Have a look on MIME::Tools and MIME::Entity. Parse the message, then check the parts to see if they are text/plain, pick up the parts you need. For HTML-only messages you'll probably have to decide if you want to ignore them or transform HTML to text.

In reply to Re: Reading POP email that may be plain text, HTML, or both by Krambambuli
in thread Reading POP email that may be plain text, HTML, or both by pdxperl

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