Why ‘high carb’ veganism could never be “100% healthy” Pt.1
From a(n anti-)nutrition standpoint
There’s this large misconception that plants are a wonderful source of nutrition without any drawbacks.It is important to understand one important thing:
Plants do not want to get eaten.
So what if plants do not want to get eaten? What has that to do with nutrition you might even ask. It’s simple: Because they do not want to get eaten, they have evolved countermeasures to discourage being eaten and make it less beneficial to eat them as a whole. The most obvious way is of course that plants have evolved thorns (roses) or are overtly poisonous (hemlock). However, there is a more devious way that plants discourage to be used as food, namely by being covertly poisonous. For instance, one covert way plants protect themselves is through the use of a substance known as oxalate: In your body this can convert itself through the use calcium or iron into spiky crystals in your body, which usually accumulate into your kidneys and clump together to form larger obstructions and eventually leading to kidney stones. They are also responsible for the affliction known as gout. Therefore, eating a high carbohydrate vegan diet might actually expose yourself to a myriad of afflictions related to oxalate.
Another example is phytic acid; phytic acid is described as a storage form of phosphorous. However it serves a secondary and more sinister function as well. Namely that phytic acid binds essential nutrients to itself and makes them unusable for the human body. Basically, phytic acid is an anti-nutrient and since the human body virtually cannot break down phytic acid, those nutrients you thought you’d get from veggies, seeds and nuts are actually rendered unusable. This is not to say you cannot take precautions and break down phytic acid such as soaking nuts etc. But it shows that plants are fighting back.
