The Nutrient Bio-Availability in Plants Versus Animal Foods

If you look at the nutrient bio-availability in plants, it’s very poor. People may say that spinach has folate, but generally if you look at the B vitamins in plants they’re only about 30% as bio-available as B vitamins in animal foods because they’re bound to glycoproteins.

The same is true for the minerals because of the phytates and phytic acid. To say that broccoli has the same about of calcium as milk or other animal foods is ludicrous because it’s not bio-available calcium.

So if we look at the bio-availability of nutrients, that is the great arbiter, that is the leveler when we’re talking about plants versus animal foods, and if you look at that in an objective sense, there’s no comparison.

And also, all these plant foods we’re eating are likely depleting us of these nutrients, so we might get a small amount of nutrients from plant foods but they don’t even compare to the animal foods in terms of the nutrients that are in them.

Source: Saladino, Paul, guest. “Part 47 – The Great Meat Debate w/ Mark Sisson, Dr. Paul Saladino, & Dr. Shawn Baker” Peak Human, 18 July 2019. https://www.peak-human.com/home/the-great-meat-debate-with-mark-sisson-dr-paul-saladino-and-dr-shawn-baker