The Phytic Acid Myth: Do Vegans Need to Worry About Phytates and Other Anti-Nutrients?

Let’s talk about the Phytic Acid Myth. Is it true that a vegans can’t get enough iron and zinc from their diet because of phytates and other anti-nutrients?

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What are anti-nutrients?

You may or may not have heard about the term “anti-nutrients”. The paleo and carnivore diet crowd tend to use this language. Basically, it’s talking about a variety of compounds that are found in plant based foods that are said to decrease absorption of essential nutrients like iron and zinc. These compounds include things like phytic acid, oxalates, tannins, lectins, and more. A common criticism you’ll hear about vegan diets is that iron and zinc are blocked by the phytates and other anti nutrients in plant based foods, so we need to be eating meat for these nutrients.

What They Say About Phytic Acid and Other Anti-Nutrients

For many years, we’ve been taught that you need to presoak lentils, nuts, seeds, and sometimes even grains in order to decrease the amount of phytic acid in them. This is supposed to increase the absorption rate of iron and zinc from our foods.

While this is great in theory… having to soak half of your food ends up making it take forever to prepare! I have to say personally I think I soaked my cashews once, and then I gave up… I do NOT have time to have to soak everything! And the need to presoak your food is definitely great ammunition for the anti-vegans when they talk about vegan food taking too much time and effort to prepare. 

Are These Anti-Nutrients Actually Good For Us?

If you’re a busy mum like me, you’ll be glad to hear that the latest research is finding that phytates and other so called “anti-nutrients” are actually good for us. Yep, they’re finding that these anti-nutrients like phytic acid, oxylates, Saponins, tannins, and others are actually anti-inflammatory, have anti-cancer properties, help with managing blood sugar, cholesterol, heart disease and more! 

So it would seem that these anti-nutrients are in fact things that we want to actually include in our diets! 

Does phytic acid and other anti nutrients actually block absorption of iron and zinc?

Is there truth to the phytic acid myth? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. I know, I would love to be able to say they didn’t actually, but unfortunately it’s true… 

But, contrary to what the paleo dieters of the world would like you to believe, the nutrition experts who developed the dietary guidelines are actually all over it! If you look up the references for zinc, you’ll see that they recommend that vegans have up to 1.5 times the amount of zinc each day. This is to make up for the lower absorbance rates of zinc from plant based foods. 

This is one of the reasons why I teach that zinc is an even more important nutrient for vegans than iron – especially for teenage boys and men! 

If you want to know exactly how much zinc your family needs, then grab my Vegan Kids Nutrition Guide below. You’ll find guides for iron, zinc and calcium inside, plus my favourite kid friendly foods for each.

Do We Need More Iron As Well As Zinc?

So why do the nutrition recommendations have a provision for zinc for vegans, but not for iron? 

There’s a couple of reasons for this. First off, it is much easier to measure how much iron we have in our bodies than zinc. We can easily get a blood test which will let us know exactly how much iron we have in our bodies. Zinc tests are far less accurate because zinc is stored differently in the body. So this means that we’re able to stay on top of iron deficiency a lot more readily than we are zinc deficiency. 

Our bodies can also adapt iron absorption more readily than zinc. We also have ways of increasing iron absorption like adding vitamin C, or serving with garlic and onion. 

So the main take away about the phytic acid myth is that while it is true that anti-nutrients like phytates do decrease the absorption of zinc and iron, they also have amazing anti-inflammatory, anti cancer and other health benefits. So rather than trying to avoid them, we actually need to be having more high zinc foods, so that we get the benefits of both zinc and phytates. 

Find out what are the best high zinc foods in my Vegan Kids Nutrition Guide below!