Not sure if this is just from quacks on the internet, but I’ve heard people say animal based diets are better for the body because they allow for the body to absorb micronutrients and vitamins, whereas in plant-based ones, you aren’t really getting any benefit since they aren’t bioavailable. How true is this? Personally following a diet based on meats and veggies and moderate on grains/pastas/starchy carbs
It’s true that animal sources are magnitudes higher in terms of bioavailability. All nutrients are in usable form form from animal sources and don’t need to be converted by our bodies which is inefficient.
That said , you can still get nutrients from plants, it just takes more volume. There are also fat soluble nutrients that can only be transported by fat, so if a fat source isn’t present with your plant source, they won’t be absorbed.
There are some nutrients like vitamin B12, vitamin D, choline, creatine, zinc and bioavailable iron which are near impossible to get in unfortified plant foods. Also the complete protein (full amino acid profile) consumption can be tricky as well as bioavailable omega 3 (DHA) fatty acids.
>whereas in plant-based ones, you aren’t really getting any benefit since they aren’t bioavailable
Total bullshit, unless the person who said this is using some bizarre proprietary definition of “not.”
“Are not” is a qualitative statement. My car is not moving. My shoes are not by the door. My shirts are not in my dresser. That means my car is going at zero mph, zero of my shoes are by my door, and zero of my shirts are in my dresser. So to say that you aren’t getting any benefit because these nutrients have zero absorption is a big claim that needs supporting evidence.
What I’ve also not seen convincing evidence of is that a diet of mostly animal products results in better health outcomes than a diet of mostly plants (which is what this whole argument should hinge on, not claims about compounds that may or may not be in certain foods that may or may not get absorbed in certain amounts). There’s more to health than how much nutrients you get.
This type of mechanistic quackery isn’t limited to carnivores, btw. To be fair, plant-based types do this shit too, except it seems to be the ultra-low fat types who eschew oils because they contain saturated fat, ignoring the fact that they contain unsaturated fats that seem to be protective.