Is there a problem with plants?

PLANT-BASED DIETS ARE ON TREND, BUT ACCORDING TO SOME, THERE IS A DARK SIDE TO THIS NEWEST STYLE OF EATING.

- MATTHEW KADEY

This childhood rhyme probably is probably familiar to those of you who spent any time discussing sonorous bodily functions as a kid (in other words, everyone!). It’s true that certain foods like beans have a gaseous reputation, but does this toot-inducing tendency indicate an internal issue that ventures beyond a few laughable farts? Maybe, maybe not.

Recently, people have been making seemingly counterintuitive diet changes by replacing nutritional powerhouses like spinach and brown rice with less nutritious options such as iceberg lettuce and white rice. Their reasoning: to avoid ingesting anti-nutrients, naturally occurring compounds found in plants that have recently been vilified by certain medical professionals and Hollywood A-listers who claim they all but destroy your digestive system.

It sounds logical — if nutrients are good, then anti-nutrients must be bad. However, it’s really not that simple, and in order to make informed and educated decisions about your diet, you need to understand the nuances of anti-nutrients.

Nutrition Jekyll and Hyde

In living plants, anti-nutrients act as a natural defense system against invaders, including fungi, bacteria and bugs — think of them as Mother Nature’s pesticide. The trouble arises with human ingestion: Anti-nutrients bind to other micronutrients in your gut, preventing efficient absorption. “For example, oxalate [in spinach] binds to calcium during digestion, which interferes with the body’s absorption of that mineral,” explains Sharon Palmer, RD, author of The Plant-Powered Diet (The Experiment, July 2012).