Day Seventy Two!!

Three Major Minerals


Yesterday we talked about iron so today I thought we would complete this topic with the other two minerals, zinc and selenium. All three is important to your body and are essential. Zinc is found in muscle tissue, bone, eyes, skin, kidneys, and it is a necessary component to wound healing, healthy thyroid function, and cognition. Your body absorbs between 50 and 40 percent of your required dietary zinc. If you are female you need 9mg daily and if you are male 11mg daily. Good sources of zinc are beef, 3 ounces comes to 7mg. 3.5 ounces of turkey is almost 2mg. 1/4 cup sunflower seeds is almost 2mg. So you can see that people who are vegetarians might need to take a supplement. As well, deficiencies of zinc are found in alcoholics, the elderly, and low income households. 


Selenium helps reduce peroxide free radicles which are believed to cause cancer as well as aging. Selenium works along side vitamin E as a antioxidant. Good sources of selenium are eggs, tuna, sardines. Adults need about 55 micrograms per day, so an egg would give you 16mcgs, 3ounces of cooked crab gives you 34mcg’s, 3ounces of tuna gives you 56mcg’s, and sardines give you about 45mcg’s, a quarter block of firm tofu gives you 8mcg’s. Selenium intake may also reduce inflammation. Selenium deficiency can also occur after bypass surgery.


So when you take a look at the list of food items that I have written down here, it’s easy to see that for people who love to eat out with fast food or are sustaining themselves on junk food, that you can see how easily people can get into deficiencies. Personally I would never even think about the components of the food that I am eating. It used to be that everybody just talked about how much fat you’re eating. Even on the TV show I have been talking about (The Biggest Loser and The Last Ten Pounds) they too concentrate on how much fat the contestants have been eating, which really doesn’t add up to anything because they are just lumping in good fat with bad fat and they don’t identify the difference between the two. So taking a look at these different components of food, at least in regards to minerals, highlights how important it is to have a good healthy well balanced diet consisting of meats and vegetables, nuts, seeds, fruit, and for those that like it, grains and oats. ​