How many times do you hear someone say, "all things in moderation"? Like what? Cocaine? Heroin? Cyanide? All of these substances are phytochemicals, by the way. What is the origin of statements like this? I am not entirely sure, but I have some ideas. I think after hearing everyone say it repeatedly, it just assimilates into our brains as a universal truth. As they say, "a lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." Who doesn't think that plant fiber and so-called phytochemicals (phytonutrients)  aren't great for our health? After all, we hear about their virtues all the time. How true is this?

What are phytochemicals/phytonutrients?

Phytochemicals.info defines them this way, "Phytochemicals are non-nutritive plant chemicals that have protective or disease preventive properties. They are non-essential nutrients, meaning that they are not required by the human body for sustaining life. It is well-known that plants produce these chemicals to protect themselves, but recent research demonstrates that they can also protect humans against diseases. There are more than a thousand known phytochemicals. Some of the well-known phytochemicals are lycopene in tomatoes, isoflavones in soy, and flavonoids in fruits." (1)

Let's break their definition down, line by line.

•   Phytochemicals are non-nutritive plant chemicals that have protective or disease preventive properties. They may be nutritive when broken down into their components. We can use magnesium in chlorophyll. They are produced by the plant to be protective and disease preventive for the plant.

• They are non-essential nutrients, meaning that they are not required by the human body for sustaining life. They got the part about them being "not required for sustaining life" correct. The term non-essential nutrient has no real meaning. The proper definition of a nutrient is " a chemical substance required by the body to sustain basic functions..." (2). By this definition, anything considered not required for life is not a nutrient. Sometimes a phytonutrient can be digested, and some of its components can have nutritive value. Chlorophyll contains magnesium, which is essential for life, but humans have zero need for chlorophyll itself. 

• It is well-known that plants produce these chemicals to protect themselves, but recent research demonstrates that they can also protect humans against diseases. This statement is mostly correct. Phytochemicals can be made by plants to defend themselves, and we can classify them as natural pesticides. When we call them by their proper name, it does not sound so wonderful. Indeed, many are very harmful. Incidentally, 99.99% of all pesticides we ingest are made naturally by the plants themselves! (3) Other phytochemicals like chlorophyll are not pesticides as they serve to maintain the plant. The statement that they can protect humans is true for some of them in certain circumstances, but I am sure the oil on poison ivy is not protecting anyone from disease.

• There are more than a thousand known phytochemicals. True.

• Some of the well-known phytochemicals are lycopene in tomatoes, isoflavones in soy, and flavonoids in fruits. I can't argue. 

The site then goes on to cite some examples of their benefits. I will list a few.

•      Isoflavones, found in soy, imitate human estrogens and help to reduce menopausal symptoms and osteoporosis. Assuming one is healthy, their estrogen level should be at the correct level. Some estimates show that soy formula for babies may give the equivalent of two birth control pills worth of estrogen to them. (4) Yikes!

•       Indoles, which are found in cabbages, stimulate enzymes that make the estrogen less effective and could reduce the risk for breast cancer. Other phytochemicals, which interfere with enzymes, are protease inhibitors (soy and beans), terpenes (citrus fruits and cherries). For the same reason, we don't want to raise our estrogen arbitrarily, we don't want to lower it either. I love how the site claims that raising AND lowering hormones are both beneficial. Breast cancer is not caused by estrogen, by the way. Interfering with enzymes does not get an example from them, so let me explain. Protease helps us digest protein. Protease inhibition means we won't be able to break it down properly, and may become malnourished.

•        Saponins found in beans interfere with the replication of cell DNA, thereby preventing the multiplication of cancer cells. Capsaicin, found in hot peppers, protects DNA from carcinogens. Interfering with our DNA replication is not a good thing. Maybe if you are dying from cancer? OK. Capsaicin announces its presence by producing a burning irritation. Have you ever had something with too many jalapenos in it?

As you can see from the samples above, praising phytonutrients for their roles as pharmaceutical agents is a natural bias, but why take medicine if you are not ill? I will talk more about this later in the post.

Let me talk about a very famous phytochemical for a bit.  Many of us have taken aspirin at some point, and there is no denying its efficacy. Aspirin is salicylic acid from a willow tree's bark (and other plants), and we have used it for thousands of years to alleviate suffering. It works by inhibiting our synthesis of prostaglandin, which shuts down part of our immune system. (5) Does this sound like a good thing? If I told you I would try to weaken your immune system, you might get alarmed. If I promised that I would take away your pain, you would probably be happy. The right context lies in the fact that you may want aspirin when you are sick and not at other times. Just because the phytochemical called salicylic acid is useful sometimes, may not mean that you want to be taking it all of the time, as it has terrible side effects and is lethal at higher doses.

Phytochemicals act at the cellular level

Most plants evolved before humans evolved, so their defenses are not specific to humans. Many of the chemical defenses employed by plants work at the level of the cell, disrupting chemical reactions to produce their effects. This makes them natural biochemical “weapons”. Mushrooms may be the most common example, even though it is a fungus and not a plant. Believe it or not, the human cell and bacterial and fungal cells share many of the same mechanisms, making humans accidental targets. This talk by George Diggs, I attended a few years ago, is worth a look. He goes into the subject matter much more in-depth than I do in this post.

The Case for Nutrients

Contrary to what most of us believe, the human body is a miracle machine capable of maintaining high functionality levels in the milieu of complete nutrition, proper sleep, movement, water, oxygen, etc. We make antioxidants (another so-called phytonutrient) to the level we need them, and we also make oxidants to the precise degree that we need to maintain health. There is no such thing as a dietary antioxidant deficiency. I can say the same about cholesterol. In a healthy person, we make less if we have eaten some and more if we haven't. 

Misguided Medical Advice at the Highest Level

 A very recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association boldly states, "Over the long term, a diet in which only 5% of total calories come from carbohydrates makes it impossible to obtain optimum amounts of antioxidant phytonutrients from fruits and vegetables." They do not state what an optimum level is because there is none. Information like this then gets circulated by journalists, and the result is a perpetuation of dietary myth.

The Sad State of Observational and Epidemiological Studies

Most of the studies done on human nutrition are epidemiological and observational. Well-designed studies isolate one variable, change it, observe the results, and easily duplicate the results. Observational/epidemiological studies do not rely on this kind of scientific rigor. Still, since they use the scientific method, use complicated statistics, get peer-reviewed, are published in prestigious journals, and disseminated by journalists to the non-scientific public, they seem legitimate. Take a look at the photograph above. What we are observing does not represent reality. A 2005 analysis by John Ioannidis found that observational studies had an 83% failure rate when attempting to duplicate the results. (6) Still, we hang our hats on this low-quality information. We should not.

Nutrition Versus Medicine

Water is not medicine, but it is found in most foods and can be considered a nutrient. It is vital for life. When a patient is severely dehydrated, it will save their life. It can also kill us if we (moronically) drink too much by ignoring our instinct to stop. A healthy (smart) human body tightly regulates hydration levesl through thirst, perspiration, and elimination/sparing by our kidneys.

My previous example of a chemical found in plants, aspirin, is not a nutrient, it is not vital for life, but it is a medicine. We have no physiologic need for it, we have no appetite or thirst for it, it weakens our immune response, and we cannot sense whether we have ingested too much other than through experiencing its dangerous side effect (stomach pain, bleeding, tinnitus, etc.). There are thousands of such phytochemicals, all of which have no set daily intake values because we don't need them.

Why Medicine, Phytonutrients and Nutraceuticals Are Important

We live in an age when food has never been so abundant, readily available, and of such poor quality. As a result, only 12% of us are metabolically healthy. (7) Most of us are ill to one degree or another. We are more likely to suffer from chronic pain and obesity than not. Body parts fail under such conditions. When body parts fail, western medicine swoops in to save the day. Take my job, for example. Teeth will rot and abscess due to our highly processed diets. Antibiotics will help and potentially save lives. We do not need them when we are healthy. I can say the same about phytonutrients. Nutraceuticals are isolated phytochemicals rebranded to sound like pharmaceuticals. When you get down to it, they are all the same. Pharmaceuticals are substances prepared and dispensed by pharmacies to treat or cure a disease. So too are isolated phytonutrients and nutraceuticals. Phytochemicals are the same; they are just not manufactured. They are useful when we need them. Hopefully, we do not.

We Have a Choice

If we are careful, we can obtain all the nutrients we need. If our lifestyles contain the other vital ingredients to health, including sleep and sunshine, and other things in the proper dose, we should not suffer from diseases, other than some contagions and genetically based problems, which are far less common than most of our modern chronic diseases. I have written about the subject extensively on this site. When we place ourselves in the proper environment, our bodies will flourish.

Why I Decided to Avoid All Phytochemicals

As some of you know, I have had zero fruits, vegetables, herbs, or spices since January first. I have only eaten animal products, so no phytochemicals. I have never felt better. By most people's standards, I should be sick right now. At least I should have scurvy, which is a vitamin C deficiency. I do not. My rationale for this experiment is to help dispel the myth that phytochemicals are necessary for health. I want to get closer to the truth. I have done my research and feel that I am at no risk, so you need not look at me as some kind of hero. If you think I am foolish, have at it. I have discussed their many disruptive properties in this post and only scratched the surface. I am not suggesting that you should try this experiment on your own. Enjoy your grapes. They contain the nutrients vitamin C, Vitamin K, Thiamine, Riboflavin, B-6, Potassium, Copper, and Manganese. Resveratrol will come along for the ride, and numerous observational studies show that it lowers cholesterol and does some other good stuff. There is an 83% chance that the studies about resveratrol are probably worthless BS. Enjoy it, but do not believe for a second that you need resveratrol to be healthy.