I realize this topic has been discussed several times already but I couldn’t readily find a post covering this relatively recent(2020) study: “Does ‘activating’ nuts affect nutrient bioavailability?” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814620303915
I unfortunately have no access to the full PDF but the abstract seems to be pretty unambiguous:
> - Activating nuts refers to soaking or pre-germination to reduce the phytate.
> - Activating nuts does not result in meaningful reductions in phytate concentrations.
> - Mineral concentrations were lower in activated nuts.
> - Activating nuts does not improve phytate to mineral ratios.
>
Which I think is interesting and (to me) a bit surprising. Although I have seen claims that soaking could help with issues other than those mentioned in the abstract (e.g. oxalates, traces of mold or mycotoxins) this would seem a pretty strong case against soaking.
What do you think?
And, most importantly, do you soak?
This doesn’t surprise me at all.
Soaking is only effective at reducing phytic acid in beans because they have low fat content. Nuts, with their high fat content, will be hydrophobic so while water might cause them to swell it’s not going to meaningfully deal with the phytic acid.
FYI roasting and other forms of cooking are even more effective then soaking for beans and the best way to handle nuts. The big reason to soak them before roasting is that the inside of the nut will steam giving a more pleasant mouth feel. I like low temp roasting for an hour.
If you want to do this, go for us. Just remember that we have tons of studies showing when people eat nuts regularly (especially pistachio, almond and walnut, but I’m sure there are studies on others), they have less diabetes, less heart disease, better mental health, etc. And I’ll bet they are mostly not soaking and doing extra work, they just eat what’s available. If you want to biohack go for it, but you don’t always need to overcomplicate.
Yeah, I saw this study as well, I was testing with nuts, spend some weeks eating it without soaking and felt bloated and full, started soaking and blending them a week ago and fell good now.
I think it would be better to test with people ingesting soaked nuts vs non-soaked and measure how much nutrients they absorbed from each than just look at the phytate content