Fun fact – plants do not want us eating them. Obviously, I’m being (somewhat) sarcastic with my title, because there are a lot of health benefits to eating plants as well. But I wanted to write this article mostly to help explain why I decided to experiment with removing all plants from my diet for 7 weeks. I’ll post another article soon and share how the experiment went, along with my lab work and other health metrics, but for now, I’ll present a few arguments for why plants aren’t that great for us.
The argument to go plantless is two-fold:
- Plants contain anti-nutrients.
- Plants contain carbohydrates, and too many carbs put unnecessary stress on our body
In this article, I’m are going to dive deeper into the first point: Plants contain anti-nutrients. Let’s get into it.
Plants Contain Anti-Nutrients
One thing you hear a lot in the all-meat-eating community is how much their digestion felt better after removing plants from their diet. People who suffered from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), gas, acid-reflux, just to name a few, report having a happy tummy after removing plants from their diet. It’s also similar to people with skin issues or food allergies. They struggled for years but once they removing plants from their diet they found relief in days!
How could this be? As crazy as it might sound to remove all plants from your diet, it does make sense why some people found relief to what ailed them. By removing plants from your diet, you are implementing a strict elimination diet. Plants naturally evolved to have various anti-nutrients and this can bother some people’s health.
From the plants’ perspective, this makes a lot of sense. Plants cannot run away from predators, so they have to protect themselves with chemical defenses. Some notable anti-nutrients that plants use are phytates, oxalates, lectins, and you could even argue they can be hormone dysregulating.
And no matter if you are getting adverse symptoms or not by eating plants with these anti-nutrients, it will still cause some distress to your body.
Now, let’s take a look at these anti-nutrient villains and see how we can possibly mediate their harm…
Phytates
Phytates (phytic acid), are typically found in whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Phytates act as a nutrient binder, limiting absorption of iron, zinc, manganese, and calcium. Phytates also inhibit digestive enzymes that break down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
So even if you’re eating copious amounts of veggies, you still might not be absorbing those key minerals for proper health.
You will always get some amount of phytates when consuming the above-mentioned foods, but pre-soaking and sprouting your grains and seeds will help reduce the effects of this anti-nutrient. But as you’ll see, even with sprouting, you are still going to have to contend with some other anti-nutrients. You just can’t escape them! Let’s continue…
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Oxalates
Oxalates (oxalic acid) are found in dark leafy greens, brassica vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage, cocoa, seeds, and nuts.
Have you ever eaten a raw spinach salad and your teeth felt strange? Oxalates act similar to phytates as a nutrient binder — particularly iron and calcium. That strange slimy/gritty feeling you felt on your teeth after eating that green salad was the oxalates binding to the minerals in your teeth! There is also a risk of consumption of oxalates to and an increased risk of kidney stones due to the binding of calcium.
What’s confusing about oxalates is that so many “health” foods contain them! If you still want to consume oxalate-containing foods, cooking helps break down the oxalates. Depending on your digestive health, your stomach may do a fine job. But in my experience, most people do not have enough stomach acid to break down oxalates.
Lectins
Lectins are typically found in grains, seeds, and legumes. There are many sub-categories of what a lectin is, but the most infamous is gluten.
The main takeaway is that lectins stress the gut lining allowing food particles to enter your bloodstream. This is not what you want, because you can build auto-immunity to certain foods. This can cause allergies or even autoimmune conditions and health complications down the road. This is why I do not recommend gluten consumption on the regular (if at all).
If you don’t have celiac disease, which means you cannot consume gluten at all or you might die, you can still consume gluten but it should only be a once in a while thing. I try to limit my gluten consumption to once a month or less.
Lectins can be reduced by sprouting and fermenting. This is why sourdough bread has lower gluten concentrations.
And if you eat fruit, you’re getting most likely getting lectins as well! In the book, The Plant Paradox, Dr. Steven Gundry makes an interesting point regarding fruit and lectins. When you purchase fruit from the store, most likely the fruit was picked unripe, which allows the fruit to ship further distances, and then later ripened with ethylene gas.
The gas itself isn’t harmful. The problem is that when the fruit is picked unripe the inner seeds are still developing and have a higher lectin load. If the fruit was allowed to ripen on the plant at its normal rate, the seed lectins would decrease. So it’s hard to say if the fruit you are getting at the store was artificially ripened, but it’s something to consider when eating fruit.
[ctt title=”Lectins are found in grains, seeds, and legumes stress the gut lining allowing food particles to enter your bloodstream, causing health complications 🙁 ” tweet=”#Lectins are found in grains, seeds, and legumes stress the gut lining allowing food particles to enter your bloodstream, causing #health complications ? by @Optimized_Andy #vegetarian #vegan #paleo” coverup=”26g00″]
Estrogenic
This is a tricky topic because depending on your hormone status you may actually benefit from having these kinds of foods. I find that most people should limit their estrogen exposure because many are already getting a heaping dose of estrogenic compounds from taking hormonal birth control and/or exposure to xenoestrogens from plastics.
Therefore, to keep our hormones in healthy balance, avoiding foods that are typically higher in phytoestrogens might be something to consider. Foods high in phytoestrogens are dried fruit, flax seeds, beans, grains, soy, even tea tree and lavender!
Goitrogenic
Goitrogens block the uptake of iodine into the thyroid gland, which is necessary for a healthy thyroid and metabolism. Foods that are high in goitrogens are brassica vegetables, such as broccoli, kale, cabbage and brussels sprouts. Other foods such as peanuts and soy also contain a fair amount of goitrogens.
You can decrease the goitrogenic activity in these foods through cooking. Also, increasing foods high in iodine, such as sea vegetables and seafood, will offset the harm of these goitrogens.
So as you can see, plants aren’t just pure health food. These anti-nutrients are serious business, and people who remove these foods from their diet are finding a lot of positive benefits to their health.
Wrap Up
The bigger question is: Do we need plants at all to be healthy? I test this hypothesis and write my story in a later article, but for now, I’m going to address the second argument for why plants aren’t so great… and that’s because plants contain carbohydrates.
Stay tuned!
