Legumes, grains, nuts, and seeds are healthy foods and appear to be packed with minerals. While they appear to have abundant amounts of minerals they contain a substance called phytic acid that interferes with your body's ability to absorb the minerals. The packaging label on your food might have a good quantity of iron, calcium, zinc, or magnesium, but if the item contains high levels of phytic acid, you will not be able to benefit much from the minerals in your food. As luck would have it, however, there are straightforward kitchen processes that you can use to reduce phytic acid in your food. Soaking and fermentation methods are some of the most powerful methods for reducing phytic acid in your food. If you adopt these techniques in your cooking and baking, you may double your digestion of iron, calcium, zinc, and magnesium, depending on the food itself and the mineral content.
For warm cereal like a whole wheat porridge, you can soak them in body temperature water the night before you intend to cook it to reduce the phytic acid. Use the portion of water called for in the recipe, bring it to about 100 degrees, and stir the water into the grains the night before. In the morning simply cook the cereal, but watch it carefully and stir it well -- it will be done within minutes and could easily burn and stick to your pan. With your cooked cereal, not only will you digest more minerals, you will also speed up your morning meal preparation.
Bread makers will want to use sourdough strategies to break down phytic acid. Grains such as wheat are high in phytic acid but, largely, they contain an enzyme that breaks down the phytic acid while the bread rises. A simple yeast bread will reduce the phytic acid to some degree. Sourdough bread will be far better still.
As far as beans are concerned, many of us soak their beans before they cook them. To combat phytic acid soak the beans for 12-18 hours in in water warmed to above body temperature. We recommend starting with a temperature of approximately 120 degrees and set the beans in a warm location. The water will cool over that length of time but as the beans soak up the water, add extra warm water to your bowl of beans. When the beans are soaked and ready to be cooked, strain the soaking water and add new water to the beans, in line with your recipe. Follow the instructions in your recipe and enjoy your bean dish.
You may wish to soak nuts and seeds (e.g. almonds and walnuts) to reduce the levels of phytic acid, though the soaking will be more effective if you break the nuts into smaller pieces first. By breaking the nuts, you increase the surface area of the food and the warm water reaches a greater portion of the nut. Soak the nuts or seeds overnight in warm water as you would the beans. Pour off the soaking water and then dry the nuts or seeds on a clean cookie sheet until they are crispy. You can dry the nuts in a warm area like a dehydrator or oven. In the summer, a car window works too.
Science often comes with special cases and in food science research, there are foods that can be soaked and soaked with virtually no change in the phytic acid content, including soy, corn, and oats. These excepted foods are low in the phytase enzyme that breaks down the phytic acid. Soy must be fermented -- turned into miso or tempeh in order to see a large reduction in phytic acid. You can ferment oatmeal or corn too, but they will gain by the addition of a grain high in the enzyme such as fresh wheat or rye. Cornmeal is often used in recipes with wheat flour for instance. Use whole wheat flour, fresh ground, to leverage the phytase in the wheat to work against the phytic acid in the corn.
Grains, beans, and nuts are delicious and can be quite healthy and nutritious, especially if you prepare them with the intent to get the most out of them. Read more about phytic acid in foods and discover the very simple kitchen preparation techniques that will help you get more minerals out of them.
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