By Elena Voropay

Can high fibre foods such as green vegetables can effect the uptake of supplements, is this relevant also to protein powders? This question falls into one of the 'grey' ares where there is no black or white answer. Firstly, eating your veggies with protein. My favorite mix is a green salad - lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red capcicums, baby corn, marinated beans, roasted eggplant, with grilled chicken breast, sprinkled with toasted seeds and yogurt mint dressing, plus a couple of pieces of rye bread  - appologies if you puked reading all this as I understand that everyone's taste is different, and not too many people share mine... Anyway, I also love Thai stir fries with seafood and plenty of veggies and steamed rice.

Vegetables themselves contain many biofactors that actually enhance the absorption of many amino acids, facilitate digestion and promote a slower release of peptides into the blood stream (so you don't overburden your liver, where the protein gets processed, with a surge of ammonia).

You know how protein gets digested, in the intestines, being absorbed throught the walls, pass into the blood, and then to the liver taking several hours to be completely broken down. But after they reach the blood, they get cleared within 10 minutes or so. The body uses only the needed amount of nitrogen, and the rest is excreted through the additional work of liver. It forms ammonia from the excess nitrogen, and then the kidneys get involved in removing the manufactured ammonia through urea.

In other words, you excrete the extra protein, and your valuable body energy gets wasted in all this unnecessary processing. But for hopeless meat lovers, there issomething to look forward - an interesting point is that the excess aminos might be actually of good use for the body, and the liver may be able to use these to form some nonessential amino acids by combining with alpha-ketoacids derived from either carbs (such as pyruvic acid) or fat (acetoacetic acid)

Vegetables and complex carbs balance the digestive process. Consider the production of all the enzymes and hydrochloric acid in the stomach stimulated by the molecules of carbohydrates and all the vitamins and minerals involved in healthy function of the body's food processing system, which also builds up good bacteria in the GI tract, improvs the protein transportation system to the cells, and keeps the brain in healthy satisfaction. However, fiber may block the absorption of some nutrients, and amino acids are included. It depends on how much of what you eat and what are your body needs.

Too much fiber with just a few grams of protein is definately not going to be a very body constructive meal. Fiber does bind with fats and other substances, pushes the food more quickly through the digestive tract (but at the same time may slow down the digestion as churning fiber takes a lot longer than simple sugars), and especially if you calculate every gram of protein you eat (some dieters get obsessed with all the peptide milligram counting - I refer to bodybuilders), then you may have to slightly upgrade your burger size.

But since your body is a very smart machine, and it will do whatever it needs to get the stuff. It will adapt, secrete more bacteria when needed to break down the fiber more efficiently, change the PH balance and increase the acidity in the GI tract depending on how you train your system to absorb the stuff it needs. It is rather difficult to do a research on this subject, as the control of subjects absorption rates of different amino acids may vary, and how well they process fiber is also not a uniform pathway.

So, in moderation, veggies can do more good for protein digestion than inhibit the absorption of aminos. And if it is just a regular meal, you are doing yourself a great favor by adding greens to your meal. After an intense workout, some recommend liquid protein and carb supplements for faster and more efficient nutrient delivery to your empty muscle cells. But this combination lacks fiber. And since the uptake of nutrients at this moment is at its peak, practicing saturation through quick and easy absorption may improve your size and strength.