As an intuitive eater with a background in nutrition, honoring my body’s requests for less vegetables has been one of my biggest challenges and most important lessons.
Realizing that a craving for less vegetables is just as valid as a craving for less carbs has been revelatory, and so healing as someone who struggled with restrictive eating in the past.
It seems like everyone is unanimously in favor of eating tons of vegetables (or trying to) without question, but they may be more problematic than we realize.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you that vegetables are bad or that you should stop eating them, and I’m not going to recommend eating only meat and fruit (lol).
The health benefits of vegetables are clear…
… but if you’re pushing yourself to eat big raw salads and superfood smoothies most days, when you’re really craving cooked veggies, a sandwich, or a nice warm egg breakfast, what I’m sharing today will help.
I’m going to cover three main pillars when it comes to vegetables:
Toxins, fiber, and the emotional connection.
Do Vegetables Have Toxins?
Just like animals have instincts and defense systems to help them escape predators, so do above-ground vegetables.
Above-ground vegetables like kale, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and chard release toxins to ward off predators like deer and rabbits.1
It might sound kind of out-there, but all living organisms have survival instincts, and vegetables are no exception.
Just like a deer doesn’t want to get eaten by a jaguar, a head of kale doesn’t want to get eaten by a deer.
Just like animals are driven to survive and spread their seed, so are vegetables.
What kind of toxins do above-ground vegetables have in them? Do these toxins impact the health benefits of these vegetables?
Vegetables and almost all plant foods contain many toxins. In this article, I’m going to cover a few of the most important substances to be aware of.
1. Oxalic acid.
Oxalic acid is a natural chemical found in leafy greens that binds with calcium in the body and forms oxalates, which can reduce calcium absorption.2
Oxalates may interfere with digestion, specifically, the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.3
Spinach, kale, and Swiss chard are a few of the above-ground vegetables with higher oxalic acid.
Cooking these vegetables can help break down the oxalic acid, making them more digestible and unlocking their health benefits.
2. Lectins.
Lectins are a protein found in many vegetables, especially nightshades like tomatoes, eggplant, and potatoes.
Lectins are known to cause digestive issues like bloating, nausea, and IBS-D.
Some studies show that lectins may interfere with gut lining integrity, making them antagonistic to digestion and absorption.4
3. Goitrogens.
Goitrogens are substances naturally found in plants that can impact thyroid function by interfering with iodine absorption and/or disrupting thyroid hormone production.5
Thyroid hormones are essential for metabolism, and influence almost every bodily function.
Goitrogens are mainly food in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard greens, and bok choy.
Cooking your greens well can significantly reduce goitrogens and help protect thyroid health aka metabolic health.
Why Is Fiber Hard To Digest?
Vegetables (especially raw vegetables) have a ton of fiber that can be difficult to digest, especially if you have existing digestive issues.
When I was pushing myself to eat lots of big raw salads and smoothies, that was when I was having the most digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, and related symptoms like cystic acne.
When I eased up on vegetables – and ate mostly cooked veggies, if any – my digestion improved and my hormones rebalanced.
Today my monthly cycles are like clockwork, and I have little to no hormonal symptoms.
What’s the deal with fiber? Why is fiber hard to digest?
1. Cellulose.
Raw veggies – especially leafy greens like kale, cabbage, and cauliflower – have a lot of cellulose, which is a tough, insoluble fiber that humans can’t fully break down.
While you want the right amount of fiber for your unique body, trying to break down a lot of raw fiber at once is impossible for most people, and can lead to digestive issues.
Cooking your veggies breaks down some of the cellulose, making the fiber easier to digest.
3. Cell Wall Structure.
Vegetables have cell walls made up of complex polysaccharides and fibers that are harder for our digestive enzymes to break down in raw form.
Cooking your veggies helps break down these walls, releasing more nutrients and making the vegetables softer and easier to digest.6
4. Gas-Producing Compounds.
Raw vegetables – especially cruciferous veggies like you get in those big raw kale salads – have raffinose and sucrose, which are complex sugars that humans can’t fully digest.
When these sugars reach the colon, bacteria breaks them down through fermentation, which can lead to gas, bloating, and cramps.7
While fiber from vegetables can be beneficial, it’s also important to listen to your body’s signals, especially when it comes to digestion.
Here’s the bottom line: If you’re someone who’s already healthy and experiences little to no metabolic, digestive, or hormonal issues – keep doing what you’re doing.
If you’re someone who’s struggling in those areas and eating lots of vegetables because you think it’s the healthiest route, you may want to eat less vegetables overall – especially less raw vegetables.
Cooking your vegetables can reduce toxicity and increase digestibility, but if you’re suffering with chronic digestive issues, you may want to pause vegetables for the time being, or stick to simple, well-cooked veggies like carrots, zucchini, and squash.
Vegetables and Emotional Eating: Understanding the Connection
If you’re always pushing yourself to eat vegetables when you’re craving a steak or pasta, that can make you feel deprived and perpetuate the restrict-overeat cycle.8
When you honor your body’s cravings and stop restricting certain foods, you may find that you stop overeating.
Restriction is the main reason people overeat.
If you never restrict yourself, you never have a reason to overeat any food, because you can have it anytime you genuinely want it.
This is a learning curve, and can take some time.
At first you might overeat, especially if you’ve been restricting yourself for a long time (even subconsciously).
After enough time with food freedom, your body gets tired of feeling uncomfortably full and dealing with foods that don’t really work for you, and you naturally stop overeating.
That’s the exact process I went through to break free from my decade-long eating disorder, which included restricting, overeating, binging, and more disordered behavior.
Today I’ve been an intuitive eater for over 10 years, and I never eat to a point of discomfort, or binge.
Overeating feels completely foreign to me, because I’ve developed true food freedom and self-trust.
If you’re someone who restricts other foods in favor of veggies, and feels stuck in the restrict-overeat cycle, eating less veggies and more of the foods you’re truly craving may help you break that cycle.
Vegetables aren’t all good or all bad:
How they’re impacting you depends on your current health, how much of them you’re eating, whether you’re cooking them, and how you relate to them emotionally.
Are you curious about decreasing your veggies, especially raw veggies?
What’s your intuition telling you?
I’d love to hear your insights in the comments below.
Have a friend who would nerd out on this? Send it to them.
Much love,
Lula
References
1. The Evolutionary Ecology of Plant Chemical Defenses: From Molecules to Communities
2. An overview of nutritional and antinutritional factors in green leafy vegetables
3. Oxalate: effect on calcium absorbability
4. Antinutritional properties of plant lectins
5. The role of micronutrients in thyroid dysfunction
6. Raw vs. Cooked Vegetables: What’s Healthier?