Do you want beautiful, flawless, radiantly healthy skin? Want to stay healthy during cold season? Want to eat that bagel without your blood sugar spiking through the roof? Then it’s time to think about zinc.

Zinc is critical to every aspect of our biology, but the first things to go when we run low are our skin health, our immune system, and our glucose tolerance. Zinc, moreover, is critical to antioxidant defense, so should be considered broadly protective against all of the degenerative diseases that occur with aging.

Wait, are you too young to care about aging? No problem. You at least want healthy skin, great sex, or a lean physique, so listen up.

Zinc-rich foods are harder to come by then you’d think. Nutritional databases can be wildly inaccurate if you don’t adjust for inhibitors of zinc absorption in natural foods. And zinc supplements can be valuable, but they’re not a panacea. In fact, used wrongly, they can quickly induce a deficiency of copper and other minerals that are just as critical to your health.

There’s an easy solution to this mess: let’s master this topic, stat, with the Mastering Nutrition podcast, episode 36.

If you'd like to share the public version of this episode with non-Masterpass holders, you can find it here.