Do you know what antinutritional substances are? Learn to identify them and how to neutralize their effects. Improve your nutrition now!
Antinutritional substances are compounds in food that tend to reduce nutrient availability. They can interact with nutrients, resulting in a reduction in their bioavailability.
Antivitamins are a broad class of compounds that counteract the essential effects of vitamins. The symptoms triggered by these types of antinutritional substances resemble those of vitamin deficiencies, but they can be successfully reversed by treating patients with the intact vitamin.
Despite being undesirable for healthy organisms, the toxicities of these compounds are of considerable interest for biological and medicinal purposes. Indeed, antivitamins played a pivotal role in the development of pioneering antibiotic and antiproliferative drugs, such as prontosil and aminopterin.
The main antinutritional factors found in edible crops are:
Saponins
Saponins are commonly considered non-volatile secondary metabolites and surfactants, widely dispersed in nature, but are primarily found in plants.
They have the ability to interact with the cholesterol group of erythrocyte membranes, leading to hemolysis. They have also shown inhibitory activity against digestive enzymes such as amylase, glucosidase, trypsin, chymotrypsin, and lipase. This can cause health problems related to indigestion. Saponins are also considered factors that reduce vitamin absorption.
Phytates
Phytates, or phytic acids, are found naturally in the plant kingdom. Phytic acid hinders the activity of enzymes necessary for protein breakdown in the small intestine and stomach. It is generally a negatively charged structure, which typically binds with positively charged metal ions such as zinc, iron, magnesium, and calcium to form complexes and reduce the bioavailability of these ions through lower absorption rates.
Tannins
Tannins are phenolic compounds with molecular weights greater than 500 Da. One of the properties of these compounds is that they can precipitate proteins. They generally affect protein digestibility and lead to the reduction of essential amino acids by forming reversible and irreversible tannin-protein complexes between the hydroxyl group of tannins and the carbonyl group of proteins.
Enzyme Inhibitors
Proteinase enzymes have diverse roles in improving the nutritional and functional properties of various protein molecules. Protease inhibitors (PIs) perform several proteolytic actions, such as signal initiation, cell transmission and apoptosis, inflammatory response, blood coagulation, and various hormone processing pathways.
Lectins and Hemagglutinins
Lectins and hemagglutinins are sugar-binding proteins that readily adhere to red blood cells, causing them to agglutinate. These antinutrients are found primarily in foods eaten raw.
Trypsin Inhibitors: Their Impact on Digestion
In the plant kingdom, there are numerous antinutritional factors, including trypsin inhibitors, which prevent proteins from being transformed into amino acids, antivitamins, antihormones, substances that affect mineral utilization, and, of course, food allergens. Fortunately, for most of the foods in question, a simple process is enough to improve the availability of their nutrients. However, this is not the case for food allergens, which require avoiding the plant in question.
Raw egg whites, raw milk, and many protein-rich plants contain trypsin inhibitors. However, cooking egg whites, processing raw milk with heat treatment (boiling, UHT), and using heat, fermentation, or even sprouting for plants causes the trypsin inhibitors to degrade. Raw fish is a food that contains heat-sensitive antivitamins that degrade thiamine (vitamin B1). Corn contains an antivitamin PP, which can only be broken down by certain types of traditional fermentation.
Certain antihormones (glucosinolates), present in vegetables such as turnips and all cabbages, can cause hormonal problems in people who eat them, and especially in animals that consume large amounts (development of goiter due to effects on the thyroid).
Finally, certain plant compounds such as oxalic acid (in beets, spinach, rhubarb, cocoa, etc.) and phytic acid (in the hull or bran of cereals) can reduce the availability of certain minerals, including calcium, iron, and zinc. Oxalic acid can cause the formation of stones in the urinary tract (urolithiasis). However, certain enzymes (phytases) have the power to cause phytic acid to degrade with the help of intestinal flora, through fermentation with natural yeasts, or during germination.
Strategies Used to Reduce Antinutrient Levels in Foods
Today, several strategies are used to overcome the effects of these dietary antinutrients, including processing treatments such as milling, soaking, germination, autoclaving, microwave treatment, and fermentation. Several studies have confirmed that fermentation is one of the best methods for reducing antinutrients in foods compared to all other methods.
The quality of food crops, such as cereals and grains, can be improved by subjecting them to various processing methods, especially germination and fermentation.
How to combat antinutrients? Here are some strategies!
- Soaking: Soaking legumes and grains before cooking helps reduce their phytate and lectin content.
- Sprouting: Sprouting legumes and seeds increases their nutritional value and reduces antinutrients.
- Cooking: Cooking foods at high temperatures deactivates many lectins and other antinutrients.
- Fermentation: Fermenting foods like yogurt and sauerkraut reduces their phytate content.
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