Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host Monica Reinegel. I got

an email this week from Reggie who wrote, I've heard that dairy has a molecule in it that

blocks the absorption of certain polyphenols, in particular blueberries and green tea,

meaning that if you have blueberries on your yogurt, you don't get the amazing benefits

of the blueberries. But I remember reading elsewhere that when going through the digestive

tract, these two types of foods are separated and two completely different enzymes are responsible

for each of their absorption into our cells. So the message was that dairy does not block

the nutrients of polyphenols. What do you think? Do you believe that dairy blocks nutrients?

Well, let's start with this interesting idea that different foods or nutrients are

separated as they go through the digestive tract. Sort of the way you might sort your laundry.

You have your whites, which you wash in hot water with bleach. The colors are done in warm water

and color-safe bleach and the darks in cold water. If you're in a laundromat, you can do them all

at once in three different machines. If you're at home, you do them sequentially one at a time.

But the digestive tract is really just a single tube. Now it's a pretty elaborate and functional

tube, but it can't sort foods or nutrients and send them down separate shoots to be processed

separately. And there's not really any place for things to be stored so that they can be separated

and then processed sequentially. It's really more like a carwash. When you drive your car through

the carwash, a sequence of different chemicals squirts out a series of nozzles aimed at various

parts of your car, but your entire car goes through the carwash together. And if you eat

blueberries and dairy together, they will not be physically separated from one another during digestion.

In the stomach, food is actually mixed together and then treated to an acid bath. And that serves

a couple of different purposes. First, the acid kills bacteria and other pathogens that could

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