Ever heard of Anti-nutrients?

Anti-nutrients are a class of proteins that are found in various food groups that hinder your body’s ability to absorb nutrients

They can do this by chemically binding to vitamins and minerals making them indigestible by your body and/or they can cause physical damage to your GI tract, compromising your ability to absorb the nutrients in food. Malabsorption of nutrients can lead to mineral deficiencies, diseases and various alignments. Our body is designed to absorb nutrients like zinc, iron, and calcium in the correct amounts at the correct times. When an anti-nutrient is digested and binds to calcium, it can not only make you calcium-deficient, but can also affect your body’s ability to absorb iron or zinc. This compromises various bodily functions needed for proper growth and development. Our bodies are highly intertwined, so the effects of anti-nutrients should be taken very seriously. 

First, let’s look at how our body begins the absorption process

Our body uses enzymes to break down food into their simple building blocks before they’re absorbed in the GI tract. To break down protein, the pancreas releases a class of enzymes called protease. Their job is to break down full proteins into individual amino acids. The first discovered and most understood protease is known as trypsin. The protease inhibitors in food bind to trypsin, making it unable to breakdown proteins.

Protease inhibitors are found in various types of foods that most people eat daily, including “grains, nuts, seeds, vegetables of the nightshade family (potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant), egg whites, onions, garlic, bamboo, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, turnips, rutabagas, buckwheat, lettuce, sweet potatoes, spinach, alfalfa, clover, apples, strawberries and grapes.”¹

Luckily, most of the protease inhibitors are broken down when your food is cooked. However, things eaten raw or under-processed will still contain some protease inhibitors. This can cause problems like malnutrition, and even cancer, by constant stimulus and irritation of the pancreas.

This over stimulation of the pancreas can lead to cellular growth

There are two types of growths that can occur in our organs: hypertrophy, which is the enlarging of the cells, and hyperplasia, which is an actual increase in the amount of cells. To over-simplify cancer extremely, when your bodily cells start dividing at a faster rate than normal, you increase your chances for genetic mistakes that can lead to cancer. This can occur in your pancreas if you consume protease inhibitors on a daily basis. As the inhibitors bind to trypsin, your pancreas will secrete more trypsin to try to replace what was lost. If this happens frequently, your pancreas won’t be able to keep up and it will eventually increase in size (hyperplasia) in order to produce more trypsin. This increase in size of one of our internal organs can increase your chances of developing cancer. Also, the constant stimulus of the pancreas can lead to pancreatitis, which is extremely painful, often leading to hospitalization. 

The most famous of anti-nutrients has to be gluten

A person with Celiac disease is allergic to gluten and has an unpleasant reaction when gluten is consumed. However, most people don’t know that gluten is part of a bigger family of anti-nutrients, called lectins. These are found predominately in beans and grains. The level of lectins in food can be lowered with cooking and processing. However, any lectins left over can wreak havoc on our GI tract. Specifically, lectins are proteins that bind to the carbohydrates in the outer wall of our cellular membranes, compromising their structure and their ability to function properly, eventually leading to cell death. This is especially problematic in our intestines, where our brush border is located. The brush border of our intestines is the location where nutrient absorption takes place. To enhance our absorption, our body increases the surface areas of our intestines ten-fold by evolving a structure called the brush border. This is made up of finger-like projections called microvilli. Here is where all of our micro and macro nutrients are absorbed. This is also where lectins come in. When lectins bind to the villi, they make the cell wall rigid and incapable of doing its job. This leads to a shortening of the brush border and an overall decrease in our abilities to absorb all the nutrients, including vitamins and minerals that the body needs. Over time, this damage to the intestines leads to a condition termed “leaky gut.” This happens when the lectins have killed enough of our villi and their origin points, called crypt cells, leading to physical holes in our intestines, allowing undigested particles and toxins to leak into our bloodstream unprocessed. This triggers an inflammatory response from our body. Chronic increased inflammation has been shown to be one of the clearest markers for the true cause of diseases of the western world, ranging from Crohn’s disease, arthritis, and others.

Oxalates are compounds in food that prevent the proper absorption of calcium

Unlike protease inhibitors, these compounds aren’t easily removed by cooking. These compounds are found in a variety of food groups, including spinach, rhubarb, chocolate, and peanuts, with the highest being in spinach.²

In a healthy individual that doesn’t have a “leaky gut,” oxalates bind to calcium in the intestines, which gets excreted with feces. The biggest problem here is the lack of calcium absorption. However, if you have a leaky gut, the oxalates can pass through your intestinal wall and into the bloodstream. When this happens, they have to be expelled by the kidneys. While the oxalates are making this journey, they are binding to calcium the entire way and this can lead to kidney stones.

Phytates act in a similar way to oxalates, but they bind to more than just calcium. They also bind to iron, zinc, and magnesium, making them inaccessible to the body.³

All of these anti-nutrients are found in various plants and grains, and none of them are found in animal products

This is because plants have to defend themselves somehow. Their preferred weapons are of the chemical variety. Lions and tigers are born fast and strong, with claws to defend themselves. Plants, on the other hand, have limited mobility and no fangs to speak of. So when you decide to eat plant material, just be aware of the anti-nutrients in them. Nothing on this planet wants to die and all organisms have ways to defend themselves, even plants. I’ll end with adding that all of these anti-nutrients, and then some (phytoestrogens), are found in soy in extremely high amounts. So the next time you read soy on an ingredient list, think twice about consuming that food.

References

1. Daniel, Kaayla T.. The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food (p. 195) National Book Network – A. Kindle Edition. 
2. Daniel, Kaayla T.. The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food (p. 245). National Book Network – A. Kindle Edition. 
3. Daniel, Kaayla T.. The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food (p. 213). National Book Network – A. Kindle Edition.