What it is
Zinc works across hundreds of enzymes with a portfolio athletes and dieters should care about: immune function, wound healing and tissue repair, protein synthesis, taste and smell, and hormone production. Your body keeps no real zinc reserve — steady intake is the design.
How much
References run around 8 mg a day for women and 11 mg for men. The asterisk: phytates in grains and legumes bind zinc and cut its absorption, so plant-based eaters are advised to aim meaningfully higher than the standard reference despite eating "enough" on paper. Long-term high-dose supplementation has a lesser-known cost — it depletes copper — so beyond a multivitamin's worth, involve a professional.
How well it's tracked
Sparsely: zinc is rarely a label line, so your tracked total underestimates reality. Treat it as directional, best on whole-food days.
Too little
Classic signs are slow-healing cuts, more frequent colds, dulled taste, and stalled recovery — nonspecific enough that bloodwork beats self-diagnosis.
Food sources
Oysters are the running joke of nutrition tables — an order of magnitude ahead. In real life: red meat, poultry, legumes, pumpkin seeds, cashews, dairy, and fortified cereals.
In the app
Zinc has its card in Insights with contributors and a customizable goal — the closing entry of the nutrient reference, with the same rule as all of them: the trend informs, the professional decides.