To not drink tea if I've just had a piece of fruit?

[PuppyMonkey]

I was always told the tanin interferes with the absorption of the vitamins in fruit, so you'd be undoing all the good of your banana, apple etc.

I have to wait at least half an hour before having a cup of tea, otherwise I get all het up about it.

Work colleagues tell me I am a loon.

Am I?

lol at the tomatoes. Sorry, but I am not really surprised that they think you are a loon.

I read that drinking tea of coffee inhibits the absorption of iron, never heard it about vitamins.

I was under this impression to - so do not drink tea with meals as DH family do. In fact drinking juice high in vitamin C helps with iron absorption.

OP IME people are very ignorant about nutritional information - importance of salt levels, what health eating is and do not always like or believe information even when provided with links to reputably sources.

importance of salt levels?

Who told you this?

I write a lot about food and nutrition. I've never heard this theory. (And if I did, I'd be very sceptical.)

Can I suggest you take your advice from a proper dietitian, a state-registered one who's actually been trained, not someone who fakes a doctorate like McKeith? Then you can eat fruit and swig tea happily all day.

importance of salt levels?

www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/2006/mar/targets

"Eating too much salt is a significant risk factor in developing high blood pressure. High blood pressure can triple the risk of heart disease and stroke and causes or contributes to more than 170,000 deaths a year in England.

At least 26 million people in the UK eat too much salt. The new salt reduction targets will help progress towards bringing down the average UK salt intake to 6g a day.

The reduction targets apply to salt levels in the 85 food categories that contribute most to the amount of salt in our diet. These include everyday foods such as bread, meat products and cereal products, and convenience products like pizza, ready meals, savoury snacks and cakes and pastries"

DC have lower maximum levels per day than adults.

Yep, caffeine definitely reduces the absorbtion of iron.

Orange juice with meals is the way to go.

No idea about vitamins though

I see. I read you as saying high levels of salt are important.

Read on MN all the time about watching salt. So had the impression minimizing salt in your diet/dc's child was quite a widespread endeavour tbh

my ex used to annoy me with his food ticks. One of which was you must not drink during meals (drink anything). He would drink a glass of water about half an hour before a meal and nothing during it.

I refused to be swayed

You are right. Tea does interfere with the absorbtion of vitamins. Its why, when I was anaemic, my doctor told me not to drink tea with meals and to wait until at least half an hour after.

You know thats actually no real proof about the salt thing. Like saturated fats causing high cholesterol and heart disease...there isn't actually any proof.
Its a very widely held belief even within the medical community, but its not based on much real evidence.

Actually I know its iron, not sure about vitamins in general. What Wubbly said.

Doh, not caffeine, it's the tannin stuff. So even decaf is no good.

Motherinferior it is actually true that tea and coffee can inhibit the absorption of iron, but it relates mainly to vegetable-based iron. There is no evidence that it inhibits the absorption of other vitamins but eating a banana with a cup of tea is just wrong

Here's an abstract from a (very dull) study on the subject:
The effect of tea on iron absorption was studied in human volunteers. Absorption from
solutions of FeCl3 and FeSO4, bread, a meal of rice with potato and onion soup, and uncooked
haemoglobin was inhibited whether ascorbic acid was present or not. No inhibition was noted if
the haemoglobin was cooked. The effect on the absorption of non-haem iron was ascribed to the
formation of insoluble iron tannate complexes. Drinking tannin-containing beverages such as tea
with meals may contribute to the pathogenesis of iron deficiency if the diet consists largely of
vegetable foodstuffs.

Link: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410962/pdf/gut00496-0045.pdf

OK, I was wrong , I often am. . Thank you!

(I once barged onto a thread to assert something half-@rsed about genetics, only to be firmly but kindly corrected by the reader in genetics at one of the Big Universities .)

Bonnie no evidence or salt and what?

there is a mass of evidence that lowering salt intake lowers blood pressure and you would struggle to find a Doc who doesn't think there is a relationship between higher intakes of salt and higher levels of blood pressure
you could eg look at the DASH diet/study for salt and MRFIT for heart disease

ZZZenAgain
Read on MN all the time about watching salt. So had the impression minimizing salt in your diet/dc's child was quite a widespread endeavour tbh

I have not been on here that long. Do not think mn is representative of general
population - mention it to other parents where I live or children center staff they look gone out and know nothing about it.

Motherinferior

www.parentingscience.com/iron-absorption.html

" experiments have demonstrated that people absorb much less iron from bread when their meals include egg protein, tea, peppermint, chamomile, or coffee (Hurrell et al 1999; Hurrell et al 1988).

Similar experiments have demonstrated that calcium interferes with iron absorption (Hallberg 1998; Perales et al 2006"

Best link I could find with quick search.

Actually, I wasn't wrong - grasps at straws - about the thing I was actually disagreeing with, which was the 'vitamins' (and I would want to know about which vitamins in any case, given that they all differ so much). I did, sort of, know about the iron. Honestly.

I didn´t think that it applied to vitamin absorption tbh.

Herbal tea?

Make sure tea isn´t too strong?

Must learn to type quicker with toddler on lap - see WriterofDreams found a better link .

I WAS DISAGREEING WITH THE OP!

I though Herbal tea was bad because they were based on fruits and were therefore acidic so harmful to tooth enamel?

smooths down MI

Basically it's all about moderation, yawn. Yes fruit tea is bad for your teeth but only if you're drinking over 5 cups a day and never brush your teeth. If you have plenty of red meat your iron levels shouldn't be affected by tea, just don't wash an iron tablet down with tea, do it with orange juice instead.

You could wash it down with a cup of blood, of course, to maximise its ferral goodness

WriterofDreams
Basically it's all about moderation, yawn

I see - most things in life seem to down to that.

motherinferior
I WAS DISAGREEING WITH THE OP!

Yes I did get that but also noted you ignored the op confusion between iron and vitamins and tea and was trying to be helpful - honest.