Seeds
Flowers
3. Plant Chemicals that Kill (Phytochemicals)
W
hat are plant phytochemicals? These are the nutrients often concentrated in the skins of many fruits and vegetables that are responsible for their color, hue, scent, and flavor. Examples of foods rich in phytochemicals include: tomatoes, red onions, green tea, grapes, red cabbages, sweet potatoes, broccoli, kale, parsley, spinach, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, melons, garlic, and the list goes on. Plants produce phytochemicals to protect themselves from insect attacks and plant diseases. These compounds belong to four major categories: alkaloids, glycosides, polyphenols, and terpenes. They are also referred to as phytonutrients and are frequently touted as being essential nutrients that help to optimize health and fight cancer.
Stems
Fruits Leaves
Roots
Flowers: cauliflower, broccoli, artichoke Seeds:
corn, peas, lima bean, string bean, legumes, peanuts, nuts
WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT PLANTS: •
99% of all plants in the
Stems:
celery, asparagus, rhubarb
Fruits:
pumpkin, cucumber, apple, tomato, eggplant, peppers, squash
Roots:
turnips, sweet potatoes
world are inedible. •
Nearly 100% of animals
carrots, radishes, potatoes, beets,
Leaves:
cabbage, lettuce, spinach
are edible. These phytochemicals we’ve been using as herbs and medicines to heal for thousands of years or to hurt as poisons. Herbal medicine was just the earliest form of the pharmaceutical industry. Native Americans and tribes in the Amazon have relied on “Medicine Men” or shamans to find natural remedies among the indigenous trees and plants. From using the bark of a tree to create an anesthetic or cure for malaria to using flowers to prevent the growth of tumors. Approximately 7,000 medical compounds prescribed by Western doctors are derived from plants. Now we’ve figured out how to take those pharmaceuticals and grind them down, process them, separate them into their entities. For as many phytochemicals that are curative, there are also many which are addictive and deadly, namely heroin and cocaine, even marijuana. Unfortunately, the good aspects of plants can’t always be isolated from the negative ones.
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•
Plants are designed for survival. We think we are using them, but they are really using us.
•
99.9% of all pesticides in our diets are natural chemicals in plants, produced to deter predators from eating them (including humans!), they’re not chemicals sprayed by farmers!
WHAT PART OF THE PLANT ARE YOU EATING? Humans eat every part of plants from the seeds and roots to the stem and flowers. Many of us don’t know which is which or that each part of a plant comes with its own particular plant poisons. Seeds are some of the riskiest because they represent the reproductive capabilities of the plant so they have lots of mechanisms to help ensure the continuation of the species. And surprising as it may be, any grains that you’re eating (wheat, corn, oats, and rice – pretty much any breakfast cereal) are the seeds of grasses. Nuts are the seeds of trees like walnuts, hazelnuts and pecans. And beans are the seeds of legumes like peas, lentils, soybeans, and chickpeas.
In 1907, in Australia, over 700 cattle died from eating the poisonous invasive plant 'Spiny Cocklebur' (Xanthium spinosum).
POISONOUS PLANTS If you doubt the effects of phytochemicals are real, consider this example of sheep in Australia. Back in the 1940s, several farmers discovered “clover disease” in their populations of grazing sheep. Sheep who ate from fields of subterranean and red clover in turn developed infertility that caused lambing rates to drop by 60%–80%. The clover species they were eating contained hormonally active phytochemicals (HAPs), particularly phytoestrogens. An ewe affected by clover disease can develop mammary gland hypertrophy, infertility, cervical deformities preventing conception, a prolapsed uterus (the uterus falls out through the vulva), or difficulty lambing.
TYPES OF PHYTOCHEMICALS Carotenoids Polyphenols Flavonoids Anthocyanins Lignans Indole-3-carbinol Isoflavones Resveratrol
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