When it comes to veggies, more is NOT always better, and the TYPE matters for each person
by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist
Author of best-sellers: The Fat Burning Kitchen & The Top 101 Foods that FIGHT Aging
There
are a lot of things that health gurus disagree about... low-carb,
high-carb, high fat, protein, meat eating, vegan diets, etc... but if
there's one thing that almost every type of diet or every health
professional agrees on, it's that vegetables are great for you.
Whether someone follows Paleo or Vegetarian or Atkins, almost everybody agrees that veggies are good for you.
However, it's NOT that simple, and there are definitely cases when you
can eat TOO many vegetables and also certain TYPES of vegetables that
are bad for certain types of conditions.
This won't be a fully comprehensive list, but let me show you a few examples...
Example #1 when veggies are NOT always great:
Some people that have a damaged digestive system, leaky gut, IBS, or
other digestive issues may actually do more harm by eating TOO much
insoluble fiber that's found in a lot of vegetables [Btw, grains can
have TOO much insoluble fiber many times too, such as wheat bran].
This is a case when cooked vegetables might be better than raw, or
eliminating certain types of veggies may be beneficial, and there's no
one answer for every type of person...It all depends on the type of
digestive ailment that a certain person has. That's why it's important
for people with digestive system ailments to work closely with a
holistic Nutritionist or Naturopath in these cases.
Keep in mind that in many cases, a traditional MD does not have enough
nutrition knowledge to prescribe the right type of diet for digestive
ailments... you really need to work with a Digestion expert directly for
your individual case... this may or may not be an MD or an ND. But
make sure to seek out someone with more of a Holistic approach to
nutrition instead of someone that just wants to prescribe a barrage of
potentially dangerous drugs to you. There may be important uses for
some drugs in certain cases, but most traditional MDs will overprescribe
drugs compared to a Naturopath or Holistic Nutritionist.
Example #2 when veggies are NOT always great:
Some veggies contain certain toxins or antinutrients that you CAN eat
too much of... for example, spinach is thought of as very healthy, but
if you eat it at almost every meal, you can eat too much oxalic acid
that can cause kidney stones or damage if eaten too often and too much
quantity.
NIghtshade vegetables (such as tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc) are
another example of veggies that are normally "healthy" but if
overconsumed, can possibly have some links to Arthritis and other
problems with inappropriate calcification in soft tissues of the body. I
talk more in this article about low level toxins in certain veggies that can be overconsumed.
Example #3 when veggies are NOT always great:
Certain types of veggies (and also whether they're cooked or not) can
have negative impacts for certain people on Thyroid function. One
reason is certain veggies have iodine blocking characteristics.
My partners at PaleoHacks have an article here about 11 Goitrogenic foods that can impact your Thyroid health
(most of them are certain types of veggies) and exactly what to look
for, so I won't go into any more detail on that in this article.
Example #4 when veggies are NOT always great:
This one has to do with gut health and the quality of your POOP.
Sorry, this one might be on the TMI (too much information) spectrum for
you, but it's one of the MOST important indicators of your health, so
if you don't pay attention to your poop on a daily basis, you're missing
out on vital health information about yourself...
As you know, a really good indicator of overall health is the regularity
of your bowel movements (do you go at least 1-3x per day?), but also
the consistency of your poop, and whether you have constipation,
diarrhea, or that "perfect" texture in the middle.
Oftentimes, people are eating certain foods that give them constipation,
or other foods that make their stools WAY too loose and runny. I've
come across cases with certain people where they were eating TOO many
veggies, and it was giving them runny poop, which means the excess
veggies were irritating their gut or negatively affecting their
digestion in some way.
Sorry if this is TMI for you, but I've also experienced this myself... I noticed that when I eat very large salads with dinner, I end up the next morning with excessively soft loose stools, but if I have just a small amount of veggies with my dinner meat, I end up having a "perfect log" poop the next morning.
As you can see, if I held onto the foolish belief that "more veggies
is always better", I would be constantly irritating my digestive system
with excess insoluble fiber, but I've learned through trial and error
(and simply paying attention to my stool texture every morning and
remembering what I ate the night before) that when I eat a "medium"
sized portion of veggies with dinner instead of a large portion, that my
bowel movements the next morning are always MUCH healthier.
Again, this is a personal observation for me, and some people may do
better with higher amounts of veggies, especially if you're prone to
constipation, which I'm not. In fact, I've probably only had
constipation once in my entire life and I think that was caused by some
antibiotic that I had to take when I was younger (I'd never take
antibiotics at this point in my life unless it was something life
threatening or a serious infection like Lyme Disease). But it's quite
clear that my digestive system seems to prefer a slightly higher
proportion of fats (avocado, nuts, butter, cream, coconut fat, etc) and
meats or eggs, and a slightly smaller amount of veggies instead of those
large salads.
Also, fermented veggies are typically much easier on
the digestive system, due to the fact that they're already partially
pre-digested by the fermenting microbes. And not only that, but
fermented veggies such as kimchi and various krauts are easily one of
THE best sources of gut-healing probiotics. I like to have a
traditional Korean Kimchi most mornings with my eggs... very tasty AND
healthy for the gut! I also like to add a particular brand of fermented
beets that I've found to my small nightly salad, along with half an
avocado.
As I've covered in today's article, you can see how more veggies is NOT
always better, and there are some cases for certain people where
reducing certain types of veggies may be beneficial. There are other
examples I could think of when more veggies are NOT always better, but I
just wanted to give you a few important examples in this article,
because it's not always the best advice when you hear people say that
"you can't eat too many vegetables". Well, as you can see, yes you CAN
eat too many in some cases.
Please pass this important article on to any of your friends and family
by sharing this page with them. It's an important health topic that
most people don't fully understand.
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