The TRUTH About Nightshades and Anti-Nutrients

And there are a few different categories here where these ridiculous half-truths and lies have been peddled. And this is it’s something I really want to put your mind at ease without getting into too much bogged-down detail. There are some links below this video that will explain everything in a bit more depth for now. I just want to cover off goitrogens, oxalates, anti-nutrients, and nightshades.

And just say, as a blanket, these are all recent phenomena that haven’t been researched that have been, I don’t want to sound too terrible here, but exploited in order to sell books and get views on YouTube and get clicks on, they call it link bait. Don’t they, without any real scientific foundation, without any studies to back it up, you know, looking in terms of as an example, like the thyroid people are being told to not eat kale, to not eat broccoli, to steer clear of all the cruciferous vegetables when there isn’t actually any data, any evidence to suggest that these food, these types of foods are depleting to the thyroid. The link here is that certain cruciferous foods or goitrogenic foods can inhibit IDN absorption by the thyroid and it, and it lessens the effectiveness and the balance of certain hormones and regulating certain things in the body and it’s simply not true.

There is zero evidence in big, big studies to show that high consumption or low consumption of nightshade foods has any negative impacts on the thyroid.

However, the findings from the studies are that the consumption of these foods supports thyroid health supports thyroid function. It’s maddening to the degree that there are so many people out there who are now not eating these wonderful leafy greens, foods, and foods like broccoli and cabbage that contains so many really important potent nutrients that are going to support their health and help them recover because of a clickbaity article posted on a magazine website or a particular author, no names being mentioned who wants to sell a load of books by being contrarian and going, Ooh, greens are bad for you after all. It’s just nonsense, you know.  Touching quickly on nightshades, again, this is a fuzzy logic link.

It’s a dotted line theory as we call it, and that dotted line theory is there is some, a particular group of alkaloids, within some of these nitrate foods that act almost like an insect repellent to help protect the food.  I think if these foods weren’t called deadly nightshades, if they were called fluffy cloud vegetables, people wouldn’t be able to formulate this link. And that name has got absolutely nothing to do with the contents of these fruits and vegetables, by the way. But these alkaloids are in such tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny quantities that they’re not going to register in the body. There’s only one food where you might want to proceed with caution white potatoes. If they’ve been left for a really, really long time, as they start to sprout a new root, they will get that discoloration around the root, and that’s evidence of that alkaloid being there.

You can choose to chop that out or not consume old sprouting white potatoes as an option, many foods to choose from. But generally speaking again, bell pepper, capsicum, super, super dense source of antioxidants. So beneficial. You just, you don’t want to be avoiding these foods.

And then when it comes to anti-nutrients, which is perhaps the most frustrating of all in a way because it’s just such nonsense. These so-called anti-nutrients were only called anti-nutrients in one study for a completely harmless reason.  It had nothing to do with human health and this name was really pertinent to just to that study, which wasn’t a study on nutrition. It was a study on farming and growing methodologies, or something similar.  It bears no relevance to our health. The same groups of compounds that were called anti-nutrients are all also classified as antioxidants.

If we call them phytonutrients, which is their real name, nobody has got a problem with them.

Look, there is the dotted-line theory that certain anti-nutrients inhibit or block the absorption of certain minerals and it’s like, all right, let’s actually take a step back. Let’s peel back a layer and look at what that actually means. And there is some truth to it yet, if you consume some of these foods, they will inhibit the absorption of, primarily, zinc, calcium, and iron to a degree, in tiny quantities. Like if you’re eating anything like an even remotely healthy diet, you won’t have any problem getting enough of these foods. Nowhere near a problem.   They only inhibit absorption within that meal, the authors that are out there writing these books would lead you to believe that if you eat foods containing these anti-nutrients, then you die of zinc and iron deficiency. And it’s nonsense guys. Whenever we talk about this, it brings a sigh of relief, to a lot of people, because if you literally listened to all of these, do me gloomy reports, there’s nothing left to eat. You know, you’re not expected to live with perfection in the ABC.

We’re never aiming for perfection. Sure. You know, if you eat a few foods that inhibit a little bit of calcium, well, do you know if you’re eating all these leafy greens, you’re going to be getting way more calcium than you need on a daily basis? And that’s, if you, when you, before you even include the other foods that aren’t leafy greens in your diet,  so just chill out. Don’t stress out. There are a couple of links below this that I’d like you to read if you want more information. But if you’re happy to understand that everything I do is evidence-based in the scientific literature. If it wasn’t there, I wouldn’t tell you about it. It’s incredibly rare that I would even make suggestions based on animal studies.

It’s always human studies. It’s very rarely meta-analyses or retrospective studies that it’s always, you know, studies that study the thing that we want to know about. It’s not like, you know, looking back over a pool of data from 12 studies, with 68 billion people (I’m being facetious) to try and work out because they kept food diaries. If spinach’s good for, you know, it’s going, what is the effect of this on this in humans? That’s how I research. And that’s how I explain these things to you and, and put forward these ideas. So if it was in the data, you’d know about it, none of these theories on nightshades, oxalates, and anti-nutrients demonstrate in the literature. There’s no, there’s no evidence to suggest you need to worry about any of them.

So let’s go forth with confidence and eat loads of greens.