Member-only story
Nutritional Heresy №5: Fruit and Vegetables Can Be Bad For You
Why you might need to cut back
We’ve had it well and truly hammered into us that we should all eat as much fruit and veg as we can fit on our plates. That the reason why we are all so sick with chronic disease is because we don’t eat enough plant foods, unlike all those fit and healthy immortals living in the Mediterranean regions.
But what if all those healthy plant foods are, in reality, doing more harm than good? For many people, that is certainly the case, even if they don’t know it.
‘More recently, various research has questioned the healthfulness of plant-foods because of the presence of certain compounds, termed ‘anti-nutrients’.
Plant foods provide vitamins, fibre, and variety. I too like to garnish the main event on my plate with a little colour and interest. However, for others these foods provide pain and bloating, and rather more gas than might be considered acceptable.
Symptoms usually begin in the gut, but they don’t necessarily end there.
Some plant foods contain substances that are so damaging to the gut wall that they cause or aggravate intestinal permeability, or leaky gut.
