Just a Reminder
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4 comments:
Thanks for your comments on my blog.
I have done a little work on phytate and it seems that the anticancer attributes of fiber are due to the phytic acid content. The structure of the phytate is related to all of the intracellular signalling inositol phosphates and they bind to basic amino acids due to charge, but also due to the hydrophobic faces of the phytate. This suggests that phytate may be transported into cells as a heparin mimetic, analogously to the way that cytoplasmic heparin can poison inositol phosphate signaling in neurons, etc. So phytate probably has some additional interesting activities in the gut.
To what extent is the chelating capacity of phytate saturated in food? Is the phytate from naturally grown plants more saturated with minerals than phytate from agriculturally depleted soils?
The phytate story is not straightforward.
Hi Art,
Yes I suppose nothing in nutrition is simple! I do think it's interesting no note that the healthiest cultures are typically low-phytate. Among industrial countries, Japan and France both have low-phytate diets because white rice and baguette have low levels. Among healthy non-industrial cultures, the healthiest usually eat low-phytate staples such as root vegetables or starchy fruit, or ferment whole grains.
The chelating capacity of phytate isn't saturated in grains brans, because you can lower overall mineral absorption from a a meal by adding it, even though it's rich in minerals. You bring up a good point about soil depletion thoug, perhaps that's a factor.
By the way, I really enjoyed your hypothesis about the broad specificity of drugs like statins. I was a biochem major in college and I still like thinking about that stuff.
Stephan, do you know where I can find the values for phytate in food? I seem to recall that you said you used nutritiondata? I'm kinda interested in the values for nuts vs grains. For price value alone, I don't see myself going out the way to get totally unprocessed raw almonds-- which i like to eat in quantities of 1-2 oz a day. (basically, i couldn't soak the phytate out of those, right?)
As an aside, have you ever considered having something on the side of your blog that people could send you their most popular ideas for blog topics? This also goes along with a possible rating system for your ideas where people could rate which ideas you have in order so that you might be able to focus on those ideas first? I figure this is the next step in interactive blogs anyway before live discussions.
Aaron,
Oh yes I forgot to answer your question last time. NutritionData doesn't have values for phytic acid so you just have to scrounge around for them on the internet.
I don't know the values for nuts off the top of my head, but I bet soaking raw nuts would help. I used to soak raw almonds before eating them and I found them more digestible than unsoaked nuts. Soaked and dried is the best.
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