Bioavailability of the nutrients we eat, is important to actually making use of those nutrients in our bodies. It's a discussion I don't see much of across the worlds of nutritional and natural health. There's a lot of talk around how this food or that food has really high levels of this or that nutrient, but often, nothing is said about the body's ability to access that nutrition, it's just assumed the body will pull it out, particularly if we're talking about plant-based foods.

It appears that those who push plant-based diets forget that humans have nowhere near the length of small intestine that herbivores have, nor the same gut flora that herbivores have, and our food doesn't stay in the small intestine for the same length of time either. This means that nutrition bound up in cellulose and other hard plant fibers, is less accessible. Fermentation, pureeing, cooking, pulverizing, etc, help to break down those fibers, with fermentation being at the top of that list of mechanical/outside-the-body ways to access plant nutrition.

However, some nutritionists and doctors who have written articles and books around the subject of digestion, (some in my NHP studies), share concerns that purees, smoothies and juicing may actually skip the first and very important digestion step in the mouth, the generation of amylase in one's saliva. Saliva flow is encouraged via chewing, and those who advocate for eating your food slowly, also advocate for chewing your food well. While one author of a textbook was all about using food and mealtimes to slow down the pace of one's life for half an hour at each meal, others advocated for the fact that the more time you spend chewing a mouthful, the more time the amylase has to work on the food in your mouth, making it easier for the stomach to deal with after you swallow. The better you pulverize the food via chewing, the more that first step kicks in, and the less work, including the less enzyme and acid creation, your stomach has to put out in the second step of food digestion. Rushing through your meal is actually hard on your entire digestive system, regardless of the particular food style you prefer or require.

The chart here, comes from a magazine my local healthfood store publishes on a monthly basis, and the chart itself comes from an EU study as noted in the info above the chart. To begin with, this chart blows a few fallacies out of the water regarding high sources of protein. One of those fallacies being promoted in the news across the western world in recent months, pushed by universities, and encouraged via homework and exercises in grade schools in various cities.

But I have to wonder. . . were those numbers based on the foods themselves as-is without considering the first step in digestion or any mechanical preparation outside the body before ingestion, or did they assume adequately chewed food in the first step of digestion?