this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2026
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this is the way - being healthy is the laziest default!
Are herbs and spices bad for you? What do you mean?
No, they're awesome. People in this thread trying to convince themselves the unhealthy part of KFC is the proprietary flavor blend 🤣🤣🤣
The unhealthy part of KFC is the breading and the industrially refined seed oils. The spices are negligible if you look at the amounts used.
You can't look at the amounts used, it's a proprietary seasoning blend
Yes, but since they're only used in small amounts to flavour food it's not a big deal compared to consuming large amounts of plant matter for other purposes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464625002245
What is your claim based on? Do you have any sources or additional reading you could point me to? I found a paper about contaminated spices, but that doesn't seem like what you're talking about.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/natural-toxins-in-food
plus lectins, allergies, etc, etc.
Most of the toxins listed on that page are not related to herbs and spices, aren't in the parts of plants that are eaten, or are destroyed by cooking the food. Do you have anything a little more definitive than "some parts of some plants can be toxic"?
Nope, your in the zero carb community - We acknowledge some people can eat some plants, but not all people can eat all plants. Obviously people exist who are allergic to some spices and herbs... So the same principle applies, carnivore's can use spices if they tolerate them, but not all people can tolerate them. Every plant you eat is a inflammatory burden on the body, for a healthy person its fine... but many people are not healthy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378512211004385
What do you mean plants are an inflammatory burden on the body? What is that based on?
That is the third paper you have dropped in this conversation; Have you read it cover to cover and are willing to discuss it in detail both the methods, contexts, math, and outcomes? Or is it just a conversational flourish?
All food actually causes a inflammatory response, eating is a burden. Plants by virtue of being immobile have mostly resorted to chemical warfare to keep animals from eating them. A good example is capsaicin - humans like it as a spice, but its a self defense compound. It DOES create a obvious response in humans.
If you want a good introduction to some of the issues Gundry has a nice lecture - https://discuss.online/post/41144731
I had posted my notes on a few papers on lectins directly, but the old lemmy hosts going down makes them hard to find at the moment. I could dig the paper out of my pile if your interested.
I was hoping by providing sources that directly contradict the things you say, you might feel obligated to share some kind of source for why you think these things.
This directly contradicts several of the papers I quoted saying many herbs and spices have anti-inflammatory properties. Is there some kind of deeper truth you're pulling from? What do you know that tells you "eating is a burden," and where did you learn about it?
The lecture from Gundry relies heavily on "leaky gut syndrome," which
I'm not sure I'd really want to base my world view on. Especially since he seems to work for a "specialty lab testing" company and the NIH continues to say
It seems like he might have a vested interest in selling people on the validity of leaky gut syndrome and selling you tests. Especially when he gives little sales pitch telling you at 32:02 that if you get 4 tests, they give you a food sensitivity panel for free.
If you haven't read your own sources, and are not willing to discuss them in detail, you are not engaging in good faith. It becomes a asymmetric time waster for a good faith discussion. Someone reads your paper, responds to it, and you drop 5 more without engaging in the first paper in depth. I'm not saying you would do that, but it is the common pattern, which is why i have stopped reading people's papers unless they are willing to engage in good faith discussions. Also, each of your quotes from papers is the author's opinions rather then the data from the paper.
Quoted, but you have admitted by omission you have not read.
Does this really just seem like an "opinion" to you? Just how technical do you want to get when we're still trying to establish the baseline of "herbs and spices are bad for you"?
Is this really more readable and better for a conversation than the abstract? It also doesn't help that I don't have access to the full article and don't expect anyone else to pay for it either.
Great, so what body of research have you thoroughly read that lead you to believe all plants are toxic (or at least unhealthy) and you should cut them out of your diet as much as possible? That's what I've been asking for from the beginning, but so far all you've given me was a very general WHO article about how toxins exist in plants and an hour long recorded zoom lecture trying to sell you medical tests.
I will read any paper you have read cover to cover and are willing to discuss in depth. Just quoting opinion isn't enough for a good faith discussion.
My exact opinion, which you can see upthread - Some people can tolerate some plants, but not all people can tolerate all plants. Herbs and spices play inside of most people's inflammation budget and are fine, but a unhealthy person may not be able to tolerate them.
Did you read the paper in full, and are you willing to discuss it in detail? If not, quoting it doesn't change the level of asymmetric engagement your trying to tarpit the discussion with.
https://discuss.online/post/44161218
https://discuss.online/post/25952420
https://discuss.online/post/25791954
Alright, so where do you want to start? Point me to one, instead of your personal library and board game collection.
You asked what I based my current opinions on, so I gave you the literature, and then you imply i'm wasting your time by citing things I haven't read - that isn't very nice of you.
If your going to read one book - Ketogenic - The science of therapeutic carbohydrate restriction in health. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2019-0-03604-7 Full Book is available on the normal book sharing websites. It doesn't say anything about herbs and spices, but it is far and away the most important and impactful book i own.
You must be a Republican politician with that level of gaslighting and projection, that's literally what you've been doing to them the entire time, when they clearly read and were willing to discuss everything posted by both of you. That isn't very nice of you.
People have meat allergies too though, so by your logic, there's no healthy food.
If you can tolerate a food, you can eat it. It's not crime pointing out food intolerance is a factor in dietary selection.
I didn't accuse you of a crime, just faulty reasoning and spurious dietary advice. "Some plants aren't edible or have to be cooked first and some people are allergic to some plants sometimes, so it's objectively healthier not to eat any plant ever." That math just ain't mathin' homie 🤷♂️
It is based on logic and facts.
I see from your comment thread with Jet that you are likely here to sea-lion and not have good faith discussion. If you'd like to actually talk about why we live this way, cite studies that you personally have read that can prove cause and effect. If they cannot, then it would help us greatly if you try to meet the Bradford-Hill criteria.
If you wish to make claims about the properties of plants, such as
Please provide details about the toxin, where in the plant it is found, its mechanism of action, safe dosage, and how much is destroyed by application of heat.
I won't be responding any further unless you meet these conditions. If you are genuinely curious, then I encourage you to peruse the posts in this community and its sister community, c/ketogenic.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/natural-toxins-in-food
I'm sure you'll accept this as a source since you're directly asking about my responses for it, so we can just go over the page together if that makes you feel better. This page from the WHO describes 8 types of toxins found in plants, and we can just go over them one at a time.
Aquatic Biotoxins
Algae is generally not food, and even more generally not considered an herb or spice. Interestingly, "Shellfish such as mussels, scallops and oysters are more likely to contain these toxins than fish," so I hope your plant-free diet also avoids most forms of sea-food, as they can contain these kinds of toxins.
Cyanogenic glycosides
This is important, but I'm pretty sure the examples given here aren't herbs and spices again.
Furocoumarins
Once again, not really herbs or spices.
Lectins
Only a warning about lectins in beans, and I'm explicitly told that they're destroyed by cooking.
Mycotoxins
Here we have another concern for plants, but I'm pretty sure moldy food is a problem no matter what kind of food you start with.
Solanines and chaconine
Not in herbs and spices, and the higher concentrations you might actually be worried about are parts of the plant you don't eat.
Poisonous mushrooms
Need I say more? Mushrooms can be very dangerous, but they aren't actually plants.
Pyrrolizidine alkaloids
Again, not in the plants you would usually eat.
And so now I've gone over all the types of toxins found in plants provided by jet, and I'm sure you can agree that it doesn't say a lot about herbs and spices being inherently unhealthy. All I can ask now is for some kind of basis for your belief that all plants contain toxins, and how whatever standard you're using to come to that conclusion wouldn't also apply to meat or mushrooms or whatever else you're trying to eat.
Oh what a long list of poisons. So now you have shown that, yes, plants have ample methods of poisoning you, how do you propose to detoxify them? Most people can detoxify most of the common plant foods, but it's metabolically expensive.
But if you can afford to do so, why not just avoid all the poisons by only animals?
It kinda sounds like you didn't read their comment at all.
Yeah I didn't read it closely. I could have just pointed out rosemary has a pretty nasty list of its own
If I were to follow your precedent, my response to that link would just be: oh what a delicious herb!
Since I'm not you, I actually read what you posted, and it's pretty inconclusive. It's not an actual study, just a research compilation, so none of the methodologies or data sets are presented here, which makes verifying the claims or their relevance to human experience impossible. It doesn't define "chronic or high dose" usage, which is the only populations it's concerned with regarding possible toxicity. The thesis of the conclusion is: "More research is recommended." How damning. I like this part too: "Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) contains alkaloids, phenolic acids, saponins, tannins, diterpenes, flavonoids, and essential oils and has"antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anticancer, neuroprotective, cardioprotective, and hepatoprotective effects", emphasis is my own. Sounds like the benefits vastly outweigh the potential side effects.
But my favorite part, though it's technically unrelated to the topic at hand, tells me a lot about the authors of this paper: "the authors used ChatGPT and Quillbot to rephrase to reduce plagiarism" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 emphasis is my own again lol
I'm hallucinating this entire thread, right? This conversation cannot possibly be happening in real life. "Herbs are unhealthy." I hit my head at some point, and this is some kind of fever dream.
for most people, there are some people who need to cut out even spices before lingering issues recover. Not trying to be pedantic, but spices are playing inside the budget of most people's inflammation tolerance levels - which we should be up front about.
This random selection of words makes no sense at all