Vegan for Life (10 page)

For baking and cooking, choose these oils most often:

Minimize these oils in your diet:

Use these oils only as supplements:

Packed with saturated fat—it has more than either butter or lard—coconut oil has developed a surprising reputation as a health food. This is partly because some research has shown coconut oil to have antimicrobial properties. Also, the main fat in coconut oil, which is called
lauric acid, raises good HDL cholesterol, producing a favorable cholesterol profile. Virgin coconut oil contains a number of protective phytochemicals as well and, for people eating healthy diets containing plenty of fiber-rich plant foods, coconut oil consumption isn’t associated with heart disease. Cooks may like it for its appealing flavor as well as the fact that it is particularly stable and doesn’t turn rancid easily. It can also be useful when you need a solid fat for cooking. But the jury is still out on the health effects of coconut oil, so, like all added fats, it should be used in moderation.

 

P
rotein, calcium, and vitamins B
₁₂
and D get most of the attention in vegan diets. But there is a handful of other nutrients that deserve consideration, namely iron, zinc, iodine, and vitamin A. We’ll touch briefly on vitamin K, riboflavin, potassium, and selenium too.

Minerals like iron and zinc are absorbed less well from plant foods than from animal products. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most important is the presence of phytate in the diet. This phosphorus-containing compound is found in whole grains, legumes, seeds, and nuts. (Smaller amounts are found in vegetables too.) Phytate binds minerals, making them less absorbable. Refining grains reduces their phytate content, but it also reduces the mineral content of a food, so isn’t much of a solution.

A number of food preparation techniques help liberate minerals from phytate and can greatly increase absorption. Fermentation, which includes the activity of both yeast and sourdough starters in bread making, as well as the production of fermented foods like tempeh and miso, greatly increases mineral availability. This makes leavened bread a better source of well-absorbed iron and zinc than crackers and flat breads.

The addition of citrus fruits to meals can also boost mineral absorption. Foods that contain vitamin C are especially effective for increasing iron absorption. Toasting nuts and seeds, and sprouting beans and grains, reduces the effects of phytate. So does soaking these foods and discarding the water before using them in a recipe.

Phytate isn’t all bad, though. It’s an antioxidant that acts in ways that could reduce cancer risk. This suggests a benefit to getting minerals from plant foods. If you use food preparation techniques to break the bond between phytate and iron or zinc, you’ll improve mineral absorption while getting the potential health benefits of phytate.

You might be surprised to know that vegans typically consume more iron than either lacto-ovo vegetarians or meat-eaters.
¹
The issue for vegans is how well that iron is absorbed.

This essential mineral is a part of hemoglobin, the component of red blood cells that is needed to ferry oxygen to the cells. It’s also a part of many enzymes involved in energy production and immune function. Even among Americans who eat meat, iron deficiency is the most common nutrient deficiency.

We need a constant supply of iron in our diets because we lose it through daily sloughing off of intestinal and other cells. Premenopausal women lose more iron than men because of menstrual losses. Therefore, their iron needs are more than twice what men require. The recommended daily iron intake is 18 milligrams for premenopausal women and 8 milligrams for men and postmenopausal women. In the government’s ongoing survey of American eating habits, 12 percent of women between the ages of twelve and forty-nine had poor iron status.
²

There are two stages of iron deficiency. In the first, iron stores become depleted and there may be a decrease in hemoglobin levels and mild symptoms.
In the next stage—overt iron deficiency anemia—hemoglobin drops to subnormal levels, which can cause symptoms such as pale skin, fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, an inability to maintain body temperature, loss of appetite, and hair loss. But these symptoms can also be due to other nutritional deficiencies or conditions, and true iron-deficiency anemia can be diagnosed only through a blood test. It’s relatively inexpensive to have your iron levels tested by a doctor. A blood test can also help your physician differentiate between anemia due to iron deficiency and anemia due to vitamin B
₁₂
deficiency.

Foods contain two forms of iron, called heme and nonheme iron. Heme iron is much more readily absorbed by the body and is not much affected by other factors in the diet. Nonheme iron is absorbed at a much lower level, and its absorption can be inhibited or enhanced by other dietary components. Meat contains both types of iron, but plant foods contain only nonheme iron. So using strategies to boost absorption is important for people who get all of their iron from plant foods.

Because phytate reduces iron absorption, all of the food preparation methods we mentioned above—fermentation, leavening breads, soaking, sprouting, and cooking—can boost iron absorption. But the most effective way by far to release iron from phytate is to add vitamin C to meals. The effects of vitamin C on iron absorption are rather dramatic. In one study in India, children with iron-deficiency anemia (who probably did not have high vitamin C intakes) were given 100 milligrams of vitamin C at lunch and dinner for sixty days. Most made a full recovery with a significant improvement in their anemia.
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But simply taking a daily vitamin C supplement won’t improve your iron status, since the iron and vitamin C must be consumed at the same time. So including iron-rich and vitamin C–rich foods in the same meal is important for good iron status. Vitamin C is found in citrus fruits, strawberries, green leafy vegetables (broccoli, kale, collards, swiss chard, brussels sprouts), bell peppers (yellow, red, and green), and cauliflower.
Other organic acids in fruits and vegetables may also boost iron absorption. Cooking foods in cast-iron pans can increase iron consumption from acidic foods like tomato sauce.

You should know, however, that certain dietary factors like tannins in coffee and tea and high doses of calcium reduce absorption of nonheme iron. It’s important to take calcium supplements between meals and avoid drinking coffee and tea with meals to maximize iron absorption.

Vegans have a definite advantage over lacto-ovo vegetarians when it comes to iron because milk is a poor source of this mineral. In addition to displacing iron-rich foods from the diet, it interferes with iron absorption. Excessive consumption of milk can increase the risk for iron deficiency, especially in young children.
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Vegetarians typically have iron stores that are at the lower end of the normal range—that is, lower than the stores of meat-eaters, but still adequate. It’s important to maintain these stores by eating plenty of iron-rich foods. And since nonheme iron is absorbed at a lower rate, vegetarians and vegans need more dietary iron than meat-eaters. But how much more is controversial. The Institute of Medicine established a vegetarian recommendation that is 1.8 times higher for vegetarians than omnivores. But this was based on a (completely unrealistic) test diet that was low in vitamin C and high in factors (like tannins from tea) that reduce iron absorption.
⁵
In other words, it represents a worst-case scenario rather than the way most vegetarians and vegans actually eat.

Based on these recommendations, a premenopausal vegan woman would require 33 milligrams of iron per day. While it’s possible to plan a diet that provides this much iron, it would be extremely difficult to consume this much without supplements. Moreover, in addition to being unrealistic, this amount is probably unnecessary. Vegans who consume vitamin C–rich foods with their meals and who avoid coffee,
tea, and calcium supplements with meals are likely to need much less iron than this recommendation. See “Maximizing Iron and Zinc in Vegan Diets” on page 70.

If you are diagnosed with iron-deficiency anemia, it doesn’t mean you should start eating meat. Iron deficiency, even in meat-eaters, is usually treated with supplemental iron, not more meat. Large doses of iron should be taken only under a doctor’s care, however, since megadoses of any mineral can be harmful. There may also be an advantage to taking supplements of the amino acid L-lysine since, in one study of women whose iron stores were not improved with supplements, adding 1.5 to 2 grams per day of L-lysine to their diet increased their iron stores.
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