The subject of discussion this week, “Taking foods as medicine: Healing or killing”? generated opinions on anti-nutritional factors of home remedies from food groups.
The discussion centered around whether consuming foods as medicine is beneficial or harmful. It covered the impact of anti-nutritional factors found in certain foods, which can affect nutrient absorption and health. These factors include compounds like phytic acid, lectins, tannins, oxalates, protease inhibitors, and goitrogens, naturally present in various foods. Their adverse effects are noticeable when consumed excessively or if an individual has specific sensitivities or deficiencies.
Strategies were discussed to minimize these effects, such as proper food preparation, storage, and sensitization about the harms of anti-nutritional factors. For instance, soaking beans and legumes overnight or employing methods like soaking, fermentation, germination, blanching, cooking, and steaming can reduce these compounds.
There was a distinction made between anti-nutrients and phytonutrients, indicating that while these compounds can be harmful at certain levels, they possess beneficial effects in smaller concentrations. For herbs and spices used as home remedies, standardizing correct dosages and understanding where these compounds concentrate in the plant is crucial.
Recent studies are shifting the perspective on these compounds, now called phytonutrients, due to their bioactive nature and therapeutic properties. For instance, research shows that processing methods like dehulling, boiling, and cooking can significantly reduce the levels of anti-nutritional factors in foods, making them health-promoting options.
This is a very educative piece.
I thank the team on such impactful knowledge.
Thank you for the great contribution, Sir Kelvin.
This is gonna be my pep talk at work today. Thanks for the piece
You are welcome, Sir. I am glad it resonated with you.
My opinion on this subject is that using food as medicine is not sacrosanct. This is because medicine comes in when nutrition fails. So food and medicine is needed to treat the health issues that arises afterwards.
Secondly, the some advocates of using food as medicine remove medicines outrightly from their therapy. This is not advisable.
Again, most of the claims of successes of using food as medicine do not go through scientific evaluation – peer reviewed, verified and published in standardized journals.
I’m conclusion, we should use our knowledge of nutrition to consumed natural foods adequately, according to nutritional requirements based on age, occupation and health status. Daily exercise and regular health checks will give the optimum health and peace of mind that we desire.
Taking food as medicine is beneficial. For example the classes of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants can be gotten from our fruits and vegetables. Most times we feed mainly on staple foods which are very little of the above classes of food that are beneficial to ravage free radicals which leads to degenerative diseases. So these classes of foods serves for therapeutic purposes I e for healing but should be taken moderately and those that needs preparation prior to consumption should be cooked moderately.