Doc Crossfit has a hard time during metabolic class explaining why plant-based foods are not that beneficial for patients with metabolic syndrome. There is a lot of pushback regarding the role of fruits and vegetables in a metabolic reversal diet. We think that we know that vegetables are good for us. Many individuals have committed a cornerstone of their lifestyle to the meme that 5-6 servings of fruits and vegetables per day are necessary for a healthy diet. As a result, patients consume large amounts of fruits and vegetables almost robotically, believing those statements to be empirically supported. They are not. However, and unfortunately, the assumptions regarding fruits and vegetables were coined as a marketing tactic in the 90's documented somewhere in here. Plant matter is either absorbed and digested as sugar or it doesn't get absorbed at all because it's fiber.
Lets reason from first principles what plant matter is. Plants are made of things we can digest.
These are:
1) Starch
2) Fructose
3) Oils
Plants are also made of things we cannot digest. These are:
1) Cellulose (wood and bark)
2) Fiber (also cellulose)
Plants have trace components which may or may not be good for us. These are:
1) Minerals
2) Vitamins
3) Plant hormone-like substances
4) Poisons
To address the miscellaneous: minerals and vitamins are good for us, I agree. The problem with plants is that we don't absorb the good things in them that well. The medical term is "low bioavailability". I can write a chapter on this, but for now, even though I concede the point there are some good things in plants, our body doesn't absorb them as well as we are led to believe.
Plant based hormone-like components are all bad. One example I will give you is soy. Soy beans have a truckload of hormone-like crap in them. They will cause all kinds of hormonal abnormalities in people that eat a lot of soy based food. Read it here. If you dare read this book, you will never come close to a soy bean or a soy based product, ever. And please, do not feed your pre pubertal children any soy. And soy beans are not the only plant based product with this problem...
Poisons are obvious. Most plants in this planet are poisonous. If you don't believe me, go roam in a field of forest and start eating plants you find randomly. Even domesticated plants have their share of poisons in them, and a lot of the preparation and cooking required with domesticated plants is nothing but poison removal. Some people even argue that the real benefit of vegetables is low level poisoning which makes us healthier through the process of hormesis.
Lets discuss the things we can digest next.
Starch: Sugar in plants may be in the form of energy storage, and that is called starch. What potatoes are made of. Starch is glucose joined end to end in Alpha 1,4 linkages, chemically speaking. This is a diagram of starch. Lots of molecules of glucose (blood sugar) linked end to end. See how Oxygen atoms between molecules look down? On account of that detail, we humans can break this chain and digest it.
Starch is digestible by humans and animals, because we have the right enzymatic machinery to break down those bonds. Starch is not good for structure, only for energy storage. Each of those funny looking hexagons is a molecule of glucose sugar.
Fructose: this is the devil's sugar and my main enemy. The real sweet, addictive component of table sugar or sucrose. It's the sugar of fruits.
Fructose is eaten and metabolized very much like alcohol. When consumed in excess, it will make us fat and give us liver failure. I have nothing good to say about fructose and fighting against its bad effects is one of the main reasons for this blog. I do not understand how we, as a society, got conned into believing that fruits are good for us. They may be good in small quantities, seasonally, but definitely not good on a daily basis, in multiple servings.
Oils: plant based oils, that are extracted by pressing the fruit, like olive, coconut and avocado are ok. Good source of fats. Good for cooking, specially coconut. No complaints from me.
However, there are industrial based oils, which are also known as "vegetable oils" in a devilish marketing move, that are nothing more than artificial, toxic byproducts of industry. Canola, Crisco, rapeseed oil, soybean oil, corn based oils. These may be good for lubricating machinery, but not for eating by humans. Stay away from them.
Lets talk now about the things we cannot digest:
The body, or structure of plants is also made of glucose sugar. It's called Cellulose. This arrangement is multiple molecules of glucose (blood sugar) linked together end to end in a chain, in a Beta 1,4 linkage. Is the same glucose sugar as in starch, only difference is the O (oxygen) atoms linking them are oriented looking up. That "looking up" angle is a Beta linkage.
Animals and humans do not have the enzymatic machinery to break down these "up" bonds. Animals that eat grass and cellulose, like ruminants, need the help of bacteria to digest cellulose. Glucose, (or blood sugar) linked into cellulose, aligns itself in a linear, sheet like fashion. It is very tough and great for building support structures, from the soft skeleton of grass, to the tough skeleton of trees and the wood beams of a house. Fiber is nothing but cellulose and we just said that humans cannot digest cellulose. This is where I start having a problem with the role of fiber in human diet. It's stuff that we can put in our mouths, chew, and then poop it. Inert, non nutritious filling. It binds whatever other good stuff we happen to be eating and keeps it from being absorbed. So, from a first principle reasoning, fiber is anti food. Is the un-food. I wrote an entire post explaining that humans do not have the digestive system of herbivores, be it ruminants or hind gut fermenters. We can't do anything with fiber. It doesn't nourish us, it doesn't help us digest and it definitely, does not help us poop. That is a myth and a lie, put to rest here. Far from improving our digestive health, fiber makes everything worse.
Fiber has a reputation for being healthy. I guess it is "healthy", but not for the reasons you think. When you start looking for evidence as to how healthy fiber really is, it is severely lacking. The guy who made the original observation about the role of fiber in our diet, Dr Burkitt, was a serious guy, and all he said was that, in certain populations in Africa, high fiber diet correlated with very large turds and low incidence of western diseases (like what we know today as metabolic syndrome). He believed that fiber had something to do with both observations. To make a long story short, Burkitt was building his fiber based theory of diet on the foundation set by another serious guy named Pete Cleave, who figured out that refined sugar and flour intake were related to nutritional diseases of civilization, and he advised to cut them out from human diet. Burkitt, believed that it wasn't sugar excess that was the problem, but rather lack of fiber. He only had weak epidemiological evidence to back his opinion, but he was a respected serious guy, and his opinion won the day. From those opinions come the "you need fiber to poop" and "fiber is good for you" memes. As you can tell, I disagree with that.
The one and only positive role of fiber that I can think of, would be for that metabolic patient who is embarking in the carbohydrate restriction journey, who has appetite regulating problems secondary to insulin resistance. Stuffing their tummy with non digestible matter may help control hunger during those first steps while they keto adapt and break away from carbohydrate poisoning. Body builders who are dieting to cut fat may also use fiber while periodizing their diet, once again, with the intention of filling up their tummy in an attempt to fool their appetite regulating brain center. In those two specific situations, eating fiber may be good…because we are not trying to eat, but actually, not to eat. But I can't think of any other good reason to eat anything made of cellulose, be it cardboard, wood, grass…or fiber.
On the other hand, if the plant matter that you are putting into your mouth is digestible, it means that is either made up of starch or sucrose (glucose-fructose). And when digested, and absorbed, goes into your bloodstream like sugar. And I don't care if it comes from broccoli, or any other vegetable allowed in page 4 of metabolic handout. If it's plant based, and it digestible, it will go into our bodies as sugar. PERIOD.
That is why Doc Crossfit doesn't eat vegetables.
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