I think I won't bother then. What kind of micronutrients, minerals, and phytochemicals that are part of "optimum human health" and only exist in carbohydrate foods are you talking about, by the way? I'd be interested in learning.
I shouldn't have said "exclusive", for the reality is that few things in nature are so bounded (though phytochemicals, by definition, exist only in plants.) Anyway, to quote from an essay by a friend who is far more nutrition-literate than I:
These are a broad category of phytochemicals that include things like carotenoids, phytoestrogens, glucosinolates, growth factors, tocopherols, catechins, cholesterol, a food’s bacterial community, and likely thousands of compounds that can’t even be named, much less put on a nutrition label today. (Note the important qualifier.)
Not to mention thatNow, obviously, not ALL of these things are specific to plants, in the broad sense, but plants will generally have specific forms of these chemicals, specific forms that our bodies may or may not be able to use in specific ways. Unfortunately, it's difficult to say what is and is not important, and in what ways, for many of these chemicals are only beginning to be studied, and as I'm sure you're aware, nutrition is notoriously difficult to study because biological systems are so complex and varied. However, when I took a course on the biology of nutrition just earlier this year, the author posited that it may be the case that many of these chemicals improve health by initiating hormetic processes; that is, they stress the parts of the body they come in contact with ever so slightly, and the work the body has to do to reestablish homeostasis may actually make it stronger, not only because it will be "trained" to respond more quickly to future stressors but because it may actually "trick" the body into fixing lower-level damage that did not trigger a homeostatic response, thus allowing it to respond with more of its resources to larger-scale damage in the future. That's just one hypothesis, and the likelihood is that they all (and the ones we don't even know about yet) function in a variety ways. As I've studied biology, the one thing I've noticed is that the complexity grows and grows the deeper you pick, and you actually don't have to paddle that far before you run aground of some topic on which we are currently ignorant.
All this is not to mention that plants are typically some of the best sources of antioxidants that combat the damage done by free radicals in the body, the fact that we are only beginning to understand the normal microbiota of the human body (and the GI flora definitely appreciate the tract being kept "clean" by the insoluble fiber found in carbohydrate food sources, for one example), the soil plants are grown in typically contains a variety of minerals and mineral salts, including minerals we may only be beginning to recognize as important (like silicon and copper), many vitamins that are most efficiently ingested through plant sources (like many of the B vitamins, Vitamin C, etc.) are also most efficiently absorbed in that form (and often increase the absorption of other vitamins and minerals; calcium is absorbed better when ingested with Vitamin C, for example).
In short, the research is still scanty, in some respects, but it does seem to portend that plants really do have a potentially valuable role to play, even aside from their tasting good, giving diets more variety and enjoyability, serving as a great vehicle for delivering other nutritious food, being a good way to fuel exercise, etc.. A diet balanced among the various macronutrients, and with much variety within them, does the best job of embracing that complexity by exposing one to a wide variety of nutrients in a wide variety of contexts while simultaneously guarding against known and unknown ill effects of over- and/or underemphasizing certain nutrients at the expense of others.
In general, though, if you find something that works for you and makes you feel good, I say embrace it. Simply taking charge of one's own health is likely more important than the specific way in which you micromanage it, imo.
Edit: Also, I say all this as someone who is a hypocrite, in that he knows how he SHOULD eat but doesn't, mostly out of laziness and inertia.
