TikTok Myth of the Week: Vegetables Are Bad for You
In the health world, what you’ve already heard is boring . Why would you want to hear yet another person tell you what you’ve heard a million times: that almost any exercise can be beneficial, that a healthy diet includes a variety of foods including vegetables, and so on? It’s much more interesting to watch someone tell you secrets that mainstream medicine doesn’t want you to know.
On TikTok, a bunch of (mostly) white guys proudly proclaim that they don’t eat vegetables, and you shouldn’t either. Ready to dig in?
Why TikTokers say vegetables are bad for your health
Here’s a little story that has some truth to it. Vegetables are plants, namely the roots, stems, leaves and (possibly) seeds of these plants. Plants don’t want to be eaten. So they produce toxic compounds to better kill anyone who tries to eat them, including you.
This talking point is repeated from video to video, and the TikToker usually follows it up with examples of specific toxins, health conditions, and vegetables to avoid if you want to be healthy. Sometimes they also use the term “anti-nutrients,” a category that is not necessarily the same as these toxins, but we’ll get to the specifics in a moment.
(Tiktokers tend to forget that any relationship between eater and eater in nature is an arms race. The plant releases a toxin; the herbivore develops a resistance to that toxin. Haven’t they ever planted a garden and watched it feed all the surrounding insects, slugs and squirrels? They think we are more fragile than insects, slugs and squirrels? I have so many questions.)
Sometimes it will be accepted that “some” people can eat vegetables and be healthy, but someone whose health is imperfect should simply stop eating most or all vegetables. Fruit is also sometimes demonized, although there are TikTokers who say they will eat fruit but not vegetables.
Are vegetables really bad for your health?
What? No! Of course not! Mountains of scientific evidence support the idea that the more vegetables you eat, the better.
These studies, like all studies, have their limitations: they are largely observational in nature and combine many types of vegetables and different ways of measuring them. But even so, the results consistently and overwhelmingly indicate that vegetables reduce the risk of many diseases.
For example, a 2022 study designed to evaluate the evidence behind vegetable recommendations found that eating about 12 ounces of vegetables per day, compared with no vegetables, reduced the risk of strokes, coronary heart disease, and esophageal cancer. A 2008 study found that people who eat at least three servings of vegetables a day reduce their risk of coronary heart disease by 70%. (There was also a 60% reduction from five servings of fruit.)
And this 2017 meta-analysis found that the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the lower your risk of the aforementioned chronic diseases , cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all-cause mortality. They found that the more fruits and vegetables people eat, the better: up to about 600 grams for cancer prevention and 800 grams for everything else. To put this in real terms, 800 grams of vegetables is 28 ounces, or about five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables per day.
So what to do with these supposed toxins and anti-nutrients?
Two things are true at the same time: yes, there are toxins and anti-nutrients in vegetables. And they are not harmful enough to matter to us in normal quantities and using normal cooking methods.
As the above studies on vegetables and health show, the good outweighs the bad. People don’t get worse the more vegetables they eat; they are healthier. You don’t have to get into the specifics of how lectins, sulforaphanes, or tannins affect our bodies to understand that the general answer is that we should eat vegetables.
But I know you want to hear the details, so let’s take a look at some of the big names on TikTok taking a stand against vegetables.
Lectins
Lectins are plant proteins that bind to carbohydrates. They can interfere with the absorption of certain nutrients and sometimes cause gastrointestinal problems. For example, there are dozens of case reports of people developing vomiting and diarrhea as a result of lectin poisoning after eating undercooked beans . That’s why it’s important to cook the beans for 10 minutes rather than just soaking and simmering. (Canned beans are already cooked enough to destroy the lectins.)
As the Harvard Nutrition Source explains , “It’s important to remember that consuming foods with large amounts of active lectins is rare.” Cooking destroys or significantly reduces lectins in foods. It’s unlikely that you get much lectin from your diet at all.
TikTokers who claim that lectins can cause gastrointestinal problems are not based on clinical evidence; Apart from cases of people overdosing on lectins (such as bean poisoning), most of our evidence comes from studies that do not involve people or the types of vegetables that people typically eat. Is it possible that some people are sensitive to the effects of certain lectins? Certainly. But do the lectins found in vegetables wreak havoc on our health in any universal or widespread way? It is quite obvious that this is not the case.
Lectins also have their benefits: They are antioxidants and can also slow the absorption of carbohydrates, potentially helping to avoid post-meal blood sugar spikes. Foods containing lectins include legumes (beans, lentils) and whole grains. These foods contain fiber, vitamins, and other health benefits, and there is plenty of evidence that these foods are generally good for us.
Oxalates
We have long known that it is harmful to eat large doses of foods high in oxalates or oxalic acid; This is why when you buy rhubarb at the grocery store, the red stems don’t have leaves attached. Rhubarb leaves are known for their high oxalate content. Other vegetables, mostly leafy greens like spinach (but also potatoes!), contain oxalates in smaller amounts.
But, again, most of our grocery store vegetables don’t contain enough oxalates to pose a health risk . Cooking reduces oxalate levels. If you have a history of oxalate-containing kidney stones, the American Urological Association suggests limiting your intake of high-oxalate vegetables. (Don’t avoid them completely, as TikTokers suggest, but just enjoy them in small doses.)
You can see how different the risks sound when you listen to TikTok rants and get information from medical sources. TikTok told me that oxalates cause kidney stones and kidney failure; The Colorado State University Nutrition Center told me that the oxalate in most kidney stones is produced by the body, that drinking plenty of water is the best nutrition-based advice for avoiding kidney stones, and that “it is recommended that you include plenty of oxalates in your diet.” plant foods in the diet, as evidence suggests that these foods play a vital role in disease prevention.”
Toxic reactions to vegetables look very different than what TikTok would have us believe.
From a medical perspective, the best time to be a TikToker is when you’re feeling under the weather and don’t know why. Then you try their diet or their supplements, or at least continue to watch their content and increase your engagement rates.
In reality, there are plenty of opportunities for us to have a bad reaction to toxic compounds in vegetables, with dramatic results that will force you to seek medical help immediately—and that’s why the FDA , WHO , and other organizations warn against exposing yourself to the dangerous ones. They want us to make sure we cook our beans fully, don’t eat rhubarb leaves, avoid mountain laurel honey and rhododendron flowers, and don’t eat peach pits or apple seeds. (Regarding the latter: “occasional consumption of a seed or pit will not harm you,” but please do not eat large quantities of them.)
Of course, TikTokers may try to use this information as a weapon to scare us away from completely harmless vegetables. For example,one video states that celery is poisonous because it contains an acid that makes a person susceptible to sunburn. It’s true when it comes to sunburn! (No as far as poison is concerned.) Celery juice may make your skin more sensitive to UV exposure; the same can be said for lime juice , causing a reaction nicknamed “Margarita hand”. A woman suffered a serious reaction after eating a pound of celery before heading to the tanning salon . This doesn’t mean you need to avoid celery completely.
You also shouldn’t believe videos from a sea moss supplement company that say that celery’s acidic pH indicates it’s man-made rather than nature-made (huh?) or thatbroccoli gets stuck in our digestive system for up to 4 weeks if we don’t buy it. sea moss supplements. (It’s the 100-year-old “your guts are full of stuck poop” myth again.)
Meanwhile, many of the compounds that TikTokers demonize, including tannins, sulforaphanes and glycoalkaloids, have both beneficial and potentially harmful effects. Here’s an article from MD Anderson Cancer Center that recommends we look for cruciferous vegetables specifically because of their sulforaphane content.
In conclusion, vegetables are still good for us, no matter what TikTok says. I won’t force you to eat them – I’m not your mom – but please don’t believe the online fear-mongering.