The Anti-Nutrients: Grains and Legumes

Just finished reading Dr. Komadina's book Born To Be Healthy and Thin and thought it to be quirky but enlightening in several areas regarding diet and nutrition. His approach to hormones, vitamins and diet are unique and refreshing. His health philosophy is straightforward and bold. His diet recommendations are in many ways similar to the Paleolithic Diet. 

One thing that really caught my attention because of I have Celiac disease is that he says eating grains and legumes is the cause of many of our diseases. This is because our DNA is not designed to process grains, and today's genetically engineered grains are even less edible. Eating grains and legumes damage our gut and allow toxins to enter our blood also triggering autoimmune responses. 

According to Wikipedia:

Compared to Paleolithic food groups, cereal grains and legumes contain high amounts of antinutrients, including alkylresorcinols, alpha-amylase inhibitors, protease inhibitors, lectins and phytates, substances known to interfere with the body's absorption of many key nutrients. Molecular-mimicking proteins, which are basically made up of strings of amino acids that closely resemble those of another totally different protein, are also found in grains and legumes, as well as milk and dairy products. Advocates of the Paleolithic diet have argued that these components of agrarian diets promote vitamin and mineral deficiencies and may explain the development of the "diseases of civilization" as well as a number of autoimmune-related diseases.

Never heard about lectins before now. I am just now starting my research but from what I have read so far, this issue is of grave concern to all of us. There is a great web page THE LECTIN STORY that explains in detail how lectins cause damage and disease. I encourage the reader of this blog to do their own research.


My focus now is on getting healthy and healing my body after discovering I have Celiac disease. Gluten is poison to me and I am beginning to think that other grains are not good for me either. So how do we eliminate lectins from our diet?


There is a very good article on the web Soaking Grains Exploration: Lectins Present Yet Another Problem which talks about sprouting grains a way to destroy toxic lectins. The article says:

Cooking doesn't really affect most lectins, but two traditional food preparation methods destroy or nearly completely diminish lectin content:

1. Sprouting not only increases the overall nutrition of seeds, but it completely destroys the lectin. You can sprout both grains and legumes.
2. Soaking beans in water and tossing the soak water also dramatically reduces lectin content.