Unveiling the Hidden Dangers of Plant-Based Eating – Episode 168: Dr. Deanna Minich

Foreign. Welcome to the first lady of Nutrition podcast. Anne Louise Gittleman is a New York Times best selling Author of over 37 books on diet, detox, the environment and women's health. For more than four decades, Anne Louise has been regarded as a leading voice and visionary in nutrition and who has fearlessly stood on the front lines of holistic and integrative medicine. For more information, check out annloweeze.com that's a n n l o u I s e dot com and here's your host, Anne Louise Gittleman.

Hey everyone. Ann Louise Gittleman for First lady of Nutrition. Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. I really love all my clients, all my followers, all my fans. And today we have a lovely guest, Deanna Minick, who is an international lecturer, educator and author. Very, very popular with the nutrition crowd. And she's going to talk about when plants bite back. Diana, welcome. I'm so excited to be with you today.

Oh, well, I feel the same about you, Louise, and Louise, being here with you to have this very robust conversation about nutrition. And thank you for all of the many years of really blazing the trail into the nutrition field. It's inspiring.

My pleasure. And you're taking the bastion and running with it, my love.

Well, thank you.

So you've written an article on antinutrients and perceived problematic plant compounds. Are we talking about lectins and the problems with oxalates?

Correct. Lectins, oxalates, goitrogens, tannins and phytates. Those are some of the heavy hitters. But yeah, we hear a lot about lectins and oxalates these days.

So what is it? Tell us what a lectin is and tell us why oxalates are so dangerous.

Well, these are, first of all, they are primarily found in plants, but in some cases we also find them in animal foods. But they have been truly pigeonholed into plant foods and have even given reason why some people don't eat certain plant foods. So lectins are basically protein and carbohydrate kind of compounds that are found in plant foods that may stimulate inflammation in, in certain people. So there can be a connection there to gut inflammation, leaky gut autoimmune conditions is, is what we see that is being discussed out there in relationship to lectins. You know, there isn't a lot in the way of work just on lectins, feeding people isolated lectins and then looking for those outcomes. So in foods that contain lectins, like legumes and whole grains, And a variety of different vegetables and fruits. It's really hard to pinpoint and say that it's the lectins that are the problem. But, you know, I believe that everybody has a personalized response to food. And so we, we might see that there are certain lectin containing foods that might be a little bit more responsive in certain people's bodies. So those would be primarily legumes and whole grains, which is why some people omit those foods.

Interesting. You know, years ago there were all kinds of books out about blood type theories, and so.

Yes.

Have you found any of that to be efficacious in your own research?

You know, I must say I haven't even gone deep into the blood type diet. I know that a lot of work has been done on that. I can see that blood type would be one facet of our being as it connects to nutrition, but I think that in the 21st century, we've stumbled across so much more. There is genomics, there is the environment, there's the toxic burden. So I think it's one piece of the whole with respect to our response to food.

Are you an O blood type?

No, I'm an A. Oh, how interesting.

So you're very analytical.

I definitely. I wouldn't get a PhD if I wasn't analytical. So I would say, you know, I do work from the head, but also from the heart, I hope.

Lovely, lovely. So anti nutrients include lectins and oxalates. Would you describe what the oxalates are and what we need to be mindful of?

Sure. So oxalic acid. So we find oxalates in a number of different plants, like some of the heavy hitters would be. So Swiss chard, sorrel, spinach, rhubarb is one. But then also things like beet greens, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and so these oxalates. Now, with oxalates, I would say that there's a bit more data than something like lectins with oxalates. What can happen is that there may be an imbalance with minerals. And what can happen in certain people, especially if they have a certain gut microbiome, they can hyper absorb certain of these soluble oxalates, and that may translate into some changes in kidney health. Specifically, there may be some changes in kidney stone formation. So, but, but you know, I think that there's some nuance there, Ann Louise. I think that when you look at people that consume healthy amounts of minerals, there isn't quite that same impact. And also when people take care of their gut microbiome, there's Even what's referred to as the oxalobiome. So specific microbiome, microorganisms that work to break down that oxalic acid, then maybe these things aren't as problematic. And we can also cook our food well. So with lectins and oxalates, one of the ways to reduce them in foods is to make sure that we cook food, especially using moist heat methods.

What about the oxalates and almonds, which I understand are problematic?

Well, yeah, the same thing we would. I'm not sure how almonds stack up relative to some of the other foods that tend to be very high, like the greens.

Exceedingly high.

Yeah.

And there are, you know, why, Diana, if I may interrupt, is that people are using almond flour instead of wheat. Gluten free grains and gluten grains, yes.

And also, you know, millet, amaranth. Some of these alternate grains also do contain some more of these antinutrients nutrients. And we can see in populations in Africa, when people eat these grains all the time, they start to get deficiencies of certain minerals. So, you know, almonds. Well, you know, almonds, you know, have many issues. They require a lot of resources, water and such in order to grow. If we look at almond products on the market, they're exorbitantly priced. Because they do. Yeah. So I think that, you know, and this is why I always talk about diversity. It's never just hammering on one food and saying, okay, I'm going gluten free, so I'm going to switch over to almond flour. Flour. Well, but what about sorghum and rice and tapioca and buckwheat? You know, there can be many different options where we don't just get the concentration of particular nutrients, whether they're vitamins, minerals, or even these anti nutrients.

You know, my favorite flour is chestnut flour.

Ah, I like chestnut. And you would get a bit of fatty acids with chestnut and a wonderful sweet taste. Yeah, I love that idea.

So we've, we've got the oxalates covered, the lectins. Tell me about the goitrogens.

So goitrogens can block the production of thyroid hormone. So you can get some issues with thyroid health. And so if we think of the foods that contain goitrogens, typically these are the foods that we would consider to be healthy as well. So things like the brassica vegetables, kale, brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, turnip greens, things of that nature. So the way to, to override goitrogens is to steam or to cook cruciferous vegetables. Just even minor amounts relatively of steaming can help to reduce the goitrogen content. Now I also think that we get a lot of benefit from these foods. There's a lot of chemo preventative benefit to these foods. They play a role in detoxification. So like anything else, sometimes you get the good with the bad. And I don't like to call it good with bad, it's just that you get a balance of different compounds in foods that sometimes can offset one or the other. So but in general people have concerns about goitrogens because of thyroid health. But you really have to be having a lot of raw crusades, cruciferous vegetables and have an underlying thyroid condition. I think in order to really see this clinically, not to say that there can't be some sensitivity for certain individuals. You know, imagine somebody is just having raw kale smoothies every day in large amounts. That could be, that could be a problem for certain people.

And then last but not least, phytic acid.

Well, phytates are, you know, they're very interesting because they much like the others, they also also seem to have a benefit. So we tend to find phytates in high fiber foods. So they are the, the plant storage form of energy. And typically phytates are seen in and of itself as an antioxidant. So you find phytates and things that are high in fiber, things like cereal grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, all of the same foods that we would find things like lectins in. So and you know Ann Louise, a lot of these compounds can vary with the same season, the cultivar, where is it grown? I want to toss that into the mix because it's really hard to know how much in the way of any of these compounds anybody's getting at any particular time. So the thing with phytates is that they chelate, they are big bulky compounds and what they can do is they can bind things like minerals. Now on the other hand they can also bind things like heavy metals. So it's much like fiber, fiber can have a binding effect. So what we tend to see in the literature and what people have had concern about is how phytate containing foods, reducing zinc bioavailability. So and you know, typically that's seen in rural populations, vegetarians that are just eating specific foods and eating a lot of those foods and not really having a diverse diet.

So you're a big believer in dietary diversity. But how do we know when we're getting enough?

So the, a number of different organizations have claimed certain numbers to get Within a week. So the American Gut project talks about aiming for 30 unique foods in seven days. You know, making sure that we get enough of those rotational fibers. I would say there's another publication in which Dr. Miguel Toribio Mateus was talking about getting 50 unique plant foods, or I think you just talked about foods in general in order to nourish the gut microbiome. So 50 unique foods in seven days. So what that means is that, you know, how people go to the store and they buy a big bag of apples and all those apples are the same. Maybe it's like Red Delicious, it's Pink lady apples. But what I would encourage people to do is even within something like apples, picking by hand the different kinds, because each type of apple has different phytonutrients. So each of them count.

Very, very practical. Tip.

Yes. And it takes about an additional minute in the grocery store, but it's actually benefiting our phytochemical diversity. And dietary diversity benefits so many things. Mood, nutritional status, it reduces toxic burden. It helps with even reducing the risk of fractures and falls. You know, there' a long list of different things that tie into dietary diversity.

So what do you eat? Let's get really diverse. Let's get close up and intimate with our diet.

All right, well, so here's how I eat. And this doesn't mean this is how everybody should eat my breakfast. I'm a morning person. So my breakfast is like most people's dinners. I eat a very big breakfast. I eat the rainbow at breakfast. I try to get it all in. In fact, sometimes my husband complains. He'll look down and he'll say, this is too divers.

Oh my God, I can hear it now. This is too diverse.

He literally said, and he's not a morning person and he doesn't really like to eat breakfast. So I make these big breakfasts. I like to front load my day. This is when I do most of my physical activity. And so just even today, you know, the way that I front load my morning meal is with spices. And I try to get a combination of spice blends. Like curry powder has about 5 to 7. And in fact, my curry powder that I buy, which is in a glass jar, it's all organic, it has 11 different spices. So already right there I'm a, I'm getting 11 if I use. And I use that curry powder this morning. So I get that. I make sure that I have fruit in season when I can. Because we do know from even the science now that certain fruits grown in season help to prime our metabolism and also our hormone health. So I try to go with the seasons on fruits, and I'm always getting vegetables. I like to grow them. We live on five acres, so, you know, we have a lot of cruciferous vegetables. I like to bring those in. And as for protein, because that's always a charged question. People always want to know, what do you eat? Are you a vegetable, animal, protein person? And quite honestly, in my view, I like to diversify protein. I don't like to stick with any one type of. Because there are pros and cons of every type of food. And I think that when people just hammer on one protein source all the time, they could potentially form a sensitivity, intolerance, or even an allergy. So I have to rotate. I rotate my foods. I actually did this exercise in one of my groups, and I think for me personally, I got to like 120 different unique foods in seven days. But I really had to think about it. You know, you really have to make sure, like, okay, I had a banana today, so no banana tomorrow. You know, you have to write it down, take pictures and be very focused. You'd have to, absolutely.

Hi, my friends. Before I go any further, let me take a moment to acknowledge my sponsor, Unikey Health, at unikeyhealth.com, which is your universal key to health. Since 1992, I have been a spokesperson for this company for over 30 years. They're the home of all my weight loss plans. The FAP Lasting Biobuilder, which has been featured in national magazines. They also carry the Ultimate Brain support and the Magnesium multitasker. So whether it's weight loss, internal cleansing, or just targeted health Support, go to unikihealth.com tell them Ann Louise sent you. Within all this, where do nightshades fall?

You know, clinically. You know, years ago, when I was seeing people one on one, what I would find is most people know when they have a nice shade sensitivity. Those are the people that get joint pain. They have some kind of inflammation. I have found that on average, it's 10 to 15% of people that have some sense. And even for myself, I'm not a tomato person. If I eat tomatoes, I end up looking like a tomato. I get a rash, I get inflammation. But for me, it's very specific to tomatoes. So not eggplant, potatoes, all of those things. Correct. And so it's a very selective sensitivity in my case. But for other people. Yeah. You know, I think sometimes certain of those foods, maybe they're too acidic or Maybe it's the lectins. There can be a lot of different things. So I don't discount that. You know, maybe our guts just aren't primed for certain foods. And also maybe our ancestry, you know, where do we come from? Because, you know, I'm part Irish and so, you know, it's like for me to not eat potatoes would be like an anomaly.

Sacrilegious.

Yes. But on the other hand, I'm not Mediterranean. My husband's Mediterranean. He does great with tomatoes. I do not. So I think, I don't know, we just kind of have to take into account many different variables. Whether it's like you were saying before, the blood type for some people. But I think it's very complex. We are complex beings living in a complex world that's very different now than even 10 years ago. So things are always changing.

So when I think of you, I usually think of colors. So this is what I think of color diversity. So how does all that play into your philosophy now?

Yeah, it's still there, very much there. In fact, one of the things that I found, and you might be able to appreciate this while being a nutrition as you have, is that, you know, basically people can arm wrestle anything. They can arm wrestle muscle, soy, eggs, meat, dairy. You know, everybody has a pro and a con and you know, there's always a fight to be picked about what people are eating. The one thing that I see that people can't really effectively arm wrestle would be the copious research on fruits, vegetables, plants in general. You know, even aside from these anti nutrients which I started to get asked about because of my position on plants, it's like, you know, but that's still a relatively minor percentage of the population that has issues with those things. Overall, epidemiologically through populations looking globally, what we see is that this is the common denominator. So then when I went further into looking at eating fruits and vegetables, I started to see that there was a color code, that there are certain colors that align to phytochemicals, that align to functions. So if we're missing a color of the rainbow, we potentially may not be getting a certain function purple.

What are we missing?

Brain. Brain health. What we know about blue purple foods is that they connect to anthocyanins, anthocyanidins, proanthocyanins. A lot of this talk about blue purple foods and brain health. So when I talk brain health, I'm talking learning, memory, mood, I'm talking about mood state and what's really interesting and this is not my research. This comes from other researchers like Dr. James Joseph at Tufts and many other people where they looked at certain compounds and things like blueberries and certain other groups looked at Concord grape juice. And what they find is that these compounds go into the brain, localize there, and actually have a functional role. So they're not just generic antioxidants. They're actually functional components of our different body systems. And in fact, I like that you call out purple because that's the color that people eat the least amount of.

I love the color purple. What about the color yellow?

That to me is a gut color. So people get too much yellow. And what I mean by yellow here is a lot of processed foods contain a lot of corn, refined grains. And yellow is actually the color of happiness, optimism and joy. So it has a lure. You know, most people, when they think of the color yellow, it lifts mood. So when I think of yellow, I think of healthy yellow. I think of ginger, which helps with gut motility. I think of things like prebiotic fibers and things like plantains and bananas. Some of the highest serotonin containing foods are plantains, pineapple, and actually even banana. And when I think of banana, I think of like a smile. So it's kind of like, you know, we need. Yeah, I think we want to be happy. Right. That's why we want to be healthy. And with yellow, it is that connection to joy. A bright sunny day. And what we're trying to do is actually get energy and joy in our lives. And many times we overeat a lot of these processed yellow foods.

Interesting. Red, orange.

Red is the color of inflammation, right? So when we think of inflammation in the body, we think of redness, pain, heat, swelling. Now what we see is that a lot of the red colored foods, the berries and some of the vegetables contain a number of these anti inflammatory polyphenols that can actually help with immune health and reducing inflammation. Now there's a flip side to red, just like there is with yellow, sometimes they cause inflammation. You were just asking about nightshades. There's also the connection with histamine release from certain foods. So strawberries, which can be high in histamine. So you know, red is kind of on that line. Sometimes people get too much red in the way of red colored foods, but sometimes we need some. Now, orange, I don't know why, but I associate you with orange whenever I see your clothing or, you know, orange to me is a feeling color. Orange is kind of a sexy color. It's connected to reproductive health, actually.

We like that. We like that.

Yes, it's the ovaries. In fact, I just posted on my Instagram last night that the human uterus has been shown to contain 13 different carotenoids, and the bulk of them are beta carotene and beta crypto xanthin. So I studied carotenoids. Carotenoids are the plant compounds that are connected to red, orange, and yellow. And so most people think of beta carotene when I think of carotenoids. But carotenoids is really a category of like 700 different plant compounds. But there is a connection here. Most people don't realize this with the reproductive tract, especially in women. And these particular carotenoids, they also go into the fat tissues. So, like, the skin can turn orange if we have too many of these orange foods?

Yes, indeed.

Yes. So orange is. It's a feeling warm, it's a happy color, but it's a creative color, too.

Creative color. I also think people are somehow attracted to a color that they need to attain or a quality that they need that that's missing 100%.

I have also found that just more anecdotally and you know, that sometimes the color that we're repelled by is the color that we need as a nutrient. You know, for myself, I've. I've had a history of reproductive issues, and I was always polarized to orange and per. And pink. Not purple, but orange and pink. I just didn't like those colors, but then I would paint them. So I also, you. You mentioned me in this connection to color, and I almost felt that because I wasn't getting them in my diet, I needed orange and pink in other ways. Well, now I'm. I'm very good on carotenoids. I'm not as drawn to orange and pink or polarized by those colors. You know, the color I've always loved, though, is green. And some of us just have a color we've always liked. Some people, like you said you like purple. My. My niece loves purple. Some people, we just know what colors we like, and sometimes it changes. Sometimes we move into a different color where we actually need that color mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.

Even my whole kitchen is green.

Ah, that's appropriate.

The interior decorator said, nobody has a green kitchen. I said, I will. And we were cool in the. In the summer and warm in the winter.

I like it. It's healing. Green has a connotation with healing, the heart, expansion, nourishment. It's the color of health. So it makes sense to me to bring that into the kitchen.

I love that. But for those of us that don't have time to make all these wonderful foods and practice color diversity and vegetable diversity, are there any powders we can look to?

Yes. So a lot of the different phytonutrient powders out there are wonderful because you're getting a, a medley of different colorful phytonutrients. The only thing I would say there is just make sure that you choose an organic powder. You know, when I think of concentrating plants, I also think of concentrating whatever can be in plants. And so that could be pesticides, insecticides, herbicides. So if you do do a phytonutrient powder, which I do, sometimes I do it. I don't do it every day. But if you, if you need to fill that gap, I do think bringing in a phytonutrient powder can be a worthwhile thing. Now, it's not going to look like the rainbow, but inside it will have the colors that would correspond to certain of those plant compounds. So just read the label, make sure you're getting a lycopene, astaxanthin for the red, the beta carotene, beta cryptoxanthin for the orange. You've got your yellows with a lot of the naringenin, nobilitin things of that, bioflavonoids. You've got the greens with the nitrates, you've got the anthocyanins with the blue purple.

There you have it. Where can we learn more about you?

Deannamenick.com My website. I put everything there. A bunch of different resources.

Spell your name for my listeners.

You bet. It's Deanna. D E A N N A M I N I C H dot com.

Excellent. Will you come back, Diana Minick?

I would love to. Thank you, Ann. Louise.

My pleasure. We're practicing vegetable and nutrient diversity today, my friend.

Wonderful. If people can just remember diversity, color and creativity, I think they have it down beyond food, even.

Yes, indeed. So thank you very much for coming and being my guest. Thank you all for listening to first lady of Nutrition. Visit annlouise.com, get that new download on dopamine, which is a diverse nutrachemical for the brain. And we'll see you next week. Shalom uvracha, my friends. And please don't forget to subscribe and like first lady of Nutrition podcast, thank you so very much.