Okay, that’s a bit of a generalization, and it depends to a certain extent what your diet mainly consists of. I have always thought, it was completely missing the boat, both when it comes to our health and common-sense, when people started developing these theories of anti-nutrients in plant-foods.
I.e. thinking that a low thyroid issue was due to eating too much broccoli. No one eats that amount of broccoli - it’s just plain unrealistic.
And now we finally have the science to stop talking about this nonsense.
Yet on the flipside: anti-nutrients do become an issue these days, because we are seeing the rise of so many ridiculous extreme diets i.e. the rise of raw vegan green detox fad type of extremist diets.
It is entirely possible to eat so monotone and restrictive, that you are actually eating too many of a select type of anti-nutrients, causing health issues in the long run. However, if we stick to the amounts consumed naturally and ensure we are eating a balanced and varied diet, the fear of antinutrients is unfounded.
The issue is, that we tend to think that because “something is good, more is better”.
And then we suddenly eat a vegan crap diet consisting of soy burgers, soy lattes, soy ice cream, soy cheese, soy scramble etc.
Or we substitute all grains with nuts - no one should be eating nuts in those amounts, that is not natural. Nuts is a food which is available in small amounts in nature to us. Restricting entire food groups to substitute with another, gets us into problems in the long run. This has been proven by research time and time again. Yet often times, we are only focused on a few parameters while testing a new diet trend out: are we losing weight? Is our blood sugar okay? And our triglycerides? And then we conclude that the diet, we are on is perfect for life, just because these few select parameters look fine for a year or so typically. But what about long-term damage to our hormones? What about adrenal fatigue? What about bone health? What about our body’s ability to detox everyday toxins on this diet? And the list goes on and on of things we forget to take into account, when deciding that this is “the perfect diet” for us forever.
This is NOT a balanced diet or mentality at all. when eating a super restrictive diet, then it is realistic to talk about anti-nutrients affecting us.
Currently, we have a movement thinking we need to eat only meat (carnivore), cos there are “anti-nutrients” in plants. This is really pseudoscience when it is worst. Not saying a carnivore or keto-diet can’t very well be applicable for certain periods of our life, depending on our current health issues, but when we think this type of extreme eating pattern is healthy in the long run - that is when we get into trouble.
This study here (click here) explores the many myths about so-called anti-nutrients that have been called into question like lectins, oxalates, goitrogens, phytoestrogens, phytates, and tannins.
What did it conclude? That there is no basis for the theory of anti-nutrients as long as we eat varied, eat a balanced diet of both cooked and raw foods. Look at how foods have been eaten originally i.e. soaking beans and sticking to mainly fermented soy. Roasting and soaking nuts also make them easier to digest, but it is not going to affect the minerals in our body, unless we are eating everything raw vegan etc. So do not fret about soaking or sprouting everything.
The main take-away: eating monotone is never a good idea, except for short-term targeted healing purposes of specific cases.