HEALTH DANGERS OF A PLANT-BASED DIET ceviri taslağı
HEALTH DANGERS OF A PLANT-BASED DIET
DR. KEVIN STOCK
Content
In this paper we are going to look
at various parts of plants that humans eat – everything from their seeds to
roots to stems to leaves to their fruits. And with each “Plant Part” we are
going to highlight a particular “Plant Poison” that the plant uses to deter
predators.
Here’s where we’re going:
Plant Part / Plant Poison
· Seeds (Naked vs Protected) /
Antinutrients – (p. 7)
o
Grains / Lectins – “Wheat Leaks” – (p. 12)
o
Nuts / Phytic Acid – “Walnuts Phyte Back” – (p. 22)
o Beans /
Enzyme Inhibitors, Endocrine Disruptors, Saponins, Tannins – “Soybean
Sabotage” – (p. 25)
· Roots / Glycoalkaloids – “Potato
Paralysis” – (p. 30)
· Stems / Glucosinolates – “Broccoli
Bombs” (Crucifers) – (p. 34)
· Leaves / Oxalates – “Spinach
Leaf Prick” – (p. 39)
· Fruit / Phenolics,
Cyanogenic Glycosides, Salicylates – “Peach Pit Poison”– (p. 45)
· Conclusion:
o
The Toxin-Time Continuum (must read) –
(p. 51)
Health Dangers
of a Plant-Based Diet
To claim there are health dangers
with a plant-based diet flies in the face of conventional wisdom. It’s surely
heresy among nutrition experts. These experts tell us we need to eat fruits and
vegetables for their essential vitamins and minerals.
Their potent antioxidants ward off aging and cancer. And their fiber cleans our tubing, keeping our intestines
and arteries clean.
3 Plant Secrets
Could there
really be health dangers to a plant- based diet?
Contrary to popular belief,
plants don’t have human health as their top priority.
Like all organisms, they are more
concerned about their survival than ours.
In fact, protecting themselves
from predators like humans is high on their priority list. And since plants
can’t fight us off with fangs or flee with their feet they’ve evolved other
mechanisms to deter predators.
When we think of plants, we think
of “good guys.” They are good for decoration, good for the environment, and
good for our health.
Floyd, my money tree, is sitting right next to
my desk as I write this. While keeping me company, he sucks up my carbon
dioxide emissions and pumps oxygen into the air for me to breathe.
Floyd and I are pals but I don’t
let him fool me. He, like 99% of all plants, is completely inedible. If I
tried, I would surely get sick. While nearly 100% of animals are edible, the opposite is true for plants.
It’s strange to
assume then that the plants we do consider edible are completely safe. I think
the reason is that plants fool us.
They are masters of disguise.
Plant Secret #1
Plants are so good at disguise
that we don’t even realize they hide in most of our foods.
When I think of Floyd I know he
started as a seed. And from his seed beginnings he then puts down roots that
buried deep into the soil. These roots anchor him down and he absorbs nutrients
from the soil.
I know that Floyd’s roots connect
to a stem. His stem is not unlike a rose stem, or the stem of a tree covered in
bark. They provide structure to their stature.
I can see leaves that branch from
Floyd’s stem. And I know that many of Floyd’s plant friends bloom flowers and
ripen fruits.
Floyd, however, is a money tree,
so he is supposed to bloom cash, but I’m still waiting on this.
But these flowers and fruits disseminate
seeds which contain the offspring for the next generation.
I get it. No big secrets here.
But it’s a strange paradigm shift to
realize these plant structures give us so many of our foods.
When we eat potatoes and
carrots, we are eating roots of plants that grow underground.
Crunching on celery and
broccoli, we are eating stems of plants. A salad with spinach and kale is plant leaves. When we eat apples and
berries we are eating the fruits of these plants. And when we eat grains, nuts,
or beans we are eating seeds. We are eating plant parts.
Now the seeds are the really tricky ones.
Grains are the seeds of grasses
like wheat, corn, oats, and rice. Nuts are the seeds of trees like walnuts,
hazelnuts and pecans. And beans are the seeds of legumes like peas, lentils,
soybeans, and chickpeas.
But they are all just seeds.
Classifications can get confusing
like trying to figure out where peanuts and cashews and almonds fit in – is it
a nut or a legume – but it doesn’t matter, they are all seeds.
So when you are
eating a bowl of oats topped with nuts, you are eating seeds. All from plants.
For me it was a shocking discovery how well plant parts hide in our
food.
Take sugar for example.
The sugar that has invaded so much
of our food comes from plants.
Sucrose is table sugar. And most
sugar comes from sugar cane, which is a tall grass with a big stem. What
happens is the cane is shredded, mixed with water, then crushed to extract the
juice. The juice is then dried into a granulated form.
And viola. Sugar.
Sugar is simply a processed and
refined plant part.
The sugar beet, which is a root,
can also be refined to give us sucrose. And there are other forms of sugar like
fructose found heavily in fruits and glucose that can be found in fruits and
some roots like carrots.
But almost all
sugar in our diet comes from plants. Lactose, milk sugar, is an exception. However,
until recent history lactose was indigestible beyond childhood and is still not
tolerated by a majority of the world.
It’s a strange thought:
· My grandma’s homemade cookies are a plant-based food
– the sugar, the flour, the vegetable oil – all from plants.
I remember when I started
looking closer and was hit with a startling realization…
We are all on a plant-based diet and we don’t
even know it.
Pretty much anything we eat
comes from a plant or an animal. There are “gray area foods” like mushrooms and
algae that are neither plant nor animal, but for the most part, all our food is
derived from plants or animals.
And what shocked me more is
that most of our “unhealthy” foods are simply derived from our “healthy”
plant-based foods.
A whole grain
is healthy, but when it’s crushed into a flour it’s then unhealthy?
Is it possible that these “healthy”
plant-based foods are actually “unhealthy?”
Plants are not only hiding in all
our food – but they are hiding their poisons.
Plant Secret #2
Floyd’s motivation is his
survival not my health.
For 500 million years, plants,
like all living organisms, have fought for survival. And plants have millions
of years of evolutionary advantage on us humans. Since they can’t fight or flee
predators, they evolved other clever mechanisms to survive.
And like I mentioned, plants
tend to be masters of disguise.
Many plants are like chameleons.
They can change the color of their leaves to blend into their surroundings. And
they can grow in places difficult for these herbivore predators and insect
pests to reach.
Some plants will even mimic the
presence of insect eggs on their leaves, which dissuades insects from laying
real eggs there.
But plants use far more than
clever camouflage to deter predators.
They can illicit the protection of
natural enemies of herbivores by releasing chemicals to attract these
protectors. They can react to touch. And they can release
irritants and poisons.
They also use less subtle
defenses.
Leaves can produce resins, saps,
and waxes that trap insects. Leaves and stems can be covered with sharp
prickles, spines, and thorns.
Plants didn’t evolve to be a food
source for predators.
Plant Secret #3
Plants’ best kept secret is hidden
even better than how they hide in our food or from herbivore predators.
They look innocent enough. But
these masters of disguise have an arsenal of chemical weapons ready to go to
battle with anything that dares eat it.
They hide their phytochemical
warfare agents from view. Not until a predator bites into them do they realize
the mistake.
When Plants Attack
Plants produce
these chemicals to defend themselves. And it’s not just one or two plants that
have this super power. It’s all of them.
In fact, 99.99% of all pesticides in
our diet are natural chemicals plants produce to deter predators.
They produce
toxins to protect themselves from fungi, insects, and animal predators. There
are tens of thousands of these natural pesticides. And every species of every
plant contains its own set of toxins. Different parts of each plant contain
different toxins in different amounts.
Like humans, plants get stressed.
When feeling the pressure and damage from a pest attack, they can increase
their natural pesticide levels. Levels that can be poisonous, even deadly, to
humans.
These chemicals attack predators
in various ways. Some of these plant toxins break into cells and kill
mitochondria, some use enzymes to interfere with metabolism, and some attack
our DNA directly.
It helps to look at survival from the plant’s point of view.
Some parts of the plant are more
vital for the success of the species than others.
Seeds are critical. Because they are so
important plants take extra care to protect them and lace them with potent
toxins to deter predators.
Grains, nuts, and beans are all
seeds. These are the plant’s babies. And messing with a mother’s offspring
often has dire consequences. The parent plant wants to protect them and ensure
their offspring’s survival. The plant isn’t concerned about the health,
nutrition, or survival of humans. Quite the contrary.
So even though I’m hungry and
Floyd is sitting right next to me, I know what he’s hiding. One bite into his
leaves and I’d regret it. Mess with his seeds and Floyd and I wouldn’t be pals
anymore. He’s not edible in the least.
So this begs the question…
“What are
these plant chemicals, which plants have them, and which can I eat?”
And that’s where we’re going.
This is how we’re going to attack back at the plants:
1.
We are going to look at a plant part. For example, the seed.
2.
We are going to evaluate their warfare agents. Like lectins.
3.
We are going to see if there is a way to mitigate its attack. Like cooking.
Health Dangers
of Eating Seeds
“Antinutrients”
Health Dangers of Eating Seeds
There are
health dangers with eating seeds. In the first article of this series, we
discovered how plants have motivations for their survival, not human health.
And to protect themselves, plants use phytochemicals to deter predators from
eating them. These toxins fight back against fungi, insects, and animal
predators – including us humans.
Seed Survival and Success
Some plant
structures are more vital than others to
the success of their species. Seeds are such a structure.
It’s why there are health
dangers when eating seeds. Because seeds are so important plants take extra
measures to ensure they get protected, spread, and have the best chance of
growing and producing their own seeds.
What are
seeds?
and have seeds that we call
different things.
Of all plant parts, seeds tend to
be the most tricky. Grasses, trees, and legumes are plants
Grains are the seeds of grasses
which include wheat, corn, oats, and rice. Walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans are
all nuts, which are the seeds of trees. And legumes like peas, lentils, soybeans, and chickpeas have seeds called beans.
But they are all just seeds. And
it’s not worth getting caught up in trying to determine whether a peanut or a
cashew is a nut or legume. Just know they are seeds.
Your morning bowl of oats topped
with nuts and chia seeds – all seeds.
These seeds are
the plant’s babies. Ensuring the babies survival and success is of paramount
importance to the plant. Contrary to popular belief, the nutrition in seeds is
intended for that growing baby plant, not for human health and nutrition. And
trying to steal that nutrition for ourselves often has dire consequences.
Health Dangers of Eating Seeds: Naked vs
Protected
Naked Seeds
Some seeds are covered in a
protective hull which acts as a shelter. Others are naked. Naked seeds are
exposed babies. They grow on grasses and vines and must use internal deterrents
to prevent predators from eating them. Parent plants drop these seeds right
where they grow, so that
in the winter, when the parent plant
dies off, the offspring can sprout right there in the same area.
Although these naked seeds seem
bare and exposed on the outside, on the inside they are potent fighters armed
with chemical warfare agents.
A “healthy” spinach salad
topped with tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and cucumbers has an arsenal of
weapons.
Some weapons like tannins are
bitter. Others like phytates interfere with nutrient absorption aiming to
malnourish the predator. Similarly, enzyme inhibitors disrupt a predator’s food
processing. From the plant’s perspective, if they are going to get eaten, they
are at least going to cause negative consequences for the predator to
discourage their consumption in the future.
Protected Seeds
Unlike plants with naked seeds
which want to drop their seeds nearby, some plants want their seeds to be
spread further away so that the offspring doesn’t have to compete for space and
sunlight with the parent plant.
To accomplish this, plants enclose
their offspring in a protective hull. This housing allows a predator to eat the
baby offspring without killing it. The seed can survive through the predator’s
GI tract completely intact. The predator can then eliminate the seed in it’s
dung, a natural fertilizer for the baby seed, in a distant location.
Spreading Seed
It’s fascinating to think how
clever these plants are.
We think we are using apple trees,
when in reality they are using us.
An apple tree entices us and other
animals like gorillas visually with big red colorful fruit.
Further, they load it with
sugar, appealing to our taste buds. And not just any sugar, but with fructose.
This special sugar doesn’t
stimulate leptin which is a hormone that signals to us animals that we are full
when we’ve eaten enough. Since fructose doesn’t turn this hormone “on” we keep
on eating more and more apples.
This was beneficial for the
gorilla that needs to store up fat for the winter. Since the fruit was only
available in season they would pad their fat stores with the overconsumption of
seasonal fruit.
Incidentally, gorillas only
gain weight during the season when fruit is ripe. While this is helpful for
apes in the wild, it’s not so
helpful for us domesticated
humans with no famine in sight.
In addition, plants make these
fruits easy to pick and even lace them with sugar alcohols that have a natural
laxative effect. This speeds the seed through the digestive tract, further
improving its survival chances.
Green means “Stop” Red means “Go”
The tree uses us. It attracts us
with color, and it makes addicts of us with sugar. All so that we animals can
spread its seed.
It’s crazy to think how the
apple tree controls our behavior.
While the seeds and its protective
coating are still developing, the apple is green and bitter. Green doesn’t
attract us like red does. It blends in. And we want a sweet sugar loaded apple,
not a bitter, sour one.
Plus, during this unripe period,
the apple has the highest toxic load. The gorilla loves apples
but is deterred from picking it until the apple is ripe.
Gorillas, like humans and all
fruit eating animals, have color vision.
Once the protective covering of
the seed has fully developed, the apple turns red, increases its sugar content
and decreases its toxic load. The red, sweet, and less toxic apple is snatched
up by us animals who will do the trees bidding, and spread it seed.
We’ll cover fruit
more in depth later, but of all plant parts, fruit may be humans’ best option.
It’s the only part of the plant designed to be eaten.
Unfortunately, the
fruit today is quite different from the fruit of yesteryear (as well see in
the “toxin-time continuum”). We’ve bred them for size and sugar, we’ve engineered them for survival of seasons and sprays. We pick them unripe, treat
them with chemicals, then transport them across the world.
What was once a seasonal treat
that helped pack on pounds transformed into a daily “health” food, loaded with
sugar and an enhanced toxic load.
Heath Dangers of Eating Seeds: Antinutrients
The salad I mentioned earlier is
loaded with antinutrients. These are plant compounds that interfere with our
ability to absorb vitamins and minerals, can damage our
intestinal lining, and trigger inflammatory responses in the body.
Antinutrients are often
responsible for food sensitivities, allergies, digestive ailments, and
autoimmune diseases. They can cause symptoms such as headaches, joint pain, and
asthma.
Of all the various plant parts,
the seeds are often the most likely to hurt human health.
Eating Plant Seeds
Under most circumstances, I
don’t recommend it.
But if you must, there are a few
ways to mitigate the plant attack.
· Soak
· Sprout
·
Ferment
While I think eating seed-bearing
fruits may be the best option for humans, because of modern day manipulation
and lifestyle, I’d exercise caution with even these. Most of us don’t need to
store up for a winter famine. But choosing local, in season, ripe, organic
fruits is the best bet.
Simply not eating plant-based
foods is the even safer bet.
Health Dangers
of Lectins
“Wheat Leaks”
Health Dangers of Lectins
One of the hidden dangers of a
plant-based diet are proteins called lectins. The health dangers of lectins can
be numerous and insidious.
Seeds like grains, beans, and
nuts house the plant’s embryo.
Naturally, the plant wants to protect
these offspring and uses lectins as
a means to do so. [r]
NOTE: This chapter is more in-depth and more scientific than most of the
other chapters. It lays a foundation. But don’t get bogged down in the details.
Don’t let the trees interfere with your sight of the forest.
Health Dangers of Lectins: What are Lectins?
Lectins are one of the most
insidious chemical weapons plants have in their arsenal to fight back against
predators. Heavy concentrations of lectins can be found in the plant’s seeds.
Why? Plants are serious about protecting
their offspring. But they can be found in other parts of the plant as well.
As part of a
plant’s immune system, lectins go on the attack when a plant is stressed or
damaged. They are natural insecticides.
So when a grasshopper starts
chewing away at a leaf, the plant can stop it in its track with its lectins.
Lectins are so
effective that crops are genetically
modified to express higher concentrations to better ward of pests.
Unfortunately, this scientific marvel that protects crops doesn’t protect us from lectins attack.
While lectins are ancient
molecules that surely evolved as a defense to insects and various pathogens, it
turns out humans aren’t immune to their damaging effects.
How Lectins Attack
Many lectins are resistant to
human digestion. So if I were foolish enough to eat a piece of whole wheat
bread, the lectins could access my gut completely intact.
A helpful way to think of the gut
is to think of it as a tubing system made of bricks. The bricks (cells called
enterocytes) are attached by mortar (tight-junctions). This brick wall is very
selective of what it lets in. In fact, it’s job is to only let “good guys” pass
through while keeping the “bad guys” out.
Lectin proteins are big, bad guys. Way
too big to squeeze through the mortar of the brick wall (i.e. tight-junctions
between enterocytes). But lectins are “sticky,” and they connect to the wall.
Once connected they tell the wall to open up (release zonulin which then causes
the “mortar” between the “bricks” to open). [r]
While sticking to the wall, these big
lectin proteins start doing damage by blocking vitamins and nutrients from
getting access through the wall to the inside. [r]
But that’s just the
beginning.
“Leaky Gut”
After the message (zonulin) is
sent, the mortar (tight-junctions) between the bricks
(enterocytes) pry apart. This creates a breach in the wall
and the big lectin proteins can get in. [r]
And not only the lectins,
but other dietary and bacterial compounds that aren’t supposed to be allowed
in, can get through the brick wall.
For example, parts of bacteria
called lipopolysaccharides (LPSs), which are “bad guys” (endotoxins), can slide
on through to the inside.
We now have a situation where foreign invaders have gained access to the inside and can invade in
to the lymph nodes, glands, and blood stream.
Just like any break in – the
body’s alarm goes off and an immune response mounts and inflammatory cytokines
stimulate battle.
This breach in the wall of the
gut is often referred to as “leaky gut.”
And the attack is on.
Health Dangers of Lectins: The Lectin Attack
Once the border is breached, the
sirens go off, and the war begins.
Inflammation
After the lectins cause a breach in
the brick wall, the foreign invaders slide in, like LPSs. And like any war, the
body calls in the troops – i.e. white blood cells release inflammatory
cytokines like IFN-gamma, IL-1, and TNF-alpha. [r] These signaling
molecules promote inflammation to identify, destroy and remove the enemy.
But lectins don’t go down
without a fight.
Autoimmune
Our immune system tags lectins as
foreign invaders and creates antibodies against them. [r, r] But these foreign
invaders can latch on to healthy cells.
In fact, lectins are called “sticky proteins”
because they bind to carbohydrates or glycolipids and glycoproteins that stick
off the membranes of our cells. So we have a situation where a “bad guy” lectin
hooks on to a “good guy” normal cell, and “friendly fire” results. The body
attacks healthy cells. [r]
For example, lectins binds sialic
acid which is a molecule that is prevalent in our brain and gut cells, and
triggers autoimmune responses to these vital cells.
Inflammation is often a
double-edge sword. It can save the day destroying enemies, but can leave many
unintentional casualties.
Cellular Disruption
Cellular Communication
Lectins are known for
disrupting communication between cells. When one neuron is trying to relay a message to another neuron, lectins
can block the transmission.
The main reason I stopped eating plant
lectins was because of this blocking mechanism
which can result in symptoms like brain fog and
decreases mental performance.
Endocrine Disruption
Another way lectins disrupt
communication is via interacting and modifying hormone functions. Lectins can
interact with endocrine receptors, disrupting and modifying hormone function.
Hormones are like managers
whose job is to tell employees (cells and tissues) what to do. They keep
everything and everyone working together in a coordinated effort. Lectins can
silence these
managers, they can camouflage and
mimic them, or even change the messages that the manger would otherwise direct
to employees.
This confuses the employees, has
them doing the wrong work, doing too much or too little or not doing any work
at all.
Translation = The coordinated
work and communication between cells and tissues gets thrown out of whack.
Agglutination
Lectins are also known for their
ability to clump cells together. For example, when lectins are swimming in the
bloodstream they can clump blood cells together. [r]
The body then has no choice but to dispose of these which can result in adverse
effects like anemia.
They can also agglutinate immune
cells thereby activating or inactivating them, which can lead to allergies and
autoimmune issues.
Mitogens
A mitogen is a compound that helps induce mitosis, or cell
division. Lectins can encourage this inappropriately and cause cells to
replicate in cancerous ways. [r, r]
Health Dangers of Lectins: Lectin Diversity
There are many different types of
lectins with different carbohydrate targets, different attack strategies, and
variable potencies.
Some plant lectins, like the castor
bean ricin, are serious plant weapons against humans. So much so that humans
turned them into weapons against humans. Ricin has been used in chemical
warfare to cause blood agglutination. [r]
Other lectins damaging effects are more subtle.
Health Dangers of Lectins: Gluten
Perhaps the most notorious lectin
is gluten. It’s a seed storage protein found in wheat, barley and rye. And like
other seeds, gluten is meant to nourish the plant embryo when it sprouts.
People with Celiac’s disease have
an autoimmune attack when they eat gluten.
“Full blown” Celiac’s disease is fairly uncommon, however,
reports of gluten sensitivity are quite common. In fact, gluten intolerance is
now commonly looked at on a spectrum that goes from full blown Celiac’s at one
end to a low-grade gluten sensitivity on the other.[r]
The problem with the gluten lectin
is that they are very difficult for our enzymes to digest. So they get
partially digested creating toxic gliadin peptides as well as gluteomorphins.
The gliadin peptides can stimulate
an immune response and inflammation while gluteomorphins act like opiate drugs,
which can explain some of glutens addictive properties. Gluten has also
transformed over time – more on this in the “toxin-time continuum.”
I don’t recommend eating gluten
too often but there are other lectins that I think are even worse…
Health Dangers of Lectins: Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA)
Not all lectins are created equal.
They have different structures which target different carbohydrates to attack
and latch on to. Some are harmless. Some aren’t.
Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA) is an exceptional
bad guy. [r, r]
It is also a prime example
demonstrating many of the tricks and attacks lectins can have on humans.
WGA Hormone Mimicry [r]
Insulin plays a major role in
directing how our bodies use energy. For example, when insulin
connects with a cell, it tells that
cell to allow energy to enter. But WGA camouflages itself to look like insulin.
[r] And it can steal
insulin’s spots (receptors) on cells. It then horribly disrupts the message
that insulin would normally send.
When WGA connects with a fat cell, it
can block out insulin. It then can tell that cell to store fat, just as insulin
would do. But, unlike insulin which binds to the cell, delivers its message and
then leaves, WGA binds indefinitely. It keeps the floodgates open for fat
storage. [r]
To make
matter worse, WGA also binds to the insulin receptors on muscle cells and brain
cells.
Typically, insulin would bind to
these cells and tell them to allow in energy. This energy is needed for
building muscle and fueling brain cell activity. But WGA, instead of opening
the energy gates for these muscle cells and neurons, acts as a blocker preventing
the cells from allowing energy entry. Since these muscle and brain cells don’t
get the message to let energy in, the cells starve. Muscle cells waste. Brain
cells panic.
Neurons, in
an attempt to survive, send hunger signals and cravings for sugar.
Because I’m
likely no match to these cravings, I’ll fill another bowl of ice cream. My
pancreas then gets to work and releases more insulin into the blood. This
insulin is shuttled to the starving
brain cells. However, because WGA
is blocking insulin receptors and not letting go, insulin cannot send its
message to the brain cells to allow in energy.
So we have a situation where the
neuron is starving, there is food all around, but it’s blind from seeing the
food because it’s being blocked. Eventually these brain cells and peripheral
nerves die. And this is thought to contribute to dementia, Parkinson’s and
peripheral neuropathy. [r]
WGA – Entry and 4 “B’s” Attack
Brain
Although most lectins are rather large, WGA is smaller,
and because of this can sneak through the gut more easily than other lectins. [r]
And because the vagus nerve connects the gut to the brain,
WGA can hop on this highway and go straight to the brain. To make matters
worse, WGA can cross the blood-brain barrier. And because it’s a “sticky”
protein, it can connect with many other substances that have no business in the
brain, and transport them right on in. Naturally, this can result in
neurological problems. [r]
Body
In addition to invading the brain,
WGA can invade the body too. Like other lectins WGA can cross-react with good
proteins forming a good guy-bad guy connection. The body’s immune system sees
WGA as a bad guy, creates antibodies to combat it, and ends up taking out the
good guy and bad guy. Again, we have a “friendly fire” autoimmune response.
Blood
Vessels
WGA can also bind to cells that
line the blood vessels. The body then attacks the WGA and the blood vessels get
hit by the attack leading to a hardening of arteries which may play a role in
the progression of atherosclerosis.
Bad
Guys
Just like WGA can drag along other
substances across the blood-brain-barrier, its “stickiness” also enables it to
bind with influenzas and other pathogens and transport them across the gut into
the body.
When I hear of someone that gets
sick all the time, I immediate think “leaky gut,” “wheat leaks,” and “WGA
tag-along.”
Our Defense Against Lectins
Plants evolved lectins to deter
predation. But humans also evolved protective and adaptive mechanisms to deal
with lectins.
Mucous
Our first line of defense against
lectins is mucus. We have mucus that lines our nose and our mouth to trap
lectins as well as provide a protective coating. This mucus continues down in
our intestines. The intestinal mucosal wall functions to keep lectins in the
gut and out of the body.
Gastric Acid
While many lectins are resistant
to digestion, gastric acid can disarm some lectin proteins.
Microbiome
Our third line of defense is the
vast microbiome residing in the gut. There are many bacteria that will eat up a
lectin before it has a chance to invade.
Good but Not Good Enough
Although these defenses are good
and likely more than adequate pre-Agricultural Revolution (see Time-Toxin
Continuum), they are often insufficient to deal with the onslaught of lectins that now make up a modern diet.
We are exposed to more lectins
than ever.
Eating plant-based foods that
didn’t even exist until modern human history now makes up the majority of our
diet. Further, we’ve genetically modified crops to express even more lectins.
For example, because lectins are
so effective against pathogens like fungi and insects, biotech companies
engineer crops to express WGA. So now our corn and tomatoes come with a big
dose of WGA.
Suffice it to say – our human
defenses are not enough…
Health Dangers
of Lectins: What to do?
What I do is I don’t eat plant-based
lectins. Problem solved.
But if I were forced to eat
plant-based foods, here are some precautions I’d take.
1.
Use a pressure cooker
Some lectins are temperature
sensitive. So tossing beans and potatoes into the Instant Pot can destroy some
lectins. Though not all. Grains are quite resistant.
Beans have more lectins than
anything else though, so they and all legumes go in the pressure cooker.
Boiling, while
less effective than the pressure cooker, is a good alternative. Dry heat, like
baking, tends to be less effective.
2.
Soak
Before you put the beans in the
pressure cooker, soak them. Change the water several times. Let them soak
overnight. Add baking soda with each new soak.
Yes this is a pain, but less than
the pain resulting from eating them improperly prepared. Easiest just not to
eat them.
3.
Ferment
I don’t think anyone should ever
eat soy. But if one had to, they should ferment it first.
4.
Sprout
Sprouting seeds will often help
decrease the lectin load (although there are exceptions like alfalfa which
actually increases lectin load when sprouted). As the seed sprouts the lectin
gets broken down to feed the growing seedling.
5.
Peel and Deseed
The seeds and peels are where
lectins tend to concentrate. Not eating seeds is a good start. And remember
seeds include grains, nuts and beans.
Peeling and deseeding also go a
long way to reduce lectin exposure. This includes fruits like squash and pumpkin
and nightshades like peppers and tomatoes.
6.
Choose Wisely
Choosing wisely,
to me, means not choosing to eat foods inherently high in lectins. But what if
you must eat some grains?
Choose white versions over the
whole grain version. I’d pick white rice over brown, white bread over whole
wheat.
Yes this is contrary to everything
we’ve been told, and eating the more refined versions of these aren’t good
either, but with the hull stripped away, some lectins get stripped out as well.
Health Dangers of Lectins: Conclusion
A lectin-free diet would basically
eliminate all plant-based foods. In this light, it’s not surprising that the Carnivore Diet is
so effective.
There are many very smart doctors
and researchers who believe and convincingly argue that this intestinal
permeability is a root cause of so many of our modern diseases. And lectins
play a large role in creating these breaches in the gut.
A damaged gut is often the first
domino to fall in a cascade of detrimental effects. Lectins can be the
inflammatory, immunotoxic, neurotoxic, and cytotoxic domino.
Some plants and “plant parts”
contain more lectins than others. Seeds (grains, beans, and nuts) as well as
legumes and nightshades are lectin loaded. It’s why people have intolerances
and reactions to wheat, beans, peanuts, potatoes and tomatoes.
As mentioned, some preparation
methods can be used to reduce lectins toxic impact. Consequently, these methods
can also destroy the healthy vitamins – perhaps the reason why someone is
eating them in the first place.
Instead of trying to manipulate
plants to make them edible and somehow satisfy our nutritional needs, it may be
easier to focus on an animal-based diet, congruent with how we are designed to
eat.
Health Dangers
of Phytic Acid
“Walnuts Phyte Back”
Health Dangers of Phytic
Acid
One of the hidden health dangers in
plant-based foods is an antinutrient called phytic acid.
It is a thief.
But the health dangers of
phytic acid are often insidious. The theft happens, and we don’t even know it.
Yet phytic acid steals from us,
only because we stole first.
“Walnuts Phyte Back”
The biggest mistake we make is
that we assume that a plant’s nutrition is our nutrition. However, this
nutrition is intended for a growing baby plant. When we try and steal this
nutrition, it comes with consequences.
Phytic acid has the job to hold on
to essential minerals that the baby plant needs
to grow. But when we steal this nutrition for ourselves, the phytic acid binds
to our minerals like phosphorus, iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium and
prevents absorption.
So even though we think we are
getting a certain amount of nutrition when we eat a walnut, phytic acid “phytes
back.”
Animals like cows and sheep have
bacteria in their guts that break down phytates. Their guts are designed for
plant-based diets. Humans guts aren’t designed to handle phytic acid.
It passes through our digestive
tract, stealing minerals as it travels along all the way to the colon.
The Biggest Mineral Deficiency in the World
Iron deficiency is the most
common nutrient deficiency in the world.
Since iron plays a crucial role in
carrying oxygen to cells, deficiencies are extremely problematic to human
health.
Plants have a
form of iron called “non-heme iron.” And phytic acid interferes with its
absorption. Luckily, animal iron, called “heme iron” is immune from phytic
acid’s theft.
Studies have shown the discrepancy in
plant vs animal iron absorption by comparing vegetarians to meat eaters. Even
though both groups eat similar amounts of iron, vegetarians have a higher
incidence of iron deficiency. [r]
For example, a study of 75 vegan women
found that 40% of them were deficient in iron despite having above average the recommended
daily allowance (RDA). [r]
In nutrition, we often measure
what goes in, but what really matters is what gets absorbed.
Enzyme Inhibitor
Just because the labels says I’m
eating adequate amounts of iron, calcium, zinc, and magnesium, if phytic acid
is preventing their absorption, I may be deficient.
But it’s not just minerals that
phytic acid steals. In addition. phytic acid can inhibit digestive enzymes like
amylase, trypsin, and pepsin. This results in macronutrients not getting
digested properly. This is a problem.
For example, grains like wheat are a “great” source of phytic acid.
To compound the problem, grains
are inherently poor in nutrition (evidenced by the fact most must be fortified
with vitamins and minerals). Most also lack essential amino acids. So if phytic
acid is further preventing the digestion of the proteins it makes a poor source
of protein even worse.
Health Dangers
of Phytic Acid – What to Do
Seeds have the highest
concentrations of phytic acid.
Some of the wort offenders are
whole grains, nuts, and soybeans. Removing the bran rich layer of seeds can
help reduce the phytic acid in grains like wheat and rice. But it is also
concentrated in the cotyledon layer which is not easy to remove. Therefore many
beans like kidney beans and soybeans deliver a large punch of phytic acid.
Phytic acid is also in other parts
of plants like roots, leaves, and fruits. So while not eating seeds is a great
place to start, it doesn’t solve the whole problem.
To make matters worse, phytic acid
is resistant to most cooking methods. But cooking and draining water can help a
bit. Also soaking in an acid like lemon juice or vinegar can help reduce the
phytic acid concentration.
But the best way to reduce phytic
acid is fermentation. This works much for the same reason that cows can eat
phytic acid without any issues – because both have microorganisms that can
digest the phytic acid.
An interesting
observation –
animal-based foods don’t have phytic acid.
Health Dangers
of Eating Soy
“Soybean Sabotage”
Health Dangers of Eating Soy
When I was in high school, I thought
soy was a health food. I ate soy protein powder. I ate “soynut butter.”
I was soy stupid.
No clue about the health
dangers of eating soy.
Soy is one of the only
plant-based foods that is a complete protein. Most are missing essential amino
acids. Logically, I thought it was a good choice.
At the time soy was thought
(still is by many…) to be “heart healthy.”
But it turns out I fell victim to
propaganda and bad “science.” [r]
The soybean epitomizes many issues
with eating plant-based foods. It has enzyme inhibitors, endocrine disruptors,
and saponins.
I call it “Soybean Sabotage.”
Soybean Sabotage
Enzyme Inhibitors
Whenever you eat food special
enzymes break down large molecules of protein, carbohydrates, or fats, into
absorbable forms. If these enzymes get blocked, digestion gets disrupted.
Plant-based food like the soybean
come “prepackaged” with enzyme inhibitors. These enzyme blockers can have
adverse effects that can result in malnutrition as well as gut inflammation
that can lead to leaky gut and all its associated pathologies.
Protease, Amylase, and Lipase
Protease inhibitors are one class
of enzyme inhibitors that interfere with protein digestion. For example, wheat
has protease inhibitors that not only block the breakdown of proteins but can
also trigger an innate immune response as seen in people with Celiac’s Disease.
In addition, people without
Celiac’s can have an immune response. Because wheat also has amylase trypsin
inhibitors that cause intestinal inflammation by activating a specific receptor
(called toll-like receptor 4). Amylase inhibitors interfere with starch
digestion.
Lipase inhibitors interfere with
the lipase enzyme which helps digest fats.
Like the antinutrient phytic acid
which interferes with micronutrient absorption, enzyme inhibitors
disrupt macronutrient digestion.
Trypsin Inhibitor
A soybean is a seed. Just like
grains and nuts are seeds, so too are beans.
Like the seeds of other plants,
soybean plants don’t want predators to eat their baby offspring.
Soybeans are rich in antinutrients
like phytic acid and tannins as well as trypsin inhibitors which deter
predation. [r]
The trypsin inhibitors fall under
the broader category of “Protease Inhibitors” which disrupt protein digestion.
But interference of protein
digestion from trypsin inhibitors is just one of many issues with eating
soybeans.
Phytoestrogen
Along with the antinutrient
effects from its enzyme inhibitors, soybeans also contain isoflavones which are
a major source of phytoestrogens.
These isoflavones aid in plant
defense and are great fungicides. When a soybean plant is under attack by a
fungus, it can even upregulate production to strengthen its defense and kill
the fungus. While perhaps designed to ward of fungus, they should also ward off
humans.
Estrogenic
Molecularly, these isoflavones
look very much like estradiol. Thus, it confuses our body and has estrogenic
effects.
These phytoestrogens have the
potential to inhibit testosterone production and increase estrogen.
[r] There’s evidence that
this can also interfere with fertility by reducing sperm quality.
In addition, phytoestrogens in soy
formulas put infants at risk for growth problems and altered sexual development
(especially if the infant is premature).
If we just look
at the urine levels of babies fed soy formulas, we see that they have up to 500X more isoflavones. Because it’s in the
urine we know it is being metabolized, traveling through the body, and
potentially causing serious consequences.
If you want to
have children you should think twice before eating soy. And if you have
children (especially infants), you should really think twice or three times
about feeding them soy.
Thyroid Disruption
Soy can also cause problems with
the thyroid.
In an interesting case study [r], a woman took a
supplement with soybean extract and she developed a severe hypothyroid problem
and a large goiter. But once she stopped taking it, her thyroid returned to
normal functioning and the goiter disappeared.[r]
Soy can mimic and mess with
hormonal function.
Saponins
A major source of saponins in the
human diet come from soybeans. Saponins help protect plants from microbes and
fungi. But humans voluntarily eat them.
And because they are resistant to
digestion, they can enter the gut, cause inflammation, leaky gut, and
autoimmune issues. [r]
Saponins are natural pest control
that are bitter making them less desirable to eat to deter birds and insects.
Perhaps humans should take the hint.
GMO
From about the year 2000 to 2010
soybeans changed. In the beginning of that decade less than 10% of soybeans
were genetically modified. By the end of it, over 90% were.
Soybeans are engineered to be
resistant to glyphosate. This enables farmers to spray the crops with RoundUp.
The chemical kill the weeds but not the genetically modified crops. As I’ve
talked about before, this can have serious impacts on human health. Because
while the crops may be engineered to survive glyphosate, we aren’t.
Health Dangers
of Eating Soy: “Soybean Sabotage” Conclusion
What to do?
The high antinutrient
concentrations in soy are a health concern to humans and livestock.
In order to limit their damage, food
processors do the best they can to reduce the damaging chemicals. Soybeans are
soaked which can reduce tannin levels by about half, but it doesn’t do much to
decrease phytic acid or trypsin inhibitors. [r]
Then they are often boiled and/or
roasted to try and reduce antinutrients further. Fermenting with fungi and
bacteria can help too.
But all this processing also comes at
a cost. It can damage essential amino acids making it difficult or impossible
to digest and assimilate. [r]
So food manufacturers are tasked
with the impossible: cook soybean enough to reduce the antinutrients but not
too much. An impossible balancing act.
Just like other seeds, instead of
trying to process away offending chemicals, I just don’t eat soybeans. They
have enzyme inhibitors, endocrine disruptors, and saponins that can cause
problems to human health.
Like lectins they can cause gut issues, hormone
mimicry, and autoimmune issues.
An interesting perspective is that
there is a really high incidence of soy allergy. Many peoples’ bodies go on an
all-out attack when consumed.
Not only that, but raw soybeans
are toxic to all monogastric animals – and we humans are monogastric.
Evidence suggest that we are not designed to eat soybeans – and
enzyme inhibitors, endocrine disruption, and saponins are just a few reasons
why.
Health Dangers
of Glycoalkaloids
“Potato Paralysis”
Health Dangers of
Glycoalkaloids
One of the health dangers associated
with a plant-based diet are neurotoxins called glycoalkaloids. They are enzyme
inhibitors. And health dangers of glycoalkaloids are numerous.
The potato is a good example of
glycoalkaloids and their hazards. One of the enzyme inhibitors is called an
acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. This blocks the breakdown of acetylcholine – a
neurotransmitter.
When acetylcholine doesn’t get broken
down it builds up. [r] The
buildup of this neurotransmitter causes muscular paralysis and even death for
many predators and pests that dare try and eat the potato.
For humans, the health dangers
of glycoalkaloids are often insidious though.
“Potato Paralysis”
A plant root, like the potato, is
a carbohydrate storage organ. It’s starch that the plant uses for energy.
Humans like to steal energy from
plants and use it for our nutrition. As seen with plant seeds (which have
stored energy intended for the baby offspring of the plant) when we steal a
plant’s energy is can come with consequences.
Potato Paralysis
The glycoalkaloids in a potato
function as a natural pesticide. Their bitter taste is the first signal to the
predator not to eat them.
But if this is ignored, they deter
pests and predators with this neurotoxin. It’s nature’s natural nerve gas. It
works the same way that our man-made warfare nerve agents work.
The natural cholinesterase inhibitors
in a potato prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine. [r]
And since acetylcholine carries messages between nerve cells and muscle cells,
these signals keep getting sent.
It’s kind of like…
For a terrible analogy – this is like
someone calling you on the phone.
They tell you this important
message and give you directions on what to do. You follow the directions
step-by-step just as they are telling you. Everything is working great. All
done.
Time to stop and hang up the
phone.
But right when you do, the
phone rings again.
You have to
pick up. It’s your job. And they start repeating the same message again. In
this situation, you are powerless and must do your job which is answering the
phone and carrying out the directions.
And thanks to this neurotoxin you
can’t stop picking up and can’t hang up on them. You answer, listen, activate –
again. And again. And again.
Health Dangers of
Glycoalkaloids – Potato Problems
Ultimately, this over-stimulates
the nervous system. It can cause paralysis, convulsions, and even respiratory
arrest and death.
Understandably, significant glycoalkaloid consumption is
linked with mental health problems like anxiety, insomnia, and restlessness.
The neuropsychiatric side effects are numerous and insidious.[r]
It’s often hard to point-the-finger
and pinpoint glycoalkaloids as the “root” of the problem. Because with a
healthy GI tract most won’t make it into your bloodstream. Most. But those that
do can take days to clear out. So when eaten regularly they can build up. And
the impact can be cumulative. [r, r]
With a compromised GI tract the impact can be exacerbated.
And worse, they can even play a role in creating this “leaky gut.” [r]
Solanine
Potato plants make a specific
glycoalkaloid called solanine (they also make another one called chaconine).
The health implications of solanine are not a secret.
The US even has a maximum legal limit to the amount of
solanine a potato can have (200 mg/kg potatoes). [r]
The problem is that even low doses can be toxic. And eating just 3 mg/kg body
weight can be fatal. [r] I
say “just” because it’s very doable. [r]
Solanine is not just in potatoes
either. It’s also found in significant quantities in other nightshades like
eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.
And it’s not just solanine. The
potato’s other glycoalkaloid, chaconine, is considered even more toxic than
solanine. [r]
Glycoalkaloid poisoning from
potatoes is more likely when improperly stored, green, or sprouting. A low dose
poisoning might just cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Higher doses can
lead to fever, low blood pressure and neurological problems. And as mentioned,
high doses can even be fatal.
Metabolism and Membranes
If you need more reasons to be
weary of glycoalkaloids consider their ability to disrupt other enzymes and
alter carbohydrate and fat metabolism.
They can bind nucleic acids and
interfere with protein synthesis and DNA repair. They bind strongly to
cholesterol on cell membranes and can rupture cells open. [r]
Health Dangers
of Glycoalkaloids – What to do?
Potatoes are one of the most
common foods eaten in the world (behind wheat, rice, and corn). So this isn’t
some minute issue.
Unfortunately boiling or frying
doesn’t disarm glycoalkaloids. They survive most cooking methods. Frying can
even make it worse. [r, r]
If you must eat a potato there
are a few helpful precautions.
First, the highest concentration of
glycoalkaloids are in the peel, so be sure to peel that off. [r]
Do not eat unripe or sprouting
potatoes. If it’s green don’t eat it. Avoid regular consumption. Don’t store
them in light or a warm place.
Probably just easiest not to eat
them at all.
I remember the classic
bodybuilding diet back in the day – steak and potatoes – but maybe it’s better
to leave out that second ingredient. Yes, you can build muscle on just steak without the potatoes and
without the carbs.
Beware the perils of potatoes. The
miracles come from meat.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables
“Broccoli Bombs”
Health Dangers of
Cruciferous Vegetables
In our look at the health dangers of a
plant- based diet we turn to the cruciferous vegetables.
You might be
surprised to learn that broccoli and brussel sprouts have a dark side.
I mean these
are the vegetables that kill cancer, right?
How can there possibly be
health dangers of cruciferous vegetables?
Well just like other plants, these
vegetables place a high priority on survival. And this means protecting
themselves with phytochemicals.
The cruciferous vegetables use a special chemical called
glucosinolate to deter pests. [r, r]
Here we’ll look at glucosinolates and their role and potential impact on human
health.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables – What
are they?
Last week as I was walking the
perimeter of the grocery store (headed to the butcher) I realized how many
vegetables are from the cruciferous family. It’s not just broccoli and brussel
sprouts. But it also includes cabbage and cauliflower, kale and collards,
radishes and arugula, mustard greens and mustard seeds, and the list goes on.
They are known for their pungent
smell. It’s the sulfur. And it’s a part of their defense.
“Broccoli Bomb”
The crucifers like broccoli have
this chemical called glucosinolate.
I like to think
of this chemical as the main ingredient of the “bomb.” They also have another
chemical called myrosinase.
I think of this as the “matchstick” that lights the bomb.
While growing out in a field the
bomb and the matchstick sit in separate compartments so that the broccoli
doesn’t blow itself up.
But when a little hungry animal comes
looking for a snack and bites into the broccoli the bomb gets lit by the match.
The explosion that results are bioactive chemicals call isothiocyanates. [r, r]
One of the most well-studied
isothiocyanate is call sulforaphane.
Sulforaphane
Sulforaphane is
a pungent molecule (perhaps you’ve cooked broccoli and smelled it…) that can
deter and kill insects, bacteria, and fungi. It causes cellular apoptosis (cell
death). This happens in the cells of these small predators as well as human
cells.
If you eat broccoli about 75% of
the sulforaphane will be absorbed into the bloodstream and taken up by cells.
Once inside sulforaphane can
damage important intracellular structures like mitochondria and enzymes.
The damage increases reactive oxygen
species (ROS). And in an attempt to limit the damage, glutathione, our powerful
endogenous antioxidant, binds with sulforaphane to get
rid of it as quickly as possible (~2-3 hours after eating it). [r] This depletes our
glutathione (our most potent human antioxidant) leaving cells vulnerable to
further oxidative damage.
Sulforaphane can even disrupt epithelial barriers
providing yet another plant chemical that can contribute to “leaky gut.” “ [r, r]
Sulforaphane and Cancer
It’s not surprising that this cell
killer has been recognized as an anticancer chemical. It kills cells. Cancer
cells and healthy cells. [r, r, r]
Isothiocyanates like sulforaphane trigger the activation
of Phase II enzymes. [r]
This is like turning up the dial on the human immune system.
For some reason, research paints this
in a positive light. Sulforaphane is a hero. Isothiocyanates increase our
natural antioxidants. They say it’s a hormetic response. [r] If it doesn’t kill you,
it makes you stronger.
I see it through another lens though.
When the body
encounters something that is damaging, it wants to get rid of it. To do this it
will upregulate an army to fight it. Some of these troops are antioxidants like
our friend glutathione.
While this is
good in the context of fighting a cancerous cell or ridding the body of sulforaphane, I don’t think sending the
troops to battle on a constant basis should be seen as a good thing.
The fact that the body puts
such a vast importance on getting rid of sulforaphane as quickly as possible
suggest to me that it’s more of a danger than a cancer-killing sidekick.
For me, a helpful analogy is to
relate to chemotherapy treatment. It is very effective at killing cells. And
while the intent is to kill cancerous cells, there is often a significant
amount of “collateral damage” and the death of healthy cells as well.
Most people don’t take low dose
chemotherapy as a cancer prevention strategy. There’s a reason for this.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables – Thyroid
Health
The isothiocyanates created by chewing
up broccoli can have potent
antithyroid effects and interfere with thyroid hormone production.
They compete with iodine and thereby
block its uptake by the thyroid. With inadequate iodine there is decreased
production of thyroxine and potential for hypothyroidism. [r]
The abnormal absorption of iodine also provokes
hypertrophy of the thyroid and goiter. [r]
And it’s not just humans, but
animals too.
Oil meals, like rapeseed meal
for example, are important protein supplements for livestock. And they are high
in glucosinolates.
Animals can tolerate up to 5-10%
rapeseed meal in their diets before suffering from goiters, depressed growth,
gastrointestinal irritation, anemia, perosis, poor egg production, and liver
and kidney lesions. [r, r]
The high sulfur diet can result in
trace mineral deficiencies and polio encephalomalacia, a neurologic disease in
ruminants.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables – What to do
If you decide to eat cruciferous
vegetables, it’s a good idea to take some protective measures.
·
Adding
extra iodine to counteract the thiocyanates is helpful. However, additional
iodine consumption cannot counteract other glucosinolate byproducts like
oxazolidine-2-thiones which also blocks iodine preventing thyroxine production. [r]
·
Avoid sprouts and seeds as they can have orders of magnitude more
glucosinolate than matured plants.
Eat them with caution.
·
Freezing as well as boiling them can help reduce the glucosinolate
concentration (~50%).
Heat actually destroys the myrosinase (the matchstick that
lights the bomb); however, the bacteria in our gut can act as the lighter, so
sulforaphane will still be produced. [r]
As with other plant chemicals, the
poison is in the dose, and an individual’s ability (or lack thereof) to disarm
the plant poisons. But as we’ll see in the “Toxin-Time Continuum” – most of our
plant-based foods and their accompanying toxins are pushing into the poison
side of the spectrum.
Health Dangers
of Oxalates
“Spinach Prick”
Health Dangers of Oxalates
Oxalates are especially troublesome.
They are insidious, and they appeal to the “health conscious” who have large
spinach and kale salads topped with almonds and sesame seeds.
They think they are eating
healthy.
But they are
flooding their body with oxalates.
Here we’re going to look at the health dangers of oxalates.
Health Dangers of Oxalates: Seed Strategy
Plants use great strategy with
their seeds.
Plants lace their seeds with natural
pesticides to deter pests and predators. The sharp oxalate crystals can prick a
predator’s mouth thereby playing a role in plant defense. [r, r]
Plants also load their seeds with
nutrition for the baby plant. And they use oxalate to store calcium for the
baby offspring.
When seeds start to germinate,
they split off the oxalic acid which frees the calcium for the baby plant.
“Spinach Prick”
Oxalate Accumulation
While oxalate is useful as a
calcium storage mechanism for plants, it’s toxic to humans in acute and chronic
amounts. If you eat too much oxalate you die.
Simple as that.
But often oxalate toxicity is more
insidious. [r]
Similarly to how phytic acid is a
mineral thief, oxalic acid is a magnet for minerals, especially calcium. Oxalic
acid grabs calcium and forms calcium oxalate – the main ingredient in kidney
stones. [r, r]
These oxalate
crystals build up into bigger and bigger crystals. They bioaccumulate.
As they accumulate the body deposits
these sharp crystals throughout the body – in joints, muscles, and especially
the kidneys. [r, r, r, r, r, r]
With oxalate crystals growing and
stored throughout the body muscles start aching, eyes, ears, mouth, and throat
can burn, and stones form in the kidneys.
“Spinach Prick”
Many people think spinach is a
good source of calcium. But it’s a fraud. The calcium in spinach is completely
useless. It’s all tied up in oxalate. And this is true for all high-oxalate
foods.
In the lab we can measure the calcium
content in spinach, but that doesn’t mean it’s available as a nutrient for the
body.
There is a big difference in
the nutrition measured in food and the nutrition that the body can actually
absorb and use.
This is where standard
nutrition guidelines fail miserably.
If we eat 100% of our RDI (recommended
daily intake) of calcium from spinach, but 100% of it is tied up in oxalate, we
really got 0% of the RDI.
Making matters worse, certain
foods can increase the amount
of a nutrients we need.
For example, If I were to eat a
large bowl of spinach every day for lunch, I would increase my need for certain
vitamins and minerals. Processing the high
oxalate concentration in the spinach depletes vitamin B6 and likely requires an
increased amount of biotin and thiamine in my diet.
Spinach Sabotage
Oxalate isn’t just an antinutrient
that depletes calcium and iron, stealing essential vitamins and
minerals. It’s also toxic.
Oxalate crystals cause renal
damage; they are neurotoxic; they activate the immune system, upset the GI
tract, deplete glutathione, and corrode connective tissue (via interference
with hyaluronic acid).
Oxalates can impact nearly every
bodily system. [r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r]
· They can cause neurological
symptoms which disturb sleep and adversely affect
coordination, memory, learning, and concentration.
· They cause pain via mast
cell degranulation and histamine release.
· Mysterious vulva pain,
fibromyalgia, and carpal tunnel syndrome can all have oxalates causing or worsening the symptoms.
· Increased calcium excretion
and increased oxalic acid excretion ride hand-in-hand and are linked with osteoporosis.
· Common practice for autism
treatment is the elimination of oxalate-containing foods (as well as gluten, casein and soy).
Oxalate Absorption
Absorption of oxalate differs
among people. For some, oxalate is largely broken down in the gut and
eliminated without causing too many issues. In others, a large percentage of
consumed oxalate is absorbed.
Someone with a compromised, “leaky
gut,” can see increased absorption of oxalate.
Not only does this increased
intestinal permeability allow more oxalate to get in, oxalate can be implicit
in exacerbating the leaky gut. The needle shape of oxalate crystals can
perforate mucus membrane cells damaging the gut and increasing “leakiness”. [r, r, r, r, r, r]
Health Dangers of Oxalates: High-Oxalate Foods
It’s not only
spinach pricks that can hurt you.
Many of the
cruciferous vegetables like kale, cauliflower, and broccoli have high
concentrations of oxalate.
Other culprits include chocolate, most
nuts (especially cashews and almonds that are popular among the health
conscious) and seeds like sesame and poppy seeds. [r, r, r]
One of the worst offenders is soy.
Remember when I was soy stupid – clueless that my soy protein shakes were
loaded with oxalates.
Berries and beans. Potatoes and
sweet potatoes. Okra. Swiss chard. Anything in the buckwheat family like
sorrel. All high in oxalates.
Sorrel is actually worse than spinach and kale. And for
some reason it is popular in fancy restaurants. There is this case report of a
man who ordered sorrel soup for dinner. Two hours later he died in the hospital
from acute oxalic acid poisoning. [r]
The man had poor metabolic
health. He was obese and diabetic. And this poor metabolic health further
impairs the handling of oxalate toxins. Yet, today we encourage obese diabetic
patients to eat diets that are high in oxalates.
Health Dangers of Oxalates: Insidious Impact
Like other
plant toxins, we don’t know (with any degree of accuracy) the frequency and degree of harm from oxalates thanks to a
general lack of awareness.
It often takes a bioaccumulation to
the point of acute kidney injury until a healthcare practitioner even considers
oxalate as a potential culprit. [r, r]
Sometimes patients with oxalate
problems are asymptomatic until they find themselves trying to pass a kidney
stone.
Sometimes mysterious lingering
pain gets diagnosed as fibromyalgia or carpal tunnel syndrome without any
knowledge as to why the pain is occurring.
Clearing the Crystals
Sometimes oxalate toxicity symptoms present when
eating high-oxalate foods. But often they don’t. And sometimes symptoms don’t present until one stops eating oxalates.
For example, a flare up of pain
can be from the release of stored oxalate that’s been consumed over a period of
time.
The reason is that you have all
these oxalate crystals accumulated in tissues, and now that you aren’t eating
them, the body can process out the stores.
The tissues start dissolving big crystals down into smaller crystals
(and into their ion form) which are what cause much of the cellular damage and
pain.
But once back out into the bloodstream
they can be excreted through the urinary tract. [r]
This process of breaking down and
unloading the stored crystals for excretion can cause the same or worse
symptoms than when they were originally eaten.
You’ve got to “re-eat” all that
spinach.
Health Dangers of Oxalates: What (not) to do
Oxalate damage is from toxicity.
It’s not a food sensitivity or allergen. So reversal of oxalate toxicity is a
2-step process:
· Stop eating it
·
Excrete that which is stored up
Unfortunately, there isn’t a good
way to determine how much oxalate damage you might have or how well you process
them in general.
Urine test are unreliable and a biopsy of tissue from the
kidney is quite invasive. [r]
It’s also hard to correlate
oxalate consumption with symptoms as mentioned (you may be asymptomatic with
insidious accumulative damage that doesn’t present until a serious event like
kidney failure, or symptoms may only arise after you stop eating them. etc.).
The best thing you can do is
limit the amount of oxalate you eat.
The major sources of oxalates are
from plant-based foods. But oxalate is also a byproduct of metabolism.
For example, excess Vitamin C can
get converted to oxalate. Just another reason megadoses of Vitamin C might not be a good idea.
Cooking and Cleanses
There’s also a false notion that
you can just cook the oxalate out of your vegetables. But this doesn’t work.
Oxalate and oxalic acid crystals
are so durable that they are used by paleontologists to determine what people
ate thousands of years ago. They aren’t destroyed by heat or cooking.
The one thing that can help is
boiling them in water. The soluble parts of oxalic acid that aren’t crystalized
yet can leach out into the cooking water.
So if you boil your broccoli to mush you can reduce the
oxalate concentration by maybe a third. [r]
There are a lot of misconceptions
around “healthy” food, perhaps epitomized by the “green smoothie cleanse.”
People want to do the right thing but are often “stabbing” themselves in the
foot (or more accurately the kidney).
But a green smoothie “cleanse” is
more likely to lead you to needing an oxalate cleanse.
Health Dangers
of Eating Fruit
“Peach Pit Poison”
Health Dangers of Eating
Fruit
Continuing our exploration of
the health dangers of a plant-based diet, fruit plays an especially interesting
role.
Most people
think fruit is healthy because they are high in antioxidants,
they are a good source of fiber, and they contain essential vitamins and minerals.
And unlike
other plant parts (roots, seeds, stems, and leaves) which the plant desperately wants to
protect for
survival, the plant actually wants predators to eat its fruit and spread their
seeds. So here we’ll explore if there are any health dangers of eating fruit.
Health Dangers of Eating Fruit: Spreading Seed
Some plants don’t want predators
to spread their seeds (naked seeds). Others depend on animals
to do so.
Naked Seeds
As
we’ve discussed, naked seeds are exposed baby plants. They grow on grasses and
vines and the parent plant drops these seeds right where they are growing.
Then in the
winter, when the parent plant dies, the offspring can sprout right there in the
same area.
Because they don’t want pests
and predators to eat these seeds, plants lace the seeds with phytochemicals to
deter predators.
So while these naked seeds seem
bare and exposed on the outside, on the inside they are potent fighters armed
with chemical warfare agents.
Protected Seeds
Unlike plants
with naked seeds, other plants protect their seeds. They need animals to spread
these seeds so that the offspring don’t have to compete for space and sunlight
with the parent plant.
To accomplish this, plants
enclose their offspring in a protective hull and house them in fruit.
The fruit entices the predator and
the hull protects the seed as it passes through the predator’s GI tract. The
animal then eliminates the seed in its dung, a natural fertilizer for the baby
seed, in a distant location.
Spreading Protected Seeds
I’ll re-iterate it here: It’s
fascinating to think how clever these plants are.
We think we are using apple
trees for their nutrition, when really they are using us.
An apple tree entices us
visually with big red colorful fruit. They load it with sugar, appealing to our
taste buds.
They make these fruits easy
to pick.
They even add sugar alcohols
that have a natural laxative effect.
This speeds the seed through the digestive tract, further
improving its survival chances. [r, r]
A Review: Green means “Stop” Red means “Go”
The tree uses us. It attracts
us with color, and it makes sugar addicts of us. All so that we animals can
spread its seeds.
The apple tree controls animal
behavior every step of the way.
While the seeds and its protective
coating are still developing, the apple is green and bitter. Green doesn’t
attract us like red does. It blends in. And we want a sweet apple loaded with
sugar, not a bitter, sour one.
So, during this unripe period, the
apple has its highest toxic load. So although a gorilla would love to eat the
apple, it’s deterred from picking it until the apple is ripe.
Incidentally, gorillas, like humans and all fruit eating
animals, have color vision. [r]
While the apple ripens, and the
protective hull of the seeds develop, the apple gradually turns red, increases
its sugar content and decreases its toxic load.
The red, sweet, and less toxic
apple is snatched up by us animals who will do the trees bidding, and spread it
seed.
Fruit Phytochemicals
Based on the logic that plants
intend for their fruits to be eaten one might think that these are a good
choice for food.
However, fruits have a dark
side.
Besides the dangers associated
with the high lectin load in unripe fruit and the heave dose of insatiable
sugar that few people need today, there are other potentially toxic
phytochemicals.
Phenolics
Tannins
Many fruits have tannins which
help protect a plant from harsh weather.
They also make proteins
indigestible.
If you were to eat a leather
shoe, the reason you couldn’t get protein from it is because the proteins are
bound up with tannins.
So tannins bind up protein as
well as digestive enzymes and can interfere with digestion (i.e.
they are enzyme inhibitors). They
also interfere with our ability to absorb plant iron and have an antinutrient
impact. So they can cause nutrient deficiency and GI problems like bloating
diarrhea, and constipation.
Tannins also play a role in
deterring pests. They are potent against insects. But they are also troublesome
for animals.
For example, if cattle get trapped
in an area and must resort to eating acorns, they can get poisoned from the
tannins.
In humans, large tannin consumption can cause kidney and
liver damage. [r, r, r, r]
Flavonoids
Isoflavone (a polyphenol, plant
antioxidant) is found in many fruits and is also found heavily in soybeans.
This phytoestrogen can disrupt endocrine/hormone function
and have estrogen-like effects. [r, r]
Photosensitizers
Other phenolics act as
photosensitizers.
This is a plant defense
mechanism that makes animals sensitive to light.
The story goes like this:
An animal eats the plant, then light hits the animal, and the animal is
severely injured.
In humans we refer to this as
photodermatitis.
For example,
celery is a known occupational risk. Celery handlers that go out in the sun can
get celery dermatitis.
Lime juice is also a well-known cause of photodermatitis.
An experiment I don’t recommend trying, is squeezing limes then going out in
the sun. The swelling can be horrifying. [r]
Another example is grapefruit.
Grapefruit interacts with almost
every prescription drug. It has these toxic furanocoumarins (photosensitizers)
that the liver has to break down using p450 enzymes.
The problem arises because the same p450 enzymes in the
liver are trying to break down these grapefruit toxins. The liver gets
overburdened trying to metabolize the drugs and the grapefruit. This can result
in high levels of the drug in the bloodstream which can have severe adverse
effects. [r, r, r, r]
It’s an interesting thought that
grapefruit and prescription drugs require so much detoxifying…perhaps not the
best things to be putting in the body in the first place.
Cyanogenic Glycosides
Entomologists (scientists that
study insects) use cyanogenic glycosides to kill insects. These toxins are in
many fruits (over 2,500 plant species) like cherries and in the pits of
peaches.
They work in a
similar way to how the glucosinolates (“Broccoli
Bombs”) activate. Cyanogenic glycosides are activated upon tissue damage.
So when you bite into the fruit the glycosides mix with an activating enzyme
creating hydrogen cyanide. Yes, that cyanide.
We can detox small amounts of cyanide but at slightly
higher doses it can interfere with iodine and disrupt normal thyroid function
leading to goiter and hypothyroidism. At slightly higher concentrations it can
block cellular respiration, suffocate mitochondria and be fatal. [r, r, r, r]
This isn’t a negligible issue
either.
Cassava is one of the main sources of calories in the
tropics. It also has significant concentrations of cyanogenic glycosides. Over
a half a billion people eat cassava on a regular basis resulting in serious
thyroid and neurological impacts. [r,r,r]
Salicylates
Salicylates are phytochemicals
plants use to fight back against predators. There are many drugs developed from
the salicylate family like aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).
But many people are very
intolerant to salicylates. They experience immediate allergy- like symptoms
(asthma like symptoms from constriction of bronchial passages and mucus
production, hives, swelling and GI upset).
Salicylates are also associated with physical and mental
symptoms like acne, restless leg syndrome, headaches, anxiety, disturbed
vision, bad breath, and odor. [r, r, r, r, r]
While most people seem to be able
to handle average amounts of salicylate in food and medications there is a
danger that salicylates can bioaccumulate in the body over time (similar to the
“Spinach Pricks” of oxalates).
Most fruits are high in
salicylates. And like oxalates that bioaccumulate, they can be hard to pinpoint
that they are the troublemakers.
Health Dangers of Eating Fruits
Even with all these phytochemicals
fruit still very-well-may-be the best option to eat of all plant parts (and
that is saying something about the other parts!).
It’s the only part plants
designed for predators to eat.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based Foods
The Toxin-Time Continuum
Health Dangers of
Plant-Based Foods
The Toxin-Time Continuum
In this final chapter I want to
zoom out and look at the big picture.
The health dangers of
plant-based foods should be viewed on a continuum. This scale goes from natural
toxins to man-enhanced toxins to man- made poisons. And I want to look at how
these have emerged and changed over time.
By the end of this chapter, I want
to uncover what is actually “healthy” and what is “poison” and everything in
between. And I want you to be armed with the insight to see through propaganda,
advertising, and false beliefs that make up so much of “conventional wisdom” –
the “wisdom” that has led to widespread health epidemics.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based Foods – Natural
Plant Toxins
Up to this point, we’ve looked in
detail at some of the specific natural plant toxins. These toxins cause severe
issues for many people that eat a plant-based diet.
Specifically, we’ve looked at
various plants and plant parts and evaluated some of their most potent
chemical defenses against herbivory.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based Foods – Recap
We’ve looked at seeds
(naked vs protected) and saw how grains, nuts, and beans can destroy our health
by causing “leaky gut,” enzyme and endocrine dysfunction, and nutrient
absorption interference.
We’ve looked at roots,
like the potato, and how alkaloids can impair health.
We’ve evaluated
plant stems, like broccoli, and saw how glucosinolates can set off
problems. We’ve picked the leaves, like spinach, and saw how it can be a
real prick.
We’ve eaten the fruit, like
peaches, and saw a wide range of dangers from phenolics to glycosides to
salicylates to tannins.
The plant toxins we have
reviewed are just the tip of the iceberg.
There are literally thousands of phytochemicals produced
by plants to avoid being eaten. (r)
We have covered some of the major
players in quite some detail – the ones that have been studied and recognized
as harmful. And while I think these details are vitally important (and eye-
opening to most people) I don’t want to miss the forest by too closely
inspecting the trees.
Let’s zoom
out for a more complete picture. Let’s look at the “Toxin-Time Continuum.”
Our 24 Hour History
The First 23 Hours and 55 Minutes – Natural
Plant Toxins
Health Dangers
of Plant-Based Foods – “The Toxin-Time
Continuum”
The evolution of the human diet
takes place over millions of years.
To gain perspective,
let’s assume this evolutionary
history was condensed into one 24-hour day.
The beginning of the day is
marked with an astonishing divergence from our hominid ancestors – our brains
exploded in size.
In “What did humans evolve to eat” we discovered that the selective pressures of climate change and food
sources, as well as
selective advantages associated with a large brain
underpinned this stunning divergence from our primate ancestors. The human
genus transitioned from tree-dwelling herbivore to bipedal meat eater. (r, r, r)
And by the time 23 hours passed on the clock (~50,000
years ago) isotope studies of fossils reveal a human diet nearly
indistinguishable from carnivores. (r, r)
Though undoubtedly, during these 23 hours, humans were
opportunistic plant eaters, and included some fruit and occasional plant
material in the diet when available. But evidence is strong that for the first
23 hours and 55 minutes of the clock, humans became less and less equipped to
eat plant-based foods and more and more equipped to scavenge, hunt, and subsist
(and depend) on a meat-based diet. (r, r, r, r)
But as we’ll see the plant-based
foods eaten during this time and their natural toxins were vastly different
than the plants-based foods of today.
The Last 5 Minutes – Natural Plant Toxins in
Unnatural Quantities
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
Early in our 24-hour clock we
transitioned from the plant-based diet of our herbivore hominid ancestors to a
meat-based diet, more closely resembling the metabolisms and anatomy of
carnivores. And for 23 hours and 55 minutes our diet was consistent. It was a
meat-based diet.
Surely during certain seasons, in
certain locations, humans supplemented their meat-based diet with some fruits
and plant-based material. And in other locations and times in history,
especially during glacial periods, humans subsisted exclusively on meat. But
meat was a constant. And during these 23 hours and 55 minutes, no human
civilization ever survived without animal food.
Then in just the last 5 minutes
we radically changed the human diet. Agricultural Revolution: The Start of the
End
With the advent of agriculture
at the 23 hour and 55-minute mark, we completely abandoned our meat-based diet.
We even abandoned the plant-based foods we had supplemented our meat-based
diets with.
We began subsisting on
plant-based foods that were rarely / never eaten in human history.
In
fact, nearly all the plant-based foods we eat today did not exist (more than 5
minutes ago). Before agriculture there was no
wheat, no corn, no rice – which now make up about 50% of all the calories eaten
worldwide. (r, r) These are modern-man
inventions.
For example, grains come from wild
grasses. Naturally, in the wild, these grains are small with just a few seeds
per plant. And they readily fall and disperse. Humans would have basically
never eaten these.
But with agriculture and selective
breeding, farmers cultivated these into staple foods. They began subsisting on
grains and starchy crops for calories. This massive change in diet was low in
protein, low in fat, and low in vitamins and minerals. It was also high in
plant-based toxins.
Perhaps not surprisingly, during these last 5 minutes, our
brains started to shrink – over 10% in just these last 5 minutes. Our stature
shrank as well, we developed tooth defects, bone lesions, and degenerative conditions.
(r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r)
For the first time, we were
exposed to significant amounts of natural plant toxins, from plant parts we had
never eaten in any significant quantity. And the human body had long become
ill- equipped to detox such concentrations of phytochemicals.
Over the 23 hours and 55 minutes, our guts had transformed
beyond recognition to that of our early herbivore primate ancestors. Our
transformed gut was now optimized for the efficient absorption of meat that was
dense in energy as was required to fuel our gigantic brains; it was no longer
equipped for grazing 7 hours/day and using a microbiome to turn plant fiber
into useable energy. (r)
Before the Agricultural
Revolution, fatness was nonexistent. With this change in food production, the
wealthy gained access to plentiful carbs and, for the first time in human
history, became fat. Perhaps ironically, accompanying the rise of fat people
was the rise of widespread malnutrition and deficiencies. Health deteriorated.
“The
Dose Makes the Poison” – Part I
Prior to the Agricultural
Revolution, the opportunistic eating of plant-based foods was a relatively
miniscule part of the human diet.
Natural plant-based toxins like
alkaloids, oxalates, and tannins were eaten in small quantities. And even
though toxic – a healthy human body, for the most part, could detoxify them
without major issues.
However, some plant tissues have
especially high amounts of natural toxins. These tissues tend to be of special
importance to the plant for its survival. For example, seeds tend to be laced
with protective chemicals. These are the plant’s babies, vital for the plant to
protect.
Before the Agricultural
Revolution, seeds made up little to no part of the human diet. But this changed
just 5 minutes ago. Some of the most potent natural plant toxins, that were
never eaten before, became food staples.
Our dosage of plant-based toxins drastically increased.
We began eating
massive quantities of lectins, phytates, and enzyme inhibitors. What was once a
manageable dose to detoxify started to overwhelm our defenses. We simply had
not developed or evolved to defend this level of chemical warfare.
To make matters worse, the lower
nutrition inherent in these foods combined with the antinutrients created a
negative spiral of deteriorating health and nutrition. For example, while these
plant-based foods are already lower in vitamins and minerals,
they also come pre-packaged
with antinutrients like phytate that further prevent
absorption of essential minerals. And while already lower in protein and fat,
enzyme inhibitors further interfered with fat and protein absorption. (r)
Further, many of these toxins damage the gut, our 1st and
primary level of defense. With increased intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”),
our ability to defend against an ever-increasing phytochemical onslaught got
worse and worse. (r, r, r, r, r)
To top off this cascade of
damage, for the first time in history we started spiking our blood sugar,
stressing our pancreas to pump out insulin, and dysregulating our metabolisms.
The Last Second – Natural Plant Toxins Transformed
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
The transition that took place at
23 hours and 55 minutes was catastrophic. But the changes in the last second
have been just as destructive to human health, if not more so.
Industrial Revolution
During this last second in
time, the Industrial Revolution caused the next blow to human health – kicking
ourselves while we were down.
The
Dose Makes the Poison – Part II
With milling technology, we
started stripping the bran and the wheat germ away from the grain, creating
ultra-fine grains – the most refined flours in human history.
We took the foods that we
invented, that were completely novel to the human diet, that were loaded with
antinutrients, and which we were ill-equipped to eat, and began refining them
and thereby concentrating them.
At the start of the last 5 minutes
we radically increased the dosage of plant toxins. In this last second,
we concentrated these toxins exponentially.
With the Industrial Revolution we
saw the rise of technology for mass food production resulting in an even
further decline in fresh food (as refrigeration was not yet available).
Accompanying these new
technologies came the birth of never before seen health problems including
obesity, cancers, and heart disease.
The Last Split-Second – Unnatural
Plant-Transformed Poisons
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
As if our diet wasn’t already
foreign enough, in this last split-second of the 24-hour day, we’ve engineered
synthetic food so incongruent with our body that disease and deteriorated
health have become the new normal.
Asthma and allergies are almost expected among our youth.
IBS, indigestion, acid reflux, is considered normal digestion. Depression,
diabetes, dementia, and dental abnormalities. We are the only primates whose
teeth don’t fit into our own heads. (r, r, r) We
fight fatigue and brain fog daily. Acne, autism, and autoimmune disorders went
from non-existent to commonplace.
Osteoporosis and obesity. This
became our new normal.
Technologic Revolution: Man-made Poisons
The Big 3
During this last split-second we
have made mind-blowing advancements in science and technology. Many used for
good. Many, knowingly or unknowingly, causing serious harm.
#1 –
Grains
As we’ve discussed, grains didn’t
become any significant part of the human diet until 5 minutes ago. Moreover,
they are laced with plant toxins and antinutrients to prevent herbivores from
eating the plant’s offspring.
Just 5 minutes ago we took these
plant seeds and made them a significant part of the human diet by artificially
breeding and selecting for size and abundance.
Then in the last second, during
the Industrial Revolution, we began refining them, further concentrating
toxins.
In this last split-second
we altered them even further. We began genetically modifying them.
We’ve
engineered new traits into plants that wouldn’t otherwise naturally occur.
We’ve engineered higher lectin loads to deter insects. We began spraying
them
with pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides.
We’ve added preservatives, so we
can store and ship these foods around the world. And all these changes come
with a heavy price.
Let’s
consider gluten.
Gluten is an energy storage
protein in grains with the purpose of nourishing the developing baby seed once
it sprouts.
When some people eat gluten it
triggers an immediate, severe attack on the lining of the small intestines.
It’s known as Celiac disease.
Celiac disease dramatically
increased in the US in the 1960s and 70s. This is the same time that genetic
breeding further transformed wheat.
The 4.5 foot
“amber waves of grain” turned into 2-foot-tall, semi-dwarf, wheat. Yields went
up. Profits went up. And so did the gluten concentration.
And it was not only more abundant, but the gluten was
fundamentally different. The molecular structure of gluten was chemically
altered. (r, r, r, r, r, r)
We know that our digestive tract
doesn’t handle wheat proteins (prolamins) like gluten and other lectins very well.
Genetically modified wheat and altered proteins are like foreign invaders to
the body. They cause damage to the gut (“leaky gut”) that can lead to
widespread inflammation, autoimmune disorders, and disease.
I call it “Grain Pain.”
Today, just 3 grains – wheat, corn, and rice – make up about half of the
world’s food. And if the dose makes the poison…
By eating genetically altered, ultra-concentrated, high
doses of grains and their toxins, meal after meal, day after day – the dose is poisoning us.
#2 –
Vegetable Oils
For millions of years nearly all
fat in the human diet was animal fat.
During the Agricultural Revolution
we switched to a low-fat diet. But still, during this time, most of the fat
eaten (up until 23 hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds) was animal-based.
But during this last
split-second, we invented industrial vegetable seed oils.
And in short order we replaced natural animal fats with
unnatural plant-based industrialized fats. (r, r, r, r)
Cellular
Disruption
Without getting into the
molecular composition of fats, it’s enough to know that animal fat is high in
saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, while vegetable seed oils are high
in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA).
These PUFA originate in plant
seeds, and via complex industrial processing they give us vegetable oils like
corn, soybean, and sunflower oils.
After further
processing (hydrogenation) these fats can become solid at room temperature and
used as margarine that spreads nicely on your bread or used as shortening to
keep your baked goods tender and moist. This processing creates completely
unnatural fats including the notorious trans fats.
And these fats are very
dangerous.
Fat is an essential component of every cell in the body.
It’s vital in hormone production. It’s necessary for vitamins and minerals. And
in fact, the brain is over 60% fat. (r)
When we eat these unnatural fat
molecules, they fool our bodies. They are similar enough to natural fats that
they get incorporated into our cells and tissues.
But these unnatural industrialized
fats don’t function properly.
They damage cell membranes, disrupt function, and cause
inflammation. And they are strongly correlated with heart disease, cancer, and
neurological problems. (r, r, r, r, r, r)
Omega
3:6
The different ratios of fatty
acids between animal fat and vegetable oils is extremely significant.
Omega 3 and omega 6s are essential
fatty acids. Ideally these are balanced. Our ancestors likely ate omega 3 and
omega 6 fatty acids in a ratio that was close to 1:1.
The reason balance is important is
that omega 3 and omega 6s produce hormone-like signaling compounds called
eicosanoids that are involved in inflammation. And omega 3s and 6s have
opposite effects in some processes.
For example, eicosanoids from
omega 3 fatty acids function through pathways that decrease
inflammation,
while those from omega 6 function through pathways that increase inflammation. Striking the right balance is important.
We need inflammation for wound
healing and tissue repair, but too much can lead to chronic systemic
inflammation and to pathologies like autoimmune disease, IBS, and joint pain.
Vegetable seed
oils are very high in omega 6 fatty acids. They are pro-inflammatory. And
today, it’s common to eat 10-20X more omega 6 fatty acids than omega 3s –
thanks to oils like corn and soybean that are widespread and cheap.
Today the
scale is steeply tipped toward inflammation.
Evidence is mounting that the overwhelming omega 6 to 3
ratio is implicit in heart disease, cancer, and even neurologic problems like
depression, aggression, violent behavior, and anxiety. Which, again, is not
surprising as our brains are mainly fat. (r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r)
Oxidation
Up until this last split second in
time the only fats used in cooking were animal fats. Since these fats are more
saturated, they are more stable, and thus less likely to oxidize and go rancid.
The high
concentration of polyunsaturated fats found in vegetable oils are just the
opposite. By the time they reach the grocery store they are likely already
damaged (oxidized).
Chemically this means they turn
into free radicals. A free radical has unpaired electrons and are thus highly
reactive. This high reactivity can damage molecules in the body and result in a
domino-like chain reaction.
When a free radical damages a
molecule, that molecule then becomes a free radical itself to continue damaging
cellular structures and interfering with proper cellular function. One after
another the dominos fall.
And these oxidized oils can be
sneaky. At the store they may look and smell just fine but still be
significantly damaged. By the time they have a noticeable “rancid” odor they’ve
likely been damaged for quite some time.
To speed up the oxidation, all you
have to do is heat these oils. Fried foods aren’t only loaded with unnatural
hydrogenated fats, they aren’t only high in inflammation promoting omega 6
fatty acids, but they are easily oxidized. It’s like throwing a wrecking ball
into your body.
Heart
Disease
For 23 hours and 55 minutes we
were on a high fat (high saturated fat) diet and heart disease was largely
non-existent. Then during this last split second, Ancel
Keys told us saturated fats cause heart
disease.
Thanks to his misleading
association, health organizations turned this into “conventional wisdom” and
animal fat consumption dropped while vegetable oil consumption skyrocketed. And
so did heart disease.
This “conventional wisdom” that
saturated fat is bad still permeates society today.
When really, polyunsaturated fats
and the artificially hydrogenated fats like trans fats are among the most toxic
“foods” in the modern world. And these fats are in everything.
Nearly all processed foods – from
baked goods and breads to crackers and chips to peanut butter and pizza – all
loaded with fats from plant-based foods extracted via industrial processing.
#3 –
Sugar
With grains and vegetable oils
we’ve manufactured unnatural foods into our daily food staples. We eat these in
dosages that teeter on poison. And we’ve done the same with sugar.
Humans consumed minimal
carbohydrates for the first 23 hours and 55 minutes.
This radically changed in the last
5 minutes with the Agricultural Revolution and the transition to a
predominantly plant-based diet. Carbohydrate consumption changed even further
in the last second when the Industrial Revolution spurred mass production of
refined carbohydrate-based foods.
sugar became any significant part
of the diet.
But sugar as
we know it is even newer.
When refined
white sugar first came to Europe it was very expensive. It was a luxury
reserved for the wealthy.
Most
carbohydrates in the diet at this time were still
from refined grains and starches.
It was not until the 1900s, after
industrial processing and extraction was developed, that
And it was in this last split
second that sugar became cheap and thus abundant.
We began eating massive quantities of sugar. It now makes
up over 25% of our diet. And our bodies are not designed to handle this. (r, r, r, r)
With every meal we create a
metabolic panic, stressing the pancreas to unload insulin to re- establish
homeostatic blood sugar. This massively unnatural carbohydrate load and blood
sugar spiking wreaks havoc on human health.
Metabolic hormones become
dysregulated from the insulin rollercoaster, eventually cell start to give up
(insulin resistance) and the pancreas wears out (Type II diabetes). The high
blood sugar levels disrupt cellular water balance, impair the immune system,
and damage vision, kidneys, and nerves. Obesity, cardiovascular disease,
cancer, dementia (which some call “Type III Diabetes”) all became increasingly
common stepwise with the ever-increasing consumption of sugar.
Sugar also directly damages
tissues through glycation.
Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs) irreversibly damage
molecules. This is like the domino effect of oxidized fats and their free
radicals. When a molecule gets glycated, these AGEs can then cause damage by
cross-linking with other molecules creating a cascade of damage. Glycation is
implicit in many health problems including diabetes, hypertension, vascular
damage, aging, and dementia. (r)
Sugar
Cycle
The human body has about 1 tsp of
glucose (sugar) in all the blood. Only a few cells in the body require any
glucose at all, all of which can be made from protein. There is no essential
carbohydrate. No need to eat any sugar at all. And yet we are eating it by the
truck load.
And one reason why is that it’s addicting. When we eat
sugar the “pleasure centers” of the brain light up. It activates the same brain
regions as cocaine. And it causes neurochemical changes similar to other
addictive drugs. (r)
Sugar fuels a vicious cycle.
With a sugar surge the pancreas
panics and pumps insulin. This immediately halts any fat burning. With this
massive insulin dump, the blood sugar shortly drops too low and causes hormones
to tell the brain to hurry up and replenish.
We feel this as a strong craving
for more sugar. And since fat burning is largely turned off thanks to the
insulin – the craving can feel more like a panic. Our energy drops, we get
tired, our brain gets foggy, and we get “hangry” for more sugar.
Willpower gives way, we reach for more sugar, and
feel the “reward” from the brain reinforcing this behavior. What results is binging, cravings, and
addiction.
In this vicious “sugar cycle” we
are always hungry and always storing more fat. We disrupt hormonal signaling
and lose the ability to tap the abundant energy stored in our fat cells.
Fructose
Refined white sugar is bad.
But in 1956 we made sugar even
more dangerous. We discovered how to further process it to give us high
fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – which was even sweeter and cheaper than refined
white sugar.
By the 70s and 80s HFCS
infiltrated our diets. It was loaded into soft drinks and juices, snacks and
desserts, syrups and salad dressings.
Fructose, “fruit sugar,” has to
be processed by the liver in a special way. It must be detoxified.
Not unlike alcoholism, chronic
HFCS consumption bombards the liver with a toxin in excess. This can fatten and
damage the liver. In fact, it’s a primary player in nonalcoholic fatty liver
disease.
With this abuse, the liver eventually starts ignoring
insulin, thereby impairing its ability to process glucose. Again, blood glucose
builds up, the pancreas pumps more insulin, fat accumulates, appetite gets
dysregulated, and hormonal systems dysfunction. (r, r, r, r)
Glycation is especially dangerous with fructose – causing
glycation at 7-10X the rate of glucose. And for diabetics who already have high
blood sugar, this is a recipe for accelerated aging and vascular damage. (r, r)
Technologic Revolution: Man-made Poisons – Beyond
the Big 3
Perhaps the deadliest inventions
are the mass production and consumption of grains, vegetable oils, and sugar.
And while these may be the biggest culprits in deteriorating health – there are
many other “food” inventions that are hiding in our meals and causing harm.
Food
Additives
Today our food comes in a box or a
bag, with an ingredient list that most biochemist don’t recognize.
Pick up an item at the grocery
store, and there is a very good chance you don’t know what most of the
ingredients are. We assume these chemicals are well tested with stringent
health and safety research validating their consumption. But this is far from
the truth.
Our foods are loaded with synthetic chemicals – acidity
regulators, anti-caking agents, antifoaming agents, antioxidants, bulking
agents, dyes and food coloring materials, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, and
artificial flavors, gelling agents, glazing agents, humectants, preservatives,
stabilizers, artificial sweeteners, and thickeners. (r)
Many are potentially toxic and
very little is actually known about their combined impact.
What happens when these chemicals
are mixed together, or taken with medications, or how do they interact within a
complex environment – like the human body?
We don’t know.
But evidence is
growing that these chemicals aren’t harmless. Artificial
Sweeteners
Astute observers
witnessed the damage associated with our massive consumption of sugar. The
obvious answer was to create artificial sweeteners.
In the 70s, one such sweetener called cyclamate was pulled
from the market due to its association with testicular atrophy and cancer. But
not to be deterred, others have popped up. Today saccharin and aspartame have
gained widespread appeal and use. Though research suggest this may not be such
a great thing. (r)
Aspartame is a classic example of money and politics
winning over health and science. The aspartame industry funded numerous studies
on the sweetener, all of which showing its safety. Yet over 90% of independent
studies demonstrated problems with the sweetener including increased risk of
brain tumors and lymphoma. (r, r, r, r)
It’s thought that these
artificial sweeteners also confuse the brain about energy consumption.
With the sweetness the brain
thinks calories are coming in. But they don’t. And this misinformation
interferes with proper hormonal signaling.
When sweetness sometimes accurately reflects energy
consumption and sometimes does not, appetite gets dysregulated. And evidence suggest
this is leading to overeating and more sugar cravings. (r, r, r)
Artificial
Colors and Dyes
There are big marketing dollars in bright colors.
Artificial colors and dyes are added to make products more appealing. Some of
these come from petrochemicals and coal tar like Blue No. 1 and Citrus Red No.
2, and Green No. 3. (r)
In animal studies many of these
have been shown to be toxic, cause tumors, and are associated with other health
problems like allergic reactions.
Human clinical trials even show
evidence that they may contribute to hyperactivity.
Artificial dyes are classified as excitotoxins, which can damage nerve
cells by excessive stimulation.
In fact, doctors have successfully treated hyperactivity
by eliminating artificial colorings. MSG (monosodium glutamate) is another
example of an excitotoxin that is widely used as a flavor enhancer. (r, r, r, r)
Emulsifiers
Human are known for trying to make
substances behave in unnatural ways – like getting oil and water to mix.
Well that’s what emulsifiers, also
known as surfactants, do. They allow the mixture of substances that normally
wouldn’t mix.
Many processed foods are made
possible by complex emulsions. For example, the chemicals that allow the food
to have a long shelf life have to mix with the chemicals in the food. And it
takes high concentrations of synthetic emulsifying agents to get it all to
stick together.
Obviously, our bodies are not
adapted to deal with these novel synthetic chemicals. They are thought to cause
damage to the digestive tract and contribute to “leaky gut” (intestinal
permeability).
A case in point – pharmaceutical companies actually use
emulsifiers in their pills to help oral drugs move across the intestinal
barrier. (r, r)
Food
preservatives
Fresh food goes bad. This is not
good for shelf life or profits, so food preservatives were invented to prevent
the growth of microorganisms and avoid chemical changes associated with
exposure to oxygen (i.e. oxidation).
If you look at the ingredients on
a bag of food you’ll likely see chemicals like sodium benzoate, calcium
propionate, disodium EDTA, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated
hydroxytoluene (BHT), sulphites, sodium sulfite, sodium
and potassium bisulfite, sodium and potassium metabisulphite. (r)
Little is known about their
effects on human health. Though we do know that some people are seriously
affected by these. For example, allergic reactions to sulfites are quite
common.
Processed grains need preservatives like BHT to block the
oxidation of the PUFA in the oils. It’s also an endocrine disruptor that acts
like estrogen. This is a trifecta of damage – grains and oils mixed together
with a synthetic preservative. (r, r)
What scares me is that we know how essential our microbiome is to
our health. Yet we readily add these chemicals to our food…chemicals
specifically designed to hinder bacteria and other microorganisms.
Today: Toxins Transformed to Poison
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
For 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59
seconds the human species did not eat any refined sugars, refined grains, or
refined vegetable oils.
Plant-based natural toxins were
cultivated into unnatural doses and transformed into poisons.
Our staple foods, which many
consider “health” foods, include grains and soybeans, which are loaded with
antinutrients and plant defense phytochemicals that damage our guts and cause
disease.
Our carbohydrate intake flipped
from minimal to most of our calories. Simple sugars, fructose, and refined
carbohydrates dysregulate our hormones and appetites, lead to overeating and
obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, and are implicit in the deadliest
diseases today including heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
We replaced natural animal fats
for industrialized plant-based fats that get incorporated to our cells, ruining
their structure and function. Omega 6 fatty acids overwhelm omega 3s promoting
inflammation. The PUFA are readily oxidized, and thus readily damage those who
eat them.
We replaced nutrient dense meats
with nutrient poor grains and sugars. Although we are fat, we are malnourished.
We have widespread artificial
toxin exposure. Insecticides and additives are all over and in our food.
We do know that all of these
“foods” were invented in less than 1 second on the human history clock.
And we know that grains, sugar,
and vegetable oils make up a majority of all the calories eaten.
Yet somehow, we have propaganda
that meat, the very food our species evolved eating, suddenly started to cause
diseases and epidemics in the modern world.
It seems obvious there might be a
mismatch between what we are designed to eat and the food inventions of the
last 5 minutes.
We have powerful human engines
designed to run on a specific fuel, and we not only diluted this fuel, but we
completely changed it. And we wonder why we are getting weighed down, running
slower, getting sicker, and developing disease at an alarming rate.
Technologic
Revolution: The Fuel Weighing Us Down
To recap the “Toxin-Time
Continuum” I think looking at a couple examples will highlight the issues we
face today with our plant-based diets.
Soy
Let’s say you eat a soybean – the
body can handle its ill effects, detoxify it, and in general not cause any
issues.
Let’s say you eat soybeans
everyday – now the body is detoxifying on a continuous basis. Still the dosage
at any one time is low enough that you don’t recognize any ill effects.
Now let’s take those soybeans
and refine them and process them to give you soy milk, soynut butter, soy
protein, and soybean oil. All of a sudden soybeans are hiding in concentrated
forms in all your food.
There are a number of issues with
just eating “natural” soybeans. They are high in antinutrients like trypsin
inhibitors, phytates, and tannins as well as bioactive compounds like
isoflavones and phytosterols that have estrogenic properties.
But when its refined and concentrated in these
food-like-products, products which are everyday staples, the dosage inches
closer and closer to poison. We see hypothyroid effects and goiter,
testosterone and fertility problems, and even promotion of breast cancer. (r)
Corn
There’s a big difference
between eating an organic ear of corn vs high fructose corn syrup extracted
from genetically modified corn.
That said, an ear of corn is
quite unnatural itself.
Originally corn was small,
about the size of your little finger. The seeds of this wild grass easily fell
off and dispersed.
Today we’ve engineered it to
give us massive ears of corn. The seeds cling to the cob so tightly it can’t
even exist on its own in the wild.
So although an ear of corn is
quite unnatural today, it’s not even close to the other versions of corn that
make up so much of our diets.
Today most of us eat the version
after we steep it, take the starch, refine the syrup, and further process it to
yield HFCS. This is the version of corn that we eat in massive quantities.
Corn is a good example of what we
tend to do with many plant-based foods. In the wild the plant part is
relatively scarce, small, and low in sugar. It would be difficult to eat in
large quantities.
But we selectively breed,
genetically modify, and change these natural plants into unnatural variations
for bigger versions, sweeter versions, higher yield versions.
We then take it a step further.
· We process and refine them.
The low dose toxin gets transformed to a high dose unnatural breed.
· We take the corn starch made
from the endosperm and using it as a thickening agent.
· We squeeze
the germ of corn and get oil, that we use to fry our food in. It gets further hydrogenated to make margarine.
· We use corn to make cereals,
snack foods, salad dressings, soft drink sweeteners, gum, peanut butter, and flour products.
When we eat these end products,
the fact that we are eating plant-based foods become obscured.
The Confusion
The whole world is already on a plant-based diet. We just don’t realize
it. And this is where so much of the nutrition confusion arises.
Someone on a
whole food plant-based diet that is eating unrefined, minimally processed
plant- based foods, is eating a diet far better than most of the world that is
eating the more refined and
processed versions of these foods.
But just
because it’s unrefined doesn’t make it healthy – it makes it less unhealthy – a
toxic dose that the body may be able to handle in low quantities when eaten
infrequently.
It’s why if
someone switches from a Standard American Diet (SAD) to a vegetarian whole food diet they notice improvements –
they ditched the worst offenders.
More
confusion arises when we see that there are so many other confounding
variables, biases, and deceptions.
Health science
is not immune to profit motives and popular press incentives. It’s not immune
to dogma ingrained in government agencies, health organizations, and taught to
professionals who then pass it down as “conventional wisdom” repeated and
reinforced in echo chambers. It’s not immune to faulty assumptions and poorly
done research.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based
Foods
As we can see in our 24-hour human
history, our diets have drastically changed in the last 5 minutes, even further
in the last second, and even further in the last split-second.
Almost no food today is free from
the impact of the Agricultural, Industrial, and Technological Revolutions.
Eliminating the 3 biggest
offenders will go a long way. Get rid of grains, vegetable oils, and sugar.
Soy is a close 4th.
And an
interesting thing happens when you do this. You start eating a meat-based diet. A healthy diet is one build
around meat.
I hear good health advice every-so-often, one such
statement is “Don’t eat anything that
wasn’t around 100 years ago,” or “Don’t
eat anything your grandparents didn’t eat.”
But they need to zoom out just 5
minutes.
Better advice:
“Only eat what was eaten during the first 23 hours and 55
minutes,”
or
“Don’t eat anything that was eaten for the 1st time
within the last 5 minutes.”
If you want to know how to do
that, you can check out the 30 day guide to going full carnivore –
even if you have no intention – the concepts about how to succeed on that diet
apply across the board.
On the Clock
The alarm should have sounded 5
minutes ago. We hit snooze. Ignored the impact.
It sounded again 1 second
ago.
We hit snooze.
Ignored the impact. It’s ringing right now.
Time to wake up.
DR. KEVIN STOCK
Content
In this paper we are going to look
at various parts of plants that humans eat – everything from their seeds to
roots to stems to leaves to their fruits. And with each “Plant Part” we are
going to highlight a particular “Plant Poison” that the plant uses to deter
predators.
Here’s where we’re going:
Plant Part / Plant Poison
· Seeds (Naked vs Protected) /
Antinutrients – (p. 7)
o
Grains / Lectins – “Wheat Leaks” – (p. 12)
o
Nuts / Phytic Acid – “Walnuts Phyte Back” – (p. 22)
o Beans /
Enzyme Inhibitors, Endocrine Disruptors, Saponins, Tannins – “Soybean
Sabotage” – (p. 25)
· Roots / Glycoalkaloids – “Potato
Paralysis” – (p. 30)
· Stems / Glucosinolates – “Broccoli
Bombs” (Crucifers) – (p. 34)
· Leaves / Oxalates – “Spinach
Leaf Prick” – (p. 39)
· Fruit / Phenolics,
Cyanogenic Glycosides, Salicylates – “Peach Pit Poison”– (p. 45)
· Conclusion:
o
The Toxin-Time Continuum (must read) –
(p. 51)
Health Dangers
of a Plant-Based Diet
To claim there are health dangers
with a plant-based diet flies in the face of conventional wisdom. It’s surely
heresy among nutrition experts. These experts tell us we need to eat fruits and
vegetables for their essential vitamins and minerals.
Their potent antioxidants ward off aging and cancer. And their fiber cleans our tubing, keeping our intestines
and arteries clean.
3 Plant Secrets
Could there
really be health dangers to a plant- based diet?
Contrary to popular belief,
plants don’t have human health as their top priority.
Like all organisms, they are more
concerned about their survival than ours.
In fact, protecting themselves
from predators like humans is high on their priority list. And since plants
can’t fight us off with fangs or flee with their feet they’ve evolved other
mechanisms to deter predators.
When we think of plants, we think
of “good guys.” They are good for decoration, good for the environment, and
good for our health.
Floyd, my money tree, is sitting right next to
my desk as I write this. While keeping me company, he sucks up my carbon
dioxide emissions and pumps oxygen into the air for me to breathe.
Floyd and I are pals but I don’t
let him fool me. He, like 99% of all plants, is completely inedible. If I
tried, I would surely get sick. While nearly 100% of animals are edible, the opposite is true for plants.
It’s strange to
assume then that the plants we do consider edible are completely safe. I think
the reason is that plants fool us.
They are masters of disguise.
Plant Secret #1
Plants are so good at disguise
that we don’t even realize they hide in most of our foods.
When I think of Floyd I know he
started as a seed. And from his seed beginnings he then puts down roots that
buried deep into the soil. These roots anchor him down and he absorbs nutrients
from the soil.
I know that Floyd’s roots connect
to a stem. His stem is not unlike a rose stem, or the stem of a tree covered in
bark. They provide structure to their stature.
I can see leaves that branch from
Floyd’s stem. And I know that many of Floyd’s plant friends bloom flowers and
ripen fruits.
Floyd, however, is a money tree,
so he is supposed to bloom cash, but I’m still waiting on this.
But these flowers and fruits disseminate
seeds which contain the offspring for the next generation.
I get it. No big secrets here.
But it’s a strange paradigm shift to
realize these plant structures give us so many of our foods.
When we eat potatoes and
carrots, we are eating roots of plants that grow underground.
Crunching on celery and
broccoli, we are eating stems of plants. A salad with spinach and kale is plant leaves. When we eat apples and
berries we are eating the fruits of these plants. And when we eat grains, nuts,
or beans we are eating seeds. We are eating plant parts.
Now the seeds are the really tricky ones.
Grains are the seeds of grasses
like wheat, corn, oats, and rice. Nuts are the seeds of trees like walnuts,
hazelnuts and pecans. And beans are the seeds of legumes like peas, lentils,
soybeans, and chickpeas.
But they are all just seeds.
Classifications can get confusing
like trying to figure out where peanuts and cashews and almonds fit in – is it
a nut or a legume – but it doesn’t matter, they are all seeds.
So when you are
eating a bowl of oats topped with nuts, you are eating seeds. All from plants.
For me it was a shocking discovery how well plant parts hide in our
food.
Take sugar for example.
The sugar that has invaded so much
of our food comes from plants.
Sucrose is table sugar. And most
sugar comes from sugar cane, which is a tall grass with a big stem. What
happens is the cane is shredded, mixed with water, then crushed to extract the
juice. The juice is then dried into a granulated form.
And viola. Sugar.
Sugar is simply a processed and
refined plant part.
The sugar beet, which is a root,
can also be refined to give us sucrose. And there are other forms of sugar like
fructose found heavily in fruits and glucose that can be found in fruits and
some roots like carrots.
But almost all
sugar in our diet comes from plants. Lactose, milk sugar, is an exception. However,
until recent history lactose was indigestible beyond childhood and is still not
tolerated by a majority of the world.
It’s a strange thought:
· My grandma’s homemade cookies are a plant-based food
– the sugar, the flour, the vegetable oil – all from plants.
I remember when I started
looking closer and was hit with a startling realization…
We are all on a plant-based diet and we don’t
even know it.
Pretty much anything we eat
comes from a plant or an animal. There are “gray area foods” like mushrooms and
algae that are neither plant nor animal, but for the most part, all our food is
derived from plants or animals.
And what shocked me more is
that most of our “unhealthy” foods are simply derived from our “healthy”
plant-based foods.
A whole grain
is healthy, but when it’s crushed into a flour it’s then unhealthy?
Is it possible that these “healthy”
plant-based foods are actually “unhealthy?”
Plants are not only hiding in all
our food – but they are hiding their poisons.
Plant Secret #2
Floyd’s motivation is his
survival not my health.
For 500 million years, plants,
like all living organisms, have fought for survival. And plants have millions
of years of evolutionary advantage on us humans. Since they can’t fight or flee
predators, they evolved other clever mechanisms to survive.
And like I mentioned, plants
tend to be masters of disguise.
Many plants are like chameleons.
They can change the color of their leaves to blend into their surroundings. And
they can grow in places difficult for these herbivore predators and insect
pests to reach.
Some plants will even mimic the
presence of insect eggs on their leaves, which dissuades insects from laying
real eggs there.
But plants use far more than
clever camouflage to deter predators.
They can illicit the protection of
natural enemies of herbivores by releasing chemicals to attract these
protectors. They can react to touch. And they can release
irritants and poisons.
They also use less subtle
defenses.
Leaves can produce resins, saps,
and waxes that trap insects. Leaves and stems can be covered with sharp
prickles, spines, and thorns.
Plants didn’t evolve to be a food
source for predators.
Plant Secret #3
Plants’ best kept secret is hidden
even better than how they hide in our food or from herbivore predators.
They look innocent enough. But
these masters of disguise have an arsenal of chemical weapons ready to go to
battle with anything that dares eat it.
They hide their phytochemical
warfare agents from view. Not until a predator bites into them do they realize
the mistake.
When Plants Attack
Plants produce
these chemicals to defend themselves. And it’s not just one or two plants that
have this super power. It’s all of them.
In fact, 99.99% of all pesticides in
our diet are natural chemicals plants produce to deter predators.
They produce
toxins to protect themselves from fungi, insects, and animal predators. There
are tens of thousands of these natural pesticides. And every species of every
plant contains its own set of toxins. Different parts of each plant contain
different toxins in different amounts.
Like humans, plants get stressed.
When feeling the pressure and damage from a pest attack, they can increase
their natural pesticide levels. Levels that can be poisonous, even deadly, to
humans.
These chemicals attack predators
in various ways. Some of these plant toxins break into cells and kill
mitochondria, some use enzymes to interfere with metabolism, and some attack
our DNA directly.
It helps to look at survival from the plant’s point of view.
Some parts of the plant are more
vital for the success of the species than others.
Seeds are critical. Because they are so
important plants take extra care to protect them and lace them with potent
toxins to deter predators.
Grains, nuts, and beans are all
seeds. These are the plant’s babies. And messing with a mother’s offspring
often has dire consequences. The parent plant wants to protect them and ensure
their offspring’s survival. The plant isn’t concerned about the health,
nutrition, or survival of humans. Quite the contrary.
So even though I’m hungry and
Floyd is sitting right next to me, I know what he’s hiding. One bite into his
leaves and I’d regret it. Mess with his seeds and Floyd and I wouldn’t be pals
anymore. He’s not edible in the least.
So this begs the question…
“What are
these plant chemicals, which plants have them, and which can I eat?”
And that’s where we’re going.
This is how we’re going to attack back at the plants:
1.
We are going to look at a plant part. For example, the seed.
2.
We are going to evaluate their warfare agents. Like lectins.
3.
We are going to see if there is a way to mitigate its attack. Like cooking.
Health Dangers
of Eating Seeds
“Antinutrients”
Health Dangers of Eating Seeds
There are
health dangers with eating seeds. In the first article of this series, we
discovered how plants have motivations for their survival, not human health.
And to protect themselves, plants use phytochemicals to deter predators from
eating them. These toxins fight back against fungi, insects, and animal
predators – including us humans.
Seed Survival and Success
Some plant
structures are more vital than others to
the success of their species. Seeds are such a structure.
It’s why there are health
dangers when eating seeds. Because seeds are so important plants take extra
measures to ensure they get protected, spread, and have the best chance of
growing and producing their own seeds.
What are
seeds?
and have seeds that we call
different things.
Of all plant parts, seeds tend to
be the most tricky. Grasses, trees, and legumes are plants
Grains are the seeds of grasses
which include wheat, corn, oats, and rice. Walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans are
all nuts, which are the seeds of trees. And legumes like peas, lentils, soybeans, and chickpeas have seeds called beans.
But they are all just seeds. And
it’s not worth getting caught up in trying to determine whether a peanut or a
cashew is a nut or legume. Just know they are seeds.
Your morning bowl of oats topped
with nuts and chia seeds – all seeds.
These seeds are
the plant’s babies. Ensuring the babies survival and success is of paramount
importance to the plant. Contrary to popular belief, the nutrition in seeds is
intended for that growing baby plant, not for human health and nutrition. And
trying to steal that nutrition for ourselves often has dire consequences.
Health Dangers of Eating Seeds: Naked vs
Protected
Naked Seeds
Some seeds are covered in a
protective hull which acts as a shelter. Others are naked. Naked seeds are
exposed babies. They grow on grasses and vines and must use internal deterrents
to prevent predators from eating them. Parent plants drop these seeds right
where they grow, so that
in the winter, when the parent plant
dies off, the offspring can sprout right there in the same area.
Although these naked seeds seem
bare and exposed on the outside, on the inside they are potent fighters armed
with chemical warfare agents.
A “healthy” spinach salad
topped with tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and cucumbers has an arsenal of
weapons.
Some weapons like tannins are
bitter. Others like phytates interfere with nutrient absorption aiming to
malnourish the predator. Similarly, enzyme inhibitors disrupt a predator’s food
processing. From the plant’s perspective, if they are going to get eaten, they
are at least going to cause negative consequences for the predator to
discourage their consumption in the future.
Protected Seeds
Unlike plants with naked seeds
which want to drop their seeds nearby, some plants want their seeds to be
spread further away so that the offspring doesn’t have to compete for space and
sunlight with the parent plant.
To accomplish this, plants enclose
their offspring in a protective hull. This housing allows a predator to eat the
baby offspring without killing it. The seed can survive through the predator’s
GI tract completely intact. The predator can then eliminate the seed in it’s
dung, a natural fertilizer for the baby seed, in a distant location.
Spreading Seed
It’s fascinating to think how
clever these plants are.
We think we are using apple trees,
when in reality they are using us.
An apple tree entices us and other
animals like gorillas visually with big red colorful fruit.
Further, they load it with
sugar, appealing to our taste buds. And not just any sugar, but with fructose.
This special sugar doesn’t
stimulate leptin which is a hormone that signals to us animals that we are full
when we’ve eaten enough. Since fructose doesn’t turn this hormone “on” we keep
on eating more and more apples.
This was beneficial for the
gorilla that needs to store up fat for the winter. Since the fruit was only
available in season they would pad their fat stores with the overconsumption of
seasonal fruit.
Incidentally, gorillas only
gain weight during the season when fruit is ripe. While this is helpful for
apes in the wild, it’s not so
helpful for us domesticated
humans with no famine in sight.
In addition, plants make these
fruits easy to pick and even lace them with sugar alcohols that have a natural
laxative effect. This speeds the seed through the digestive tract, further
improving its survival chances.
Green means “Stop” Red means “Go”
The tree uses us. It attracts us
with color, and it makes addicts of us with sugar. All so that we animals can
spread its seed.
It’s crazy to think how the
apple tree controls our behavior.
While the seeds and its protective
coating are still developing, the apple is green and bitter. Green doesn’t
attract us like red does. It blends in. And we want a sweet sugar loaded apple,
not a bitter, sour one.
Plus, during this unripe period,
the apple has the highest toxic load. The gorilla loves apples
but is deterred from picking it until the apple is ripe.
Gorillas, like humans and all
fruit eating animals, have color vision.
Once the protective covering of
the seed has fully developed, the apple turns red, increases its sugar content
and decreases its toxic load. The red, sweet, and less toxic apple is snatched
up by us animals who will do the trees bidding, and spread it seed.
We’ll cover fruit
more in depth later, but of all plant parts, fruit may be humans’ best option.
It’s the only part of the plant designed to be eaten.
Unfortunately, the
fruit today is quite different from the fruit of yesteryear (as well see in
the “toxin-time continuum”). We’ve bred them for size and sugar, we’ve engineered them for survival of seasons and sprays. We pick them unripe, treat
them with chemicals, then transport them across the world.
What was once a seasonal treat
that helped pack on pounds transformed into a daily “health” food, loaded with
sugar and an enhanced toxic load.
Heath Dangers of Eating Seeds: Antinutrients
The salad I mentioned earlier is
loaded with antinutrients. These are plant compounds that interfere with our
ability to absorb vitamins and minerals, can damage our
intestinal lining, and trigger inflammatory responses in the body.
Antinutrients are often
responsible for food sensitivities, allergies, digestive ailments, and
autoimmune diseases. They can cause symptoms such as headaches, joint pain, and
asthma.
Of all the various plant parts,
the seeds are often the most likely to hurt human health.
Eating Plant Seeds
Under most circumstances, I
don’t recommend it.
But if you must, there are a few
ways to mitigate the plant attack.
· Soak
· Sprout
·
Ferment
While I think eating seed-bearing
fruits may be the best option for humans, because of modern day manipulation
and lifestyle, I’d exercise caution with even these. Most of us don’t need to
store up for a winter famine. But choosing local, in season, ripe, organic
fruits is the best bet.
Simply not eating plant-based
foods is the even safer bet.
Health Dangers
of Lectins
“Wheat Leaks”
Health Dangers of Lectins
One of the hidden dangers of a
plant-based diet are proteins called lectins. The health dangers of lectins can
be numerous and insidious.
Seeds like grains, beans, and
nuts house the plant’s embryo.
Naturally, the plant wants to protect
these offspring and uses lectins as
a means to do so. [r]
NOTE: This chapter is more in-depth and more scientific than most of the
other chapters. It lays a foundation. But don’t get bogged down in the details.
Don’t let the trees interfere with your sight of the forest.
Health Dangers of Lectins: What are Lectins?
Lectins are one of the most
insidious chemical weapons plants have in their arsenal to fight back against
predators. Heavy concentrations of lectins can be found in the plant’s seeds.
Why? Plants are serious about protecting
their offspring. But they can be found in other parts of the plant as well.
As part of a
plant’s immune system, lectins go on the attack when a plant is stressed or
damaged. They are natural insecticides.
So when a grasshopper starts
chewing away at a leaf, the plant can stop it in its track with its lectins.
Lectins are so
effective that crops are genetically
modified to express higher concentrations to better ward of pests.
Unfortunately, this scientific marvel that protects crops doesn’t protect us from lectins attack.
While lectins are ancient
molecules that surely evolved as a defense to insects and various pathogens, it
turns out humans aren’t immune to their damaging effects.
How Lectins Attack
Many lectins are resistant to
human digestion. So if I were foolish enough to eat a piece of whole wheat
bread, the lectins could access my gut completely intact.
A helpful way to think of the gut
is to think of it as a tubing system made of bricks. The bricks (cells called
enterocytes) are attached by mortar (tight-junctions). This brick wall is very
selective of what it lets in. In fact, it’s job is to only let “good guys” pass
through while keeping the “bad guys” out.
Lectin proteins are big, bad guys. Way
too big to squeeze through the mortar of the brick wall (i.e. tight-junctions
between enterocytes). But lectins are “sticky,” and they connect to the wall.
Once connected they tell the wall to open up (release zonulin which then causes
the “mortar” between the “bricks” to open). [r]
While sticking to the wall, these big
lectin proteins start doing damage by blocking vitamins and nutrients from
getting access through the wall to the inside. [r]
But that’s just the
beginning.
“Leaky Gut”
After the message (zonulin) is
sent, the mortar (tight-junctions) between the bricks
(enterocytes) pry apart. This creates a breach in the wall
and the big lectin proteins can get in. [r]
And not only the lectins,
but other dietary and bacterial compounds that aren’t supposed to be allowed
in, can get through the brick wall.
For example, parts of bacteria
called lipopolysaccharides (LPSs), which are “bad guys” (endotoxins), can slide
on through to the inside.
We now have a situation where foreign invaders have gained access to the inside and can invade in
to the lymph nodes, glands, and blood stream.
Just like any break in – the
body’s alarm goes off and an immune response mounts and inflammatory cytokines
stimulate battle.
This breach in the wall of the
gut is often referred to as “leaky gut.”
And the attack is on.
Health Dangers of Lectins: The Lectin Attack
Once the border is breached, the
sirens go off, and the war begins.
Inflammation
After the lectins cause a breach in
the brick wall, the foreign invaders slide in, like LPSs. And like any war, the
body calls in the troops – i.e. white blood cells release inflammatory
cytokines like IFN-gamma, IL-1, and TNF-alpha. [r] These signaling
molecules promote inflammation to identify, destroy and remove the enemy.
But lectins don’t go down
without a fight.
Autoimmune
Our immune system tags lectins as
foreign invaders and creates antibodies against them. [r, r] But these foreign
invaders can latch on to healthy cells.
In fact, lectins are called “sticky proteins”
because they bind to carbohydrates or glycolipids and glycoproteins that stick
off the membranes of our cells. So we have a situation where a “bad guy” lectin
hooks on to a “good guy” normal cell, and “friendly fire” results. The body
attacks healthy cells. [r]
For example, lectins binds sialic
acid which is a molecule that is prevalent in our brain and gut cells, and
triggers autoimmune responses to these vital cells.
Inflammation is often a
double-edge sword. It can save the day destroying enemies, but can leave many
unintentional casualties.
Cellular Disruption
Cellular Communication
Lectins are known for
disrupting communication between cells. When one neuron is trying to relay a message to another neuron, lectins
can block the transmission.
The main reason I stopped eating plant
lectins was because of this blocking mechanism
which can result in symptoms like brain fog and
decreases mental performance.
Endocrine Disruption
Another way lectins disrupt
communication is via interacting and modifying hormone functions. Lectins can
interact with endocrine receptors, disrupting and modifying hormone function.
Hormones are like managers
whose job is to tell employees (cells and tissues) what to do. They keep
everything and everyone working together in a coordinated effort. Lectins can
silence these
managers, they can camouflage and
mimic them, or even change the messages that the manger would otherwise direct
to employees.
This confuses the employees, has
them doing the wrong work, doing too much or too little or not doing any work
at all.
Translation = The coordinated
work and communication between cells and tissues gets thrown out of whack.
Agglutination
Lectins are also known for their
ability to clump cells together. For example, when lectins are swimming in the
bloodstream they can clump blood cells together. [r]
The body then has no choice but to dispose of these which can result in adverse
effects like anemia.
They can also agglutinate immune
cells thereby activating or inactivating them, which can lead to allergies and
autoimmune issues.
Mitogens
A mitogen is a compound that helps induce mitosis, or cell
division. Lectins can encourage this inappropriately and cause cells to
replicate in cancerous ways. [r, r]
Health Dangers of Lectins: Lectin Diversity
There are many different types of
lectins with different carbohydrate targets, different attack strategies, and
variable potencies.
Some plant lectins, like the castor
bean ricin, are serious plant weapons against humans. So much so that humans
turned them into weapons against humans. Ricin has been used in chemical
warfare to cause blood agglutination. [r]
Other lectins damaging effects are more subtle.
Health Dangers of Lectins: Gluten
Perhaps the most notorious lectin
is gluten. It’s a seed storage protein found in wheat, barley and rye. And like
other seeds, gluten is meant to nourish the plant embryo when it sprouts.
People with Celiac’s disease have
an autoimmune attack when they eat gluten.
“Full blown” Celiac’s disease is fairly uncommon, however,
reports of gluten sensitivity are quite common. In fact, gluten intolerance is
now commonly looked at on a spectrum that goes from full blown Celiac’s at one
end to a low-grade gluten sensitivity on the other.[r]
The problem with the gluten lectin
is that they are very difficult for our enzymes to digest. So they get
partially digested creating toxic gliadin peptides as well as gluteomorphins.
The gliadin peptides can stimulate
an immune response and inflammation while gluteomorphins act like opiate drugs,
which can explain some of glutens addictive properties. Gluten has also
transformed over time – more on this in the “toxin-time continuum.”
I don’t recommend eating gluten
too often but there are other lectins that I think are even worse…
Health Dangers of Lectins: Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA)
Not all lectins are created equal.
They have different structures which target different carbohydrates to attack
and latch on to. Some are harmless. Some aren’t.
Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA) is an exceptional
bad guy. [r, r]
It is also a prime example
demonstrating many of the tricks and attacks lectins can have on humans.
WGA Hormone Mimicry [r]
Insulin plays a major role in
directing how our bodies use energy. For example, when insulin
connects with a cell, it tells that
cell to allow energy to enter. But WGA camouflages itself to look like insulin.
[r] And it can steal
insulin’s spots (receptors) on cells. It then horribly disrupts the message
that insulin would normally send.
When WGA connects with a fat cell, it
can block out insulin. It then can tell that cell to store fat, just as insulin
would do. But, unlike insulin which binds to the cell, delivers its message and
then leaves, WGA binds indefinitely. It keeps the floodgates open for fat
storage. [r]
To make
matter worse, WGA also binds to the insulin receptors on muscle cells and brain
cells.
Typically, insulin would bind to
these cells and tell them to allow in energy. This energy is needed for
building muscle and fueling brain cell activity. But WGA, instead of opening
the energy gates for these muscle cells and neurons, acts as a blocker preventing
the cells from allowing energy entry. Since these muscle and brain cells don’t
get the message to let energy in, the cells starve. Muscle cells waste. Brain
cells panic.
Neurons, in
an attempt to survive, send hunger signals and cravings for sugar.
Because I’m
likely no match to these cravings, I’ll fill another bowl of ice cream. My
pancreas then gets to work and releases more insulin into the blood. This
insulin is shuttled to the starving
brain cells. However, because WGA
is blocking insulin receptors and not letting go, insulin cannot send its
message to the brain cells to allow in energy.
So we have a situation where the
neuron is starving, there is food all around, but it’s blind from seeing the
food because it’s being blocked. Eventually these brain cells and peripheral
nerves die. And this is thought to contribute to dementia, Parkinson’s and
peripheral neuropathy. [r]
WGA – Entry and 4 “B’s” Attack
Brain
Although most lectins are rather large, WGA is smaller,
and because of this can sneak through the gut more easily than other lectins. [r]
And because the vagus nerve connects the gut to the brain,
WGA can hop on this highway and go straight to the brain. To make matters
worse, WGA can cross the blood-brain barrier. And because it’s a “sticky”
protein, it can connect with many other substances that have no business in the
brain, and transport them right on in. Naturally, this can result in
neurological problems. [r]
Body
In addition to invading the brain,
WGA can invade the body too. Like other lectins WGA can cross-react with good
proteins forming a good guy-bad guy connection. The body’s immune system sees
WGA as a bad guy, creates antibodies to combat it, and ends up taking out the
good guy and bad guy. Again, we have a “friendly fire” autoimmune response.
Blood
Vessels
WGA can also bind to cells that
line the blood vessels. The body then attacks the WGA and the blood vessels get
hit by the attack leading to a hardening of arteries which may play a role in
the progression of atherosclerosis.
Bad
Guys
Just like WGA can drag along other
substances across the blood-brain-barrier, its “stickiness” also enables it to
bind with influenzas and other pathogens and transport them across the gut into
the body.
When I hear of someone that gets
sick all the time, I immediate think “leaky gut,” “wheat leaks,” and “WGA
tag-along.”
Our Defense Against Lectins
Plants evolved lectins to deter
predation. But humans also evolved protective and adaptive mechanisms to deal
with lectins.
Mucous
Our first line of defense against
lectins is mucus. We have mucus that lines our nose and our mouth to trap
lectins as well as provide a protective coating. This mucus continues down in
our intestines. The intestinal mucosal wall functions to keep lectins in the
gut and out of the body.
Gastric Acid
While many lectins are resistant
to digestion, gastric acid can disarm some lectin proteins.
Microbiome
Our third line of defense is the
vast microbiome residing in the gut. There are many bacteria that will eat up a
lectin before it has a chance to invade.
Good but Not Good Enough
Although these defenses are good
and likely more than adequate pre-Agricultural Revolution (see Time-Toxin
Continuum), they are often insufficient to deal with the onslaught of lectins that now make up a modern diet.
We are exposed to more lectins
than ever.
Eating plant-based foods that
didn’t even exist until modern human history now makes up the majority of our
diet. Further, we’ve genetically modified crops to express even more lectins.
For example, because lectins are
so effective against pathogens like fungi and insects, biotech companies
engineer crops to express WGA. So now our corn and tomatoes come with a big
dose of WGA.
Suffice it to say – our human
defenses are not enough…
Health Dangers
of Lectins: What to do?
What I do is I don’t eat plant-based
lectins. Problem solved.
But if I were forced to eat
plant-based foods, here are some precautions I’d take.
1.
Use a pressure cooker
Some lectins are temperature
sensitive. So tossing beans and potatoes into the Instant Pot can destroy some
lectins. Though not all. Grains are quite resistant.
Beans have more lectins than
anything else though, so they and all legumes go in the pressure cooker.
Boiling, while
less effective than the pressure cooker, is a good alternative. Dry heat, like
baking, tends to be less effective.
2.
Soak
Before you put the beans in the
pressure cooker, soak them. Change the water several times. Let them soak
overnight. Add baking soda with each new soak.
Yes this is a pain, but less than
the pain resulting from eating them improperly prepared. Easiest just not to
eat them.
3.
Ferment
I don’t think anyone should ever
eat soy. But if one had to, they should ferment it first.
4.
Sprout
Sprouting seeds will often help
decrease the lectin load (although there are exceptions like alfalfa which
actually increases lectin load when sprouted). As the seed sprouts the lectin
gets broken down to feed the growing seedling.
5.
Peel and Deseed
The seeds and peels are where
lectins tend to concentrate. Not eating seeds is a good start. And remember
seeds include grains, nuts and beans.
Peeling and deseeding also go a
long way to reduce lectin exposure. This includes fruits like squash and pumpkin
and nightshades like peppers and tomatoes.
6.
Choose Wisely
Choosing wisely,
to me, means not choosing to eat foods inherently high in lectins. But what if
you must eat some grains?
Choose white versions over the
whole grain version. I’d pick white rice over brown, white bread over whole
wheat.
Yes this is contrary to everything
we’ve been told, and eating the more refined versions of these aren’t good
either, but with the hull stripped away, some lectins get stripped out as well.
Health Dangers of Lectins: Conclusion
A lectin-free diet would basically
eliminate all plant-based foods. In this light, it’s not surprising that the Carnivore Diet is
so effective.
There are many very smart doctors
and researchers who believe and convincingly argue that this intestinal
permeability is a root cause of so many of our modern diseases. And lectins
play a large role in creating these breaches in the gut.
A damaged gut is often the first
domino to fall in a cascade of detrimental effects. Lectins can be the
inflammatory, immunotoxic, neurotoxic, and cytotoxic domino.
Some plants and “plant parts”
contain more lectins than others. Seeds (grains, beans, and nuts) as well as
legumes and nightshades are lectin loaded. It’s why people have intolerances
and reactions to wheat, beans, peanuts, potatoes and tomatoes.
As mentioned, some preparation
methods can be used to reduce lectins toxic impact. Consequently, these methods
can also destroy the healthy vitamins – perhaps the reason why someone is
eating them in the first place.
Instead of trying to manipulate
plants to make them edible and somehow satisfy our nutritional needs, it may be
easier to focus on an animal-based diet, congruent with how we are designed to
eat.
Health Dangers
of Phytic Acid
“Walnuts Phyte Back”
Health Dangers of Phytic
Acid
One of the hidden health dangers in
plant-based foods is an antinutrient called phytic acid.
It is a thief.
But the health dangers of
phytic acid are often insidious. The theft happens, and we don’t even know it.
Yet phytic acid steals from us,
only because we stole first.
“Walnuts Phyte Back”
The biggest mistake we make is
that we assume that a plant’s nutrition is our nutrition. However, this
nutrition is intended for a growing baby plant. When we try and steal this
nutrition, it comes with consequences.
Phytic acid has the job to hold on
to essential minerals that the baby plant needs
to grow. But when we steal this nutrition for ourselves, the phytic acid binds
to our minerals like phosphorus, iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium and
prevents absorption.
So even though we think we are
getting a certain amount of nutrition when we eat a walnut, phytic acid “phytes
back.”
Animals like cows and sheep have
bacteria in their guts that break down phytates. Their guts are designed for
plant-based diets. Humans guts aren’t designed to handle phytic acid.
It passes through our digestive
tract, stealing minerals as it travels along all the way to the colon.
The Biggest Mineral Deficiency in the World
Iron deficiency is the most
common nutrient deficiency in the world.
Since iron plays a crucial role in
carrying oxygen to cells, deficiencies are extremely problematic to human
health.
Plants have a
form of iron called “non-heme iron.” And phytic acid interferes with its
absorption. Luckily, animal iron, called “heme iron” is immune from phytic
acid’s theft.
Studies have shown the discrepancy in
plant vs animal iron absorption by comparing vegetarians to meat eaters. Even
though both groups eat similar amounts of iron, vegetarians have a higher
incidence of iron deficiency. [r]
For example, a study of 75 vegan women
found that 40% of them were deficient in iron despite having above average the recommended
daily allowance (RDA). [r]
In nutrition, we often measure
what goes in, but what really matters is what gets absorbed.
Enzyme Inhibitor
Just because the labels says I’m
eating adequate amounts of iron, calcium, zinc, and magnesium, if phytic acid
is preventing their absorption, I may be deficient.
But it’s not just minerals that
phytic acid steals. In addition. phytic acid can inhibit digestive enzymes like
amylase, trypsin, and pepsin. This results in macronutrients not getting
digested properly. This is a problem.
For example, grains like wheat are a “great” source of phytic acid.
To compound the problem, grains
are inherently poor in nutrition (evidenced by the fact most must be fortified
with vitamins and minerals). Most also lack essential amino acids. So if phytic
acid is further preventing the digestion of the proteins it makes a poor source
of protein even worse.
Health Dangers
of Phytic Acid – What to Do
Seeds have the highest
concentrations of phytic acid.
Some of the wort offenders are
whole grains, nuts, and soybeans. Removing the bran rich layer of seeds can
help reduce the phytic acid in grains like wheat and rice. But it is also
concentrated in the cotyledon layer which is not easy to remove. Therefore many
beans like kidney beans and soybeans deliver a large punch of phytic acid.
Phytic acid is also in other parts
of plants like roots, leaves, and fruits. So while not eating seeds is a great
place to start, it doesn’t solve the whole problem.
To make matters worse, phytic acid
is resistant to most cooking methods. But cooking and draining water can help a
bit. Also soaking in an acid like lemon juice or vinegar can help reduce the
phytic acid concentration.
But the best way to reduce phytic
acid is fermentation. This works much for the same reason that cows can eat
phytic acid without any issues – because both have microorganisms that can
digest the phytic acid.
An interesting
observation –
animal-based foods don’t have phytic acid.
Health Dangers
of Eating Soy
“Soybean Sabotage”
Health Dangers of Eating Soy
When I was in high school, I thought
soy was a health food. I ate soy protein powder. I ate “soynut butter.”
I was soy stupid.
No clue about the health
dangers of eating soy.
Soy is one of the only
plant-based foods that is a complete protein. Most are missing essential amino
acids. Logically, I thought it was a good choice.
At the time soy was thought
(still is by many…) to be “heart healthy.”
But it turns out I fell victim to
propaganda and bad “science.” [r]
The soybean epitomizes many issues
with eating plant-based foods. It has enzyme inhibitors, endocrine disruptors,
and saponins.
I call it “Soybean Sabotage.”
Soybean Sabotage
Enzyme Inhibitors
Whenever you eat food special
enzymes break down large molecules of protein, carbohydrates, or fats, into
absorbable forms. If these enzymes get blocked, digestion gets disrupted.
Plant-based food like the soybean
come “prepackaged” with enzyme inhibitors. These enzyme blockers can have
adverse effects that can result in malnutrition as well as gut inflammation
that can lead to leaky gut and all its associated pathologies.
Protease, Amylase, and Lipase
Protease inhibitors are one class
of enzyme inhibitors that interfere with protein digestion. For example, wheat
has protease inhibitors that not only block the breakdown of proteins but can
also trigger an innate immune response as seen in people with Celiac’s Disease.
In addition, people without
Celiac’s can have an immune response. Because wheat also has amylase trypsin
inhibitors that cause intestinal inflammation by activating a specific receptor
(called toll-like receptor 4). Amylase inhibitors interfere with starch
digestion.
Lipase inhibitors interfere with
the lipase enzyme which helps digest fats.
Like the antinutrient phytic acid
which interferes with micronutrient absorption, enzyme inhibitors
disrupt macronutrient digestion.
Trypsin Inhibitor
A soybean is a seed. Just like
grains and nuts are seeds, so too are beans.
Like the seeds of other plants,
soybean plants don’t want predators to eat their baby offspring.
Soybeans are rich in antinutrients
like phytic acid and tannins as well as trypsin inhibitors which deter
predation. [r]
The trypsin inhibitors fall under
the broader category of “Protease Inhibitors” which disrupt protein digestion.
But interference of protein
digestion from trypsin inhibitors is just one of many issues with eating
soybeans.
Phytoestrogen
Along with the antinutrient
effects from its enzyme inhibitors, soybeans also contain isoflavones which are
a major source of phytoestrogens.
These isoflavones aid in plant
defense and are great fungicides. When a soybean plant is under attack by a
fungus, it can even upregulate production to strengthen its defense and kill
the fungus. While perhaps designed to ward of fungus, they should also ward off
humans.
Estrogenic
Molecularly, these isoflavones
look very much like estradiol. Thus, it confuses our body and has estrogenic
effects.
These phytoestrogens have the
potential to inhibit testosterone production and increase estrogen.
[r] There’s evidence that
this can also interfere with fertility by reducing sperm quality.
In addition, phytoestrogens in soy
formulas put infants at risk for growth problems and altered sexual development
(especially if the infant is premature).
If we just look
at the urine levels of babies fed soy formulas, we see that they have up to 500X more isoflavones. Because it’s in the
urine we know it is being metabolized, traveling through the body, and
potentially causing serious consequences.
If you want to
have children you should think twice before eating soy. And if you have
children (especially infants), you should really think twice or three times
about feeding them soy.
Thyroid Disruption
Soy can also cause problems with
the thyroid.
In an interesting case study [r], a woman took a
supplement with soybean extract and she developed a severe hypothyroid problem
and a large goiter. But once she stopped taking it, her thyroid returned to
normal functioning and the goiter disappeared.[r]
Soy can mimic and mess with
hormonal function.
Saponins
A major source of saponins in the
human diet come from soybeans. Saponins help protect plants from microbes and
fungi. But humans voluntarily eat them.
And because they are resistant to
digestion, they can enter the gut, cause inflammation, leaky gut, and
autoimmune issues. [r]
Saponins are natural pest control
that are bitter making them less desirable to eat to deter birds and insects.
Perhaps humans should take the hint.
GMO
From about the year 2000 to 2010
soybeans changed. In the beginning of that decade less than 10% of soybeans
were genetically modified. By the end of it, over 90% were.
Soybeans are engineered to be
resistant to glyphosate. This enables farmers to spray the crops with RoundUp.
The chemical kill the weeds but not the genetically modified crops. As I’ve
talked about before, this can have serious impacts on human health. Because
while the crops may be engineered to survive glyphosate, we aren’t.
Health Dangers
of Eating Soy: “Soybean Sabotage” Conclusion
What to do?
The high antinutrient
concentrations in soy are a health concern to humans and livestock.
In order to limit their damage, food
processors do the best they can to reduce the damaging chemicals. Soybeans are
soaked which can reduce tannin levels by about half, but it doesn’t do much to
decrease phytic acid or trypsin inhibitors. [r]
Then they are often boiled and/or
roasted to try and reduce antinutrients further. Fermenting with fungi and
bacteria can help too.
But all this processing also comes at
a cost. It can damage essential amino acids making it difficult or impossible
to digest and assimilate. [r]
So food manufacturers are tasked
with the impossible: cook soybean enough to reduce the antinutrients but not
too much. An impossible balancing act.
Just like other seeds, instead of
trying to process away offending chemicals, I just don’t eat soybeans. They
have enzyme inhibitors, endocrine disruptors, and saponins that can cause
problems to human health.
Like lectins they can cause gut issues, hormone
mimicry, and autoimmune issues.
An interesting perspective is that
there is a really high incidence of soy allergy. Many peoples’ bodies go on an
all-out attack when consumed.
Not only that, but raw soybeans
are toxic to all monogastric animals – and we humans are monogastric.
Evidence suggest that we are not designed to eat soybeans – and
enzyme inhibitors, endocrine disruption, and saponins are just a few reasons
why.
Health Dangers
of Glycoalkaloids
“Potato Paralysis”
Health Dangers of
Glycoalkaloids
One of the health dangers associated
with a plant-based diet are neurotoxins called glycoalkaloids. They are enzyme
inhibitors. And health dangers of glycoalkaloids are numerous.
The potato is a good example of
glycoalkaloids and their hazards. One of the enzyme inhibitors is called an
acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. This blocks the breakdown of acetylcholine – a
neurotransmitter.
When acetylcholine doesn’t get broken
down it builds up. [r] The
buildup of this neurotransmitter causes muscular paralysis and even death for
many predators and pests that dare try and eat the potato.
For humans, the health dangers
of glycoalkaloids are often insidious though.
“Potato Paralysis”
A plant root, like the potato, is
a carbohydrate storage organ. It’s starch that the plant uses for energy.
Humans like to steal energy from
plants and use it for our nutrition. As seen with plant seeds (which have
stored energy intended for the baby offspring of the plant) when we steal a
plant’s energy is can come with consequences.
Potato Paralysis
The glycoalkaloids in a potato
function as a natural pesticide. Their bitter taste is the first signal to the
predator not to eat them.
But if this is ignored, they deter
pests and predators with this neurotoxin. It’s nature’s natural nerve gas. It
works the same way that our man-made warfare nerve agents work.
The natural cholinesterase inhibitors
in a potato prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine. [r]
And since acetylcholine carries messages between nerve cells and muscle cells,
these signals keep getting sent.
It’s kind of like…
For a terrible analogy – this is like
someone calling you on the phone.
They tell you this important
message and give you directions on what to do. You follow the directions
step-by-step just as they are telling you. Everything is working great. All
done.
Time to stop and hang up the
phone.
But right when you do, the
phone rings again.
You have to
pick up. It’s your job. And they start repeating the same message again. In
this situation, you are powerless and must do your job which is answering the
phone and carrying out the directions.
And thanks to this neurotoxin you
can’t stop picking up and can’t hang up on them. You answer, listen, activate –
again. And again. And again.
Health Dangers of
Glycoalkaloids – Potato Problems
Ultimately, this over-stimulates
the nervous system. It can cause paralysis, convulsions, and even respiratory
arrest and death.
Understandably, significant glycoalkaloid consumption is
linked with mental health problems like anxiety, insomnia, and restlessness.
The neuropsychiatric side effects are numerous and insidious.[r]
It’s often hard to point-the-finger
and pinpoint glycoalkaloids as the “root” of the problem. Because with a
healthy GI tract most won’t make it into your bloodstream. Most. But those that
do can take days to clear out. So when eaten regularly they can build up. And
the impact can be cumulative. [r, r]
With a compromised GI tract the impact can be exacerbated.
And worse, they can even play a role in creating this “leaky gut.” [r]
Solanine
Potato plants make a specific
glycoalkaloid called solanine (they also make another one called chaconine).
The health implications of solanine are not a secret.
The US even has a maximum legal limit to the amount of
solanine a potato can have (200 mg/kg potatoes). [r]
The problem is that even low doses can be toxic. And eating just 3 mg/kg body
weight can be fatal. [r] I
say “just” because it’s very doable. [r]
Solanine is not just in potatoes
either. It’s also found in significant quantities in other nightshades like
eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.
And it’s not just solanine. The
potato’s other glycoalkaloid, chaconine, is considered even more toxic than
solanine. [r]
Glycoalkaloid poisoning from
potatoes is more likely when improperly stored, green, or sprouting. A low dose
poisoning might just cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Higher doses can
lead to fever, low blood pressure and neurological problems. And as mentioned,
high doses can even be fatal.
Metabolism and Membranes
If you need more reasons to be
weary of glycoalkaloids consider their ability to disrupt other enzymes and
alter carbohydrate and fat metabolism.
They can bind nucleic acids and
interfere with protein synthesis and DNA repair. They bind strongly to
cholesterol on cell membranes and can rupture cells open. [r]
Health Dangers
of Glycoalkaloids – What to do?
Potatoes are one of the most
common foods eaten in the world (behind wheat, rice, and corn). So this isn’t
some minute issue.
Unfortunately boiling or frying
doesn’t disarm glycoalkaloids. They survive most cooking methods. Frying can
even make it worse. [r, r]
If you must eat a potato there
are a few helpful precautions.
First, the highest concentration of
glycoalkaloids are in the peel, so be sure to peel that off. [r]
Do not eat unripe or sprouting
potatoes. If it’s green don’t eat it. Avoid regular consumption. Don’t store
them in light or a warm place.
Probably just easiest not to eat
them at all.
I remember the classic
bodybuilding diet back in the day – steak and potatoes – but maybe it’s better
to leave out that second ingredient. Yes, you can build muscle on just steak without the potatoes and
without the carbs.
Beware the perils of potatoes. The
miracles come from meat.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables
“Broccoli Bombs”
Health Dangers of
Cruciferous Vegetables
In our look at the health dangers of a
plant- based diet we turn to the cruciferous vegetables.
You might be
surprised to learn that broccoli and brussel sprouts have a dark side.
I mean these
are the vegetables that kill cancer, right?
How can there possibly be
health dangers of cruciferous vegetables?
Well just like other plants, these
vegetables place a high priority on survival. And this means protecting
themselves with phytochemicals.
The cruciferous vegetables use a special chemical called
glucosinolate to deter pests. [r, r]
Here we’ll look at glucosinolates and their role and potential impact on human
health.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables – What
are they?
Last week as I was walking the
perimeter of the grocery store (headed to the butcher) I realized how many
vegetables are from the cruciferous family. It’s not just broccoli and brussel
sprouts. But it also includes cabbage and cauliflower, kale and collards,
radishes and arugula, mustard greens and mustard seeds, and the list goes on.
They are known for their pungent
smell. It’s the sulfur. And it’s a part of their defense.
“Broccoli Bomb”
The crucifers like broccoli have
this chemical called glucosinolate.
I like to think
of this chemical as the main ingredient of the “bomb.” They also have another
chemical called myrosinase.
I think of this as the “matchstick” that lights the bomb.
While growing out in a field the
bomb and the matchstick sit in separate compartments so that the broccoli
doesn’t blow itself up.
But when a little hungry animal comes
looking for a snack and bites into the broccoli the bomb gets lit by the match.
The explosion that results are bioactive chemicals call isothiocyanates. [r, r]
One of the most well-studied
isothiocyanate is call sulforaphane.
Sulforaphane
Sulforaphane is
a pungent molecule (perhaps you’ve cooked broccoli and smelled it…) that can
deter and kill insects, bacteria, and fungi. It causes cellular apoptosis (cell
death). This happens in the cells of these small predators as well as human
cells.
If you eat broccoli about 75% of
the sulforaphane will be absorbed into the bloodstream and taken up by cells.
Once inside sulforaphane can
damage important intracellular structures like mitochondria and enzymes.
The damage increases reactive oxygen
species (ROS). And in an attempt to limit the damage, glutathione, our powerful
endogenous antioxidant, binds with sulforaphane to get
rid of it as quickly as possible (~2-3 hours after eating it). [r] This depletes our
glutathione (our most potent human antioxidant) leaving cells vulnerable to
further oxidative damage.
Sulforaphane can even disrupt epithelial barriers
providing yet another plant chemical that can contribute to “leaky gut.” “ [r, r]
Sulforaphane and Cancer
It’s not surprising that this cell
killer has been recognized as an anticancer chemical. It kills cells. Cancer
cells and healthy cells. [r, r, r]
Isothiocyanates like sulforaphane trigger the activation
of Phase II enzymes. [r]
This is like turning up the dial on the human immune system.
For some reason, research paints this
in a positive light. Sulforaphane is a hero. Isothiocyanates increase our
natural antioxidants. They say it’s a hormetic response. [r] If it doesn’t kill you,
it makes you stronger.
I see it through another lens though.
When the body
encounters something that is damaging, it wants to get rid of it. To do this it
will upregulate an army to fight it. Some of these troops are antioxidants like
our friend glutathione.
While this is
good in the context of fighting a cancerous cell or ridding the body of sulforaphane, I don’t think sending the
troops to battle on a constant basis should be seen as a good thing.
The fact that the body puts
such a vast importance on getting rid of sulforaphane as quickly as possible
suggest to me that it’s more of a danger than a cancer-killing sidekick.
For me, a helpful analogy is to
relate to chemotherapy treatment. It is very effective at killing cells. And
while the intent is to kill cancerous cells, there is often a significant
amount of “collateral damage” and the death of healthy cells as well.
Most people don’t take low dose
chemotherapy as a cancer prevention strategy. There’s a reason for this.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables – Thyroid
Health
The isothiocyanates created by chewing
up broccoli can have potent
antithyroid effects and interfere with thyroid hormone production.
They compete with iodine and thereby
block its uptake by the thyroid. With inadequate iodine there is decreased
production of thyroxine and potential for hypothyroidism. [r]
The abnormal absorption of iodine also provokes
hypertrophy of the thyroid and goiter. [r]
And it’s not just humans, but
animals too.
Oil meals, like rapeseed meal
for example, are important protein supplements for livestock. And they are high
in glucosinolates.
Animals can tolerate up to 5-10%
rapeseed meal in their diets before suffering from goiters, depressed growth,
gastrointestinal irritation, anemia, perosis, poor egg production, and liver
and kidney lesions. [r, r]
The high sulfur diet can result in
trace mineral deficiencies and polio encephalomalacia, a neurologic disease in
ruminants.
Health Dangers of Cruciferous Vegetables – What to do
If you decide to eat cruciferous
vegetables, it’s a good idea to take some protective measures.
·
Adding
extra iodine to counteract the thiocyanates is helpful. However, additional
iodine consumption cannot counteract other glucosinolate byproducts like
oxazolidine-2-thiones which also blocks iodine preventing thyroxine production. [r]
·
Avoid sprouts and seeds as they can have orders of magnitude more
glucosinolate than matured plants.
Eat them with caution.
·
Freezing as well as boiling them can help reduce the glucosinolate
concentration (~50%).
Heat actually destroys the myrosinase (the matchstick that
lights the bomb); however, the bacteria in our gut can act as the lighter, so
sulforaphane will still be produced. [r]
As with other plant chemicals, the
poison is in the dose, and an individual’s ability (or lack thereof) to disarm
the plant poisons. But as we’ll see in the “Toxin-Time Continuum” – most of our
plant-based foods and their accompanying toxins are pushing into the poison
side of the spectrum.
Health Dangers
of Oxalates
“Spinach Prick”
Health Dangers of Oxalates
Oxalates are especially troublesome.
They are insidious, and they appeal to the “health conscious” who have large
spinach and kale salads topped with almonds and sesame seeds.
They think they are eating
healthy.
But they are
flooding their body with oxalates.
Here we’re going to look at the health dangers of oxalates.
Health Dangers of Oxalates: Seed Strategy
Plants use great strategy with
their seeds.
Plants lace their seeds with natural
pesticides to deter pests and predators. The sharp oxalate crystals can prick a
predator’s mouth thereby playing a role in plant defense. [r, r]
Plants also load their seeds with
nutrition for the baby plant. And they use oxalate to store calcium for the
baby offspring.
When seeds start to germinate,
they split off the oxalic acid which frees the calcium for the baby plant.
“Spinach Prick”
Oxalate Accumulation
While oxalate is useful as a
calcium storage mechanism for plants, it’s toxic to humans in acute and chronic
amounts. If you eat too much oxalate you die.
Simple as that.
But often oxalate toxicity is more
insidious. [r]
Similarly to how phytic acid is a
mineral thief, oxalic acid is a magnet for minerals, especially calcium. Oxalic
acid grabs calcium and forms calcium oxalate – the main ingredient in kidney
stones. [r, r]
These oxalate
crystals build up into bigger and bigger crystals. They bioaccumulate.
As they accumulate the body deposits
these sharp crystals throughout the body – in joints, muscles, and especially
the kidneys. [r, r, r, r, r, r]
With oxalate crystals growing and
stored throughout the body muscles start aching, eyes, ears, mouth, and throat
can burn, and stones form in the kidneys.
“Spinach Prick”
Many people think spinach is a
good source of calcium. But it’s a fraud. The calcium in spinach is completely
useless. It’s all tied up in oxalate. And this is true for all high-oxalate
foods.
In the lab we can measure the calcium
content in spinach, but that doesn’t mean it’s available as a nutrient for the
body.
There is a big difference in
the nutrition measured in food and the nutrition that the body can actually
absorb and use.
This is where standard
nutrition guidelines fail miserably.
If we eat 100% of our RDI (recommended
daily intake) of calcium from spinach, but 100% of it is tied up in oxalate, we
really got 0% of the RDI.
Making matters worse, certain
foods can increase the amount
of a nutrients we need.
For example, If I were to eat a
large bowl of spinach every day for lunch, I would increase my need for certain
vitamins and minerals. Processing the high
oxalate concentration in the spinach depletes vitamin B6 and likely requires an
increased amount of biotin and thiamine in my diet.
Spinach Sabotage
Oxalate isn’t just an antinutrient
that depletes calcium and iron, stealing essential vitamins and
minerals. It’s also toxic.
Oxalate crystals cause renal
damage; they are neurotoxic; they activate the immune system, upset the GI
tract, deplete glutathione, and corrode connective tissue (via interference
with hyaluronic acid).
Oxalates can impact nearly every
bodily system. [r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r]
· They can cause neurological
symptoms which disturb sleep and adversely affect
coordination, memory, learning, and concentration.
· They cause pain via mast
cell degranulation and histamine release.
· Mysterious vulva pain,
fibromyalgia, and carpal tunnel syndrome can all have oxalates causing or worsening the symptoms.
· Increased calcium excretion
and increased oxalic acid excretion ride hand-in-hand and are linked with osteoporosis.
· Common practice for autism
treatment is the elimination of oxalate-containing foods (as well as gluten, casein and soy).
Oxalate Absorption
Absorption of oxalate differs
among people. For some, oxalate is largely broken down in the gut and
eliminated without causing too many issues. In others, a large percentage of
consumed oxalate is absorbed.
Someone with a compromised, “leaky
gut,” can see increased absorption of oxalate.
Not only does this increased
intestinal permeability allow more oxalate to get in, oxalate can be implicit
in exacerbating the leaky gut. The needle shape of oxalate crystals can
perforate mucus membrane cells damaging the gut and increasing “leakiness”. [r, r, r, r, r, r]
Health Dangers of Oxalates: High-Oxalate Foods
It’s not only
spinach pricks that can hurt you.
Many of the
cruciferous vegetables like kale, cauliflower, and broccoli have high
concentrations of oxalate.
Other culprits include chocolate, most
nuts (especially cashews and almonds that are popular among the health
conscious) and seeds like sesame and poppy seeds. [r, r, r]
One of the worst offenders is soy.
Remember when I was soy stupid – clueless that my soy protein shakes were
loaded with oxalates.
Berries and beans. Potatoes and
sweet potatoes. Okra. Swiss chard. Anything in the buckwheat family like
sorrel. All high in oxalates.
Sorrel is actually worse than spinach and kale. And for
some reason it is popular in fancy restaurants. There is this case report of a
man who ordered sorrel soup for dinner. Two hours later he died in the hospital
from acute oxalic acid poisoning. [r]
The man had poor metabolic
health. He was obese and diabetic. And this poor metabolic health further
impairs the handling of oxalate toxins. Yet, today we encourage obese diabetic
patients to eat diets that are high in oxalates.
Health Dangers of Oxalates: Insidious Impact
Like other
plant toxins, we don’t know (with any degree of accuracy) the frequency and degree of harm from oxalates thanks to a
general lack of awareness.
It often takes a bioaccumulation to
the point of acute kidney injury until a healthcare practitioner even considers
oxalate as a potential culprit. [r, r]
Sometimes patients with oxalate
problems are asymptomatic until they find themselves trying to pass a kidney
stone.
Sometimes mysterious lingering
pain gets diagnosed as fibromyalgia or carpal tunnel syndrome without any
knowledge as to why the pain is occurring.
Clearing the Crystals
Sometimes oxalate toxicity symptoms present when
eating high-oxalate foods. But often they don’t. And sometimes symptoms don’t present until one stops eating oxalates.
For example, a flare up of pain
can be from the release of stored oxalate that’s been consumed over a period of
time.
The reason is that you have all
these oxalate crystals accumulated in tissues, and now that you aren’t eating
them, the body can process out the stores.
The tissues start dissolving big crystals down into smaller crystals
(and into their ion form) which are what cause much of the cellular damage and
pain.
But once back out into the bloodstream
they can be excreted through the urinary tract. [r]
This process of breaking down and
unloading the stored crystals for excretion can cause the same or worse
symptoms than when they were originally eaten.
You’ve got to “re-eat” all that
spinach.
Health Dangers of Oxalates: What (not) to do
Oxalate damage is from toxicity.
It’s not a food sensitivity or allergen. So reversal of oxalate toxicity is a
2-step process:
· Stop eating it
·
Excrete that which is stored up
Unfortunately, there isn’t a good
way to determine how much oxalate damage you might have or how well you process
them in general.
Urine test are unreliable and a biopsy of tissue from the
kidney is quite invasive. [r]
It’s also hard to correlate
oxalate consumption with symptoms as mentioned (you may be asymptomatic with
insidious accumulative damage that doesn’t present until a serious event like
kidney failure, or symptoms may only arise after you stop eating them. etc.).
The best thing you can do is
limit the amount of oxalate you eat.
The major sources of oxalates are
from plant-based foods. But oxalate is also a byproduct of metabolism.
For example, excess Vitamin C can
get converted to oxalate. Just another reason megadoses of Vitamin C might not be a good idea.
Cooking and Cleanses
There’s also a false notion that
you can just cook the oxalate out of your vegetables. But this doesn’t work.
Oxalate and oxalic acid crystals
are so durable that they are used by paleontologists to determine what people
ate thousands of years ago. They aren’t destroyed by heat or cooking.
The one thing that can help is
boiling them in water. The soluble parts of oxalic acid that aren’t crystalized
yet can leach out into the cooking water.
So if you boil your broccoli to mush you can reduce the
oxalate concentration by maybe a third. [r]
There are a lot of misconceptions
around “healthy” food, perhaps epitomized by the “green smoothie cleanse.”
People want to do the right thing but are often “stabbing” themselves in the
foot (or more accurately the kidney).
But a green smoothie “cleanse” is
more likely to lead you to needing an oxalate cleanse.
Health Dangers
of Eating Fruit
“Peach Pit Poison”
Health Dangers of Eating
Fruit
Continuing our exploration of
the health dangers of a plant-based diet, fruit plays an especially interesting
role.
Most people
think fruit is healthy because they are high in antioxidants,
they are a good source of fiber, and they contain essential vitamins and minerals.
And unlike
other plant parts (roots, seeds, stems, and leaves) which the plant desperately wants to
protect for
survival, the plant actually wants predators to eat its fruit and spread their
seeds. So here we’ll explore if there are any health dangers of eating fruit.
Health Dangers of Eating Fruit: Spreading Seed
Some plants don’t want predators
to spread their seeds (naked seeds). Others depend on animals
to do so.
Naked Seeds
As
we’ve discussed, naked seeds are exposed baby plants. They grow on grasses and
vines and the parent plant drops these seeds right where they are growing.
Then in the
winter, when the parent plant dies, the offspring can sprout right there in the
same area.
Because they don’t want pests
and predators to eat these seeds, plants lace the seeds with phytochemicals to
deter predators.
So while these naked seeds seem
bare and exposed on the outside, on the inside they are potent fighters armed
with chemical warfare agents.
Protected Seeds
Unlike plants
with naked seeds, other plants protect their seeds. They need animals to spread
these seeds so that the offspring don’t have to compete for space and sunlight
with the parent plant.
To accomplish this, plants
enclose their offspring in a protective hull and house them in fruit.
The fruit entices the predator and
the hull protects the seed as it passes through the predator’s GI tract. The
animal then eliminates the seed in its dung, a natural fertilizer for the baby
seed, in a distant location.
Spreading Protected Seeds
I’ll re-iterate it here: It’s
fascinating to think how clever these plants are.
We think we are using apple
trees for their nutrition, when really they are using us.
An apple tree entices us
visually with big red colorful fruit. They load it with sugar, appealing to our
taste buds.
They make these fruits easy
to pick.
They even add sugar alcohols
that have a natural laxative effect.
This speeds the seed through the digestive tract, further
improving its survival chances. [r, r]
A Review: Green means “Stop” Red means “Go”
The tree uses us. It attracts
us with color, and it makes sugar addicts of us. All so that we animals can
spread its seeds.
The apple tree controls animal
behavior every step of the way.
While the seeds and its protective
coating are still developing, the apple is green and bitter. Green doesn’t
attract us like red does. It blends in. And we want a sweet apple loaded with
sugar, not a bitter, sour one.
So, during this unripe period, the
apple has its highest toxic load. So although a gorilla would love to eat the
apple, it’s deterred from picking it until the apple is ripe.
Incidentally, gorillas, like humans and all fruit eating
animals, have color vision. [r]
While the apple ripens, and the
protective hull of the seeds develop, the apple gradually turns red, increases
its sugar content and decreases its toxic load.
The red, sweet, and less toxic
apple is snatched up by us animals who will do the trees bidding, and spread it
seed.
Fruit Phytochemicals
Based on the logic that plants
intend for their fruits to be eaten one might think that these are a good
choice for food.
However, fruits have a dark
side.
Besides the dangers associated
with the high lectin load in unripe fruit and the heave dose of insatiable
sugar that few people need today, there are other potentially toxic
phytochemicals.
Phenolics
Tannins
Many fruits have tannins which
help protect a plant from harsh weather.
They also make proteins
indigestible.
If you were to eat a leather
shoe, the reason you couldn’t get protein from it is because the proteins are
bound up with tannins.
So tannins bind up protein as
well as digestive enzymes and can interfere with digestion (i.e.
they are enzyme inhibitors). They
also interfere with our ability to absorb plant iron and have an antinutrient
impact. So they can cause nutrient deficiency and GI problems like bloating
diarrhea, and constipation.
Tannins also play a role in
deterring pests. They are potent against insects. But they are also troublesome
for animals.
For example, if cattle get trapped
in an area and must resort to eating acorns, they can get poisoned from the
tannins.
In humans, large tannin consumption can cause kidney and
liver damage. [r, r, r, r]
Flavonoids
Isoflavone (a polyphenol, plant
antioxidant) is found in many fruits and is also found heavily in soybeans.
This phytoestrogen can disrupt endocrine/hormone function
and have estrogen-like effects. [r, r]
Photosensitizers
Other phenolics act as
photosensitizers.
This is a plant defense
mechanism that makes animals sensitive to light.
The story goes like this:
An animal eats the plant, then light hits the animal, and the animal is
severely injured.
In humans we refer to this as
photodermatitis.
For example,
celery is a known occupational risk. Celery handlers that go out in the sun can
get celery dermatitis.
Lime juice is also a well-known cause of photodermatitis.
An experiment I don’t recommend trying, is squeezing limes then going out in
the sun. The swelling can be horrifying. [r]
Another example is grapefruit.
Grapefruit interacts with almost
every prescription drug. It has these toxic furanocoumarins (photosensitizers)
that the liver has to break down using p450 enzymes.
The problem arises because the same p450 enzymes in the
liver are trying to break down these grapefruit toxins. The liver gets
overburdened trying to metabolize the drugs and the grapefruit. This can result
in high levels of the drug in the bloodstream which can have severe adverse
effects. [r, r, r, r]
It’s an interesting thought that
grapefruit and prescription drugs require so much detoxifying…perhaps not the
best things to be putting in the body in the first place.
Cyanogenic Glycosides
Entomologists (scientists that
study insects) use cyanogenic glycosides to kill insects. These toxins are in
many fruits (over 2,500 plant species) like cherries and in the pits of
peaches.
They work in a
similar way to how the glucosinolates (“Broccoli
Bombs”) activate. Cyanogenic glycosides are activated upon tissue damage.
So when you bite into the fruit the glycosides mix with an activating enzyme
creating hydrogen cyanide. Yes, that cyanide.
We can detox small amounts of cyanide but at slightly
higher doses it can interfere with iodine and disrupt normal thyroid function
leading to goiter and hypothyroidism. At slightly higher concentrations it can
block cellular respiration, suffocate mitochondria and be fatal. [r, r, r, r]
This isn’t a negligible issue
either.
Cassava is one of the main sources of calories in the
tropics. It also has significant concentrations of cyanogenic glycosides. Over
a half a billion people eat cassava on a regular basis resulting in serious
thyroid and neurological impacts. [r,r,r]
Salicylates
Salicylates are phytochemicals
plants use to fight back against predators. There are many drugs developed from
the salicylate family like aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid).
But many people are very
intolerant to salicylates. They experience immediate allergy- like symptoms
(asthma like symptoms from constriction of bronchial passages and mucus
production, hives, swelling and GI upset).
Salicylates are also associated with physical and mental
symptoms like acne, restless leg syndrome, headaches, anxiety, disturbed
vision, bad breath, and odor. [r, r, r, r, r]
While most people seem to be able
to handle average amounts of salicylate in food and medications there is a
danger that salicylates can bioaccumulate in the body over time (similar to the
“Spinach Pricks” of oxalates).
Most fruits are high in
salicylates. And like oxalates that bioaccumulate, they can be hard to pinpoint
that they are the troublemakers.
Health Dangers of Eating Fruits
Even with all these phytochemicals
fruit still very-well-may-be the best option to eat of all plant parts (and
that is saying something about the other parts!).
It’s the only part plants
designed for predators to eat.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based Foods
The Toxin-Time Continuum
Health Dangers of
Plant-Based Foods
The Toxin-Time Continuum
In this final chapter I want to
zoom out and look at the big picture.
The health dangers of
plant-based foods should be viewed on a continuum. This scale goes from natural
toxins to man-enhanced toxins to man- made poisons. And I want to look at how
these have emerged and changed over time.
By the end of this chapter, I want
to uncover what is actually “healthy” and what is “poison” and everything in
between. And I want you to be armed with the insight to see through propaganda,
advertising, and false beliefs that make up so much of “conventional wisdom” –
the “wisdom” that has led to widespread health epidemics.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based Foods – Natural
Plant Toxins
Up to this point, we’ve looked in
detail at some of the specific natural plant toxins. These toxins cause severe
issues for many people that eat a plant-based diet.
Specifically, we’ve looked at
various plants and plant parts and evaluated some of their most potent
chemical defenses against herbivory.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based Foods – Recap
We’ve looked at seeds
(naked vs protected) and saw how grains, nuts, and beans can destroy our health
by causing “leaky gut,” enzyme and endocrine dysfunction, and nutrient
absorption interference.
We’ve looked at roots,
like the potato, and how alkaloids can impair health.
We’ve evaluated
plant stems, like broccoli, and saw how glucosinolates can set off
problems. We’ve picked the leaves, like spinach, and saw how it can be a
real prick.
We’ve eaten the fruit, like
peaches, and saw a wide range of dangers from phenolics to glycosides to
salicylates to tannins.
The plant toxins we have
reviewed are just the tip of the iceberg.
There are literally thousands of phytochemicals produced
by plants to avoid being eaten. (r)
We have covered some of the major
players in quite some detail – the ones that have been studied and recognized
as harmful. And while I think these details are vitally important (and eye-
opening to most people) I don’t want to miss the forest by too closely
inspecting the trees.
Let’s zoom
out for a more complete picture. Let’s look at the “Toxin-Time Continuum.”
Our 24 Hour History
The First 23 Hours and 55 Minutes – Natural
Plant Toxins
Health Dangers
of Plant-Based Foods – “The Toxin-Time
Continuum”
The evolution of the human diet
takes place over millions of years.
To gain perspective,
let’s assume this evolutionary
history was condensed into one 24-hour day.
The beginning of the day is
marked with an astonishing divergence from our hominid ancestors – our brains
exploded in size.
In “What did humans evolve to eat” we discovered that the selective pressures of climate change and food
sources, as well as
selective advantages associated with a large brain
underpinned this stunning divergence from our primate ancestors. The human
genus transitioned from tree-dwelling herbivore to bipedal meat eater. (r, r, r)
And by the time 23 hours passed on the clock (~50,000
years ago) isotope studies of fossils reveal a human diet nearly
indistinguishable from carnivores. (r, r)
Though undoubtedly, during these 23 hours, humans were
opportunistic plant eaters, and included some fruit and occasional plant
material in the diet when available. But evidence is strong that for the first
23 hours and 55 minutes of the clock, humans became less and less equipped to
eat plant-based foods and more and more equipped to scavenge, hunt, and subsist
(and depend) on a meat-based diet. (r, r, r, r)
But as we’ll see the plant-based
foods eaten during this time and their natural toxins were vastly different
than the plants-based foods of today.
The Last 5 Minutes – Natural Plant Toxins in
Unnatural Quantities
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
Early in our 24-hour clock we
transitioned from the plant-based diet of our herbivore hominid ancestors to a
meat-based diet, more closely resembling the metabolisms and anatomy of
carnivores. And for 23 hours and 55 minutes our diet was consistent. It was a
meat-based diet.
Surely during certain seasons, in
certain locations, humans supplemented their meat-based diet with some fruits
and plant-based material. And in other locations and times in history,
especially during glacial periods, humans subsisted exclusively on meat. But
meat was a constant. And during these 23 hours and 55 minutes, no human
civilization ever survived without animal food.
Then in just the last 5 minutes
we radically changed the human diet. Agricultural Revolution: The Start of the
End
With the advent of agriculture
at the 23 hour and 55-minute mark, we completely abandoned our meat-based diet.
We even abandoned the plant-based foods we had supplemented our meat-based
diets with.
We began subsisting on
plant-based foods that were rarely / never eaten in human history.
In
fact, nearly all the plant-based foods we eat today did not exist (more than 5
minutes ago). Before agriculture there was no
wheat, no corn, no rice – which now make up about 50% of all the calories eaten
worldwide. (r, r) These are modern-man
inventions.
For example, grains come from wild
grasses. Naturally, in the wild, these grains are small with just a few seeds
per plant. And they readily fall and disperse. Humans would have basically
never eaten these.
But with agriculture and selective
breeding, farmers cultivated these into staple foods. They began subsisting on
grains and starchy crops for calories. This massive change in diet was low in
protein, low in fat, and low in vitamins and minerals. It was also high in
plant-based toxins.
Perhaps not surprisingly, during these last 5 minutes, our
brains started to shrink – over 10% in just these last 5 minutes. Our stature
shrank as well, we developed tooth defects, bone lesions, and degenerative conditions.
(r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r)
For the first time, we were
exposed to significant amounts of natural plant toxins, from plant parts we had
never eaten in any significant quantity. And the human body had long become
ill- equipped to detox such concentrations of phytochemicals.
Over the 23 hours and 55 minutes, our guts had transformed
beyond recognition to that of our early herbivore primate ancestors. Our
transformed gut was now optimized for the efficient absorption of meat that was
dense in energy as was required to fuel our gigantic brains; it was no longer
equipped for grazing 7 hours/day and using a microbiome to turn plant fiber
into useable energy. (r)
Before the Agricultural
Revolution, fatness was nonexistent. With this change in food production, the
wealthy gained access to plentiful carbs and, for the first time in human
history, became fat. Perhaps ironically, accompanying the rise of fat people
was the rise of widespread malnutrition and deficiencies. Health deteriorated.
“The
Dose Makes the Poison” – Part I
Prior to the Agricultural
Revolution, the opportunistic eating of plant-based foods was a relatively
miniscule part of the human diet.
Natural plant-based toxins like
alkaloids, oxalates, and tannins were eaten in small quantities. And even
though toxic – a healthy human body, for the most part, could detoxify them
without major issues.
However, some plant tissues have
especially high amounts of natural toxins. These tissues tend to be of special
importance to the plant for its survival. For example, seeds tend to be laced
with protective chemicals. These are the plant’s babies, vital for the plant to
protect.
Before the Agricultural
Revolution, seeds made up little to no part of the human diet. But this changed
just 5 minutes ago. Some of the most potent natural plant toxins, that were
never eaten before, became food staples.
Our dosage of plant-based toxins drastically increased.
We began eating
massive quantities of lectins, phytates, and enzyme inhibitors. What was once a
manageable dose to detoxify started to overwhelm our defenses. We simply had
not developed or evolved to defend this level of chemical warfare.
To make matters worse, the lower
nutrition inherent in these foods combined with the antinutrients created a
negative spiral of deteriorating health and nutrition. For example, while these
plant-based foods are already lower in vitamins and minerals,
they also come pre-packaged
with antinutrients like phytate that further prevent
absorption of essential minerals. And while already lower in protein and fat,
enzyme inhibitors further interfered with fat and protein absorption. (r)
Further, many of these toxins damage the gut, our 1st and
primary level of defense. With increased intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”),
our ability to defend against an ever-increasing phytochemical onslaught got
worse and worse. (r, r, r, r, r)
To top off this cascade of
damage, for the first time in history we started spiking our blood sugar,
stressing our pancreas to pump out insulin, and dysregulating our metabolisms.
The Last Second – Natural Plant Toxins Transformed
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
The transition that took place at
23 hours and 55 minutes was catastrophic. But the changes in the last second
have been just as destructive to human health, if not more so.
Industrial Revolution
During this last second in
time, the Industrial Revolution caused the next blow to human health – kicking
ourselves while we were down.
The
Dose Makes the Poison – Part II
With milling technology, we
started stripping the bran and the wheat germ away from the grain, creating
ultra-fine grains – the most refined flours in human history.
We took the foods that we
invented, that were completely novel to the human diet, that were loaded with
antinutrients, and which we were ill-equipped to eat, and began refining them
and thereby concentrating them.
At the start of the last 5 minutes
we radically increased the dosage of plant toxins. In this last second,
we concentrated these toxins exponentially.
With the Industrial Revolution we
saw the rise of technology for mass food production resulting in an even
further decline in fresh food (as refrigeration was not yet available).
Accompanying these new
technologies came the birth of never before seen health problems including
obesity, cancers, and heart disease.
The Last Split-Second – Unnatural
Plant-Transformed Poisons
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
As if our diet wasn’t already
foreign enough, in this last split-second of the 24-hour day, we’ve engineered
synthetic food so incongruent with our body that disease and deteriorated
health have become the new normal.
Asthma and allergies are almost expected among our youth.
IBS, indigestion, acid reflux, is considered normal digestion. Depression,
diabetes, dementia, and dental abnormalities. We are the only primates whose
teeth don’t fit into our own heads. (r, r, r) We
fight fatigue and brain fog daily. Acne, autism, and autoimmune disorders went
from non-existent to commonplace.
Osteoporosis and obesity. This
became our new normal.
Technologic Revolution: Man-made Poisons
The Big 3
During this last split-second we
have made mind-blowing advancements in science and technology. Many used for
good. Many, knowingly or unknowingly, causing serious harm.
#1 –
Grains
As we’ve discussed, grains didn’t
become any significant part of the human diet until 5 minutes ago. Moreover,
they are laced with plant toxins and antinutrients to prevent herbivores from
eating the plant’s offspring.
Just 5 minutes ago we took these
plant seeds and made them a significant part of the human diet by artificially
breeding and selecting for size and abundance.
Then in the last second, during
the Industrial Revolution, we began refining them, further concentrating
toxins.
In this last split-second
we altered them even further. We began genetically modifying them.
We’ve
engineered new traits into plants that wouldn’t otherwise naturally occur.
We’ve engineered higher lectin loads to deter insects. We began spraying
them
with pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides.
We’ve added preservatives, so we
can store and ship these foods around the world. And all these changes come
with a heavy price.
Let’s
consider gluten.
Gluten is an energy storage
protein in grains with the purpose of nourishing the developing baby seed once
it sprouts.
When some people eat gluten it
triggers an immediate, severe attack on the lining of the small intestines.
It’s known as Celiac disease.
Celiac disease dramatically
increased in the US in the 1960s and 70s. This is the same time that genetic
breeding further transformed wheat.
The 4.5 foot
“amber waves of grain” turned into 2-foot-tall, semi-dwarf, wheat. Yields went
up. Profits went up. And so did the gluten concentration.
And it was not only more abundant, but the gluten was
fundamentally different. The molecular structure of gluten was chemically
altered. (r, r, r, r, r, r)
We know that our digestive tract
doesn’t handle wheat proteins (prolamins) like gluten and other lectins very well.
Genetically modified wheat and altered proteins are like foreign invaders to
the body. They cause damage to the gut (“leaky gut”) that can lead to
widespread inflammation, autoimmune disorders, and disease.
I call it “Grain Pain.”
Today, just 3 grains – wheat, corn, and rice – make up about half of the
world’s food. And if the dose makes the poison…
By eating genetically altered, ultra-concentrated, high
doses of grains and their toxins, meal after meal, day after day – the dose is poisoning us.
#2 –
Vegetable Oils
For millions of years nearly all
fat in the human diet was animal fat.
During the Agricultural Revolution
we switched to a low-fat diet. But still, during this time, most of the fat
eaten (up until 23 hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds) was animal-based.
But during this last
split-second, we invented industrial vegetable seed oils.
And in short order we replaced natural animal fats with
unnatural plant-based industrialized fats. (r, r, r, r)
Cellular
Disruption
Without getting into the
molecular composition of fats, it’s enough to know that animal fat is high in
saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, while vegetable seed oils are high
in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA).
These PUFA originate in plant
seeds, and via complex industrial processing they give us vegetable oils like
corn, soybean, and sunflower oils.
After further
processing (hydrogenation) these fats can become solid at room temperature and
used as margarine that spreads nicely on your bread or used as shortening to
keep your baked goods tender and moist. This processing creates completely
unnatural fats including the notorious trans fats.
And these fats are very
dangerous.
Fat is an essential component of every cell in the body.
It’s vital in hormone production. It’s necessary for vitamins and minerals. And
in fact, the brain is over 60% fat. (r)
When we eat these unnatural fat
molecules, they fool our bodies. They are similar enough to natural fats that
they get incorporated into our cells and tissues.
But these unnatural industrialized
fats don’t function properly.
They damage cell membranes, disrupt function, and cause
inflammation. And they are strongly correlated with heart disease, cancer, and
neurological problems. (r, r, r, r, r, r)
Omega
3:6
The different ratios of fatty
acids between animal fat and vegetable oils is extremely significant.
Omega 3 and omega 6s are essential
fatty acids. Ideally these are balanced. Our ancestors likely ate omega 3 and
omega 6 fatty acids in a ratio that was close to 1:1.
The reason balance is important is
that omega 3 and omega 6s produce hormone-like signaling compounds called
eicosanoids that are involved in inflammation. And omega 3s and 6s have
opposite effects in some processes.
For example, eicosanoids from
omega 3 fatty acids function through pathways that decrease
inflammation,
while those from omega 6 function through pathways that increase inflammation. Striking the right balance is important.
We need inflammation for wound
healing and tissue repair, but too much can lead to chronic systemic
inflammation and to pathologies like autoimmune disease, IBS, and joint pain.
Vegetable seed
oils are very high in omega 6 fatty acids. They are pro-inflammatory. And
today, it’s common to eat 10-20X more omega 6 fatty acids than omega 3s –
thanks to oils like corn and soybean that are widespread and cheap.
Today the
scale is steeply tipped toward inflammation.
Evidence is mounting that the overwhelming omega 6 to 3
ratio is implicit in heart disease, cancer, and even neurologic problems like
depression, aggression, violent behavior, and anxiety. Which, again, is not
surprising as our brains are mainly fat. (r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r, r)
Oxidation
Up until this last split second in
time the only fats used in cooking were animal fats. Since these fats are more
saturated, they are more stable, and thus less likely to oxidize and go rancid.
The high
concentration of polyunsaturated fats found in vegetable oils are just the
opposite. By the time they reach the grocery store they are likely already
damaged (oxidized).
Chemically this means they turn
into free radicals. A free radical has unpaired electrons and are thus highly
reactive. This high reactivity can damage molecules in the body and result in a
domino-like chain reaction.
When a free radical damages a
molecule, that molecule then becomes a free radical itself to continue damaging
cellular structures and interfering with proper cellular function. One after
another the dominos fall.
And these oxidized oils can be
sneaky. At the store they may look and smell just fine but still be
significantly damaged. By the time they have a noticeable “rancid” odor they’ve
likely been damaged for quite some time.
To speed up the oxidation, all you
have to do is heat these oils. Fried foods aren’t only loaded with unnatural
hydrogenated fats, they aren’t only high in inflammation promoting omega 6
fatty acids, but they are easily oxidized. It’s like throwing a wrecking ball
into your body.
Heart
Disease
For 23 hours and 55 minutes we
were on a high fat (high saturated fat) diet and heart disease was largely
non-existent. Then during this last split second, Ancel
Keys told us saturated fats cause heart
disease.
Thanks to his misleading
association, health organizations turned this into “conventional wisdom” and
animal fat consumption dropped while vegetable oil consumption skyrocketed. And
so did heart disease.
This “conventional wisdom” that
saturated fat is bad still permeates society today.
When really, polyunsaturated fats
and the artificially hydrogenated fats like trans fats are among the most toxic
“foods” in the modern world. And these fats are in everything.
Nearly all processed foods – from
baked goods and breads to crackers and chips to peanut butter and pizza – all
loaded with fats from plant-based foods extracted via industrial processing.
#3 –
Sugar
With grains and vegetable oils
we’ve manufactured unnatural foods into our daily food staples. We eat these in
dosages that teeter on poison. And we’ve done the same with sugar.
Humans consumed minimal
carbohydrates for the first 23 hours and 55 minutes.
This radically changed in the last
5 minutes with the Agricultural Revolution and the transition to a
predominantly plant-based diet. Carbohydrate consumption changed even further
in the last second when the Industrial Revolution spurred mass production of
refined carbohydrate-based foods.
sugar became any significant part
of the diet.
But sugar as
we know it is even newer.
When refined
white sugar first came to Europe it was very expensive. It was a luxury
reserved for the wealthy.
Most
carbohydrates in the diet at this time were still
from refined grains and starches.
It was not until the 1900s, after
industrial processing and extraction was developed, that
And it was in this last split
second that sugar became cheap and thus abundant.
We began eating massive quantities of sugar. It now makes
up over 25% of our diet. And our bodies are not designed to handle this. (r, r, r, r)
With every meal we create a
metabolic panic, stressing the pancreas to unload insulin to re- establish
homeostatic blood sugar. This massively unnatural carbohydrate load and blood
sugar spiking wreaks havoc on human health.
Metabolic hormones become
dysregulated from the insulin rollercoaster, eventually cell start to give up
(insulin resistance) and the pancreas wears out (Type II diabetes). The high
blood sugar levels disrupt cellular water balance, impair the immune system,
and damage vision, kidneys, and nerves. Obesity, cardiovascular disease,
cancer, dementia (which some call “Type III Diabetes”) all became increasingly
common stepwise with the ever-increasing consumption of sugar.
Sugar also directly damages
tissues through glycation.
Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs) irreversibly damage
molecules. This is like the domino effect of oxidized fats and their free
radicals. When a molecule gets glycated, these AGEs can then cause damage by
cross-linking with other molecules creating a cascade of damage. Glycation is
implicit in many health problems including diabetes, hypertension, vascular
damage, aging, and dementia. (r)
Sugar
Cycle
The human body has about 1 tsp of
glucose (sugar) in all the blood. Only a few cells in the body require any
glucose at all, all of which can be made from protein. There is no essential
carbohydrate. No need to eat any sugar at all. And yet we are eating it by the
truck load.
And one reason why is that it’s addicting. When we eat
sugar the “pleasure centers” of the brain light up. It activates the same brain
regions as cocaine. And it causes neurochemical changes similar to other
addictive drugs. (r)
Sugar fuels a vicious cycle.
With a sugar surge the pancreas
panics and pumps insulin. This immediately halts any fat burning. With this
massive insulin dump, the blood sugar shortly drops too low and causes hormones
to tell the brain to hurry up and replenish.
We feel this as a strong craving
for more sugar. And since fat burning is largely turned off thanks to the
insulin – the craving can feel more like a panic. Our energy drops, we get
tired, our brain gets foggy, and we get “hangry” for more sugar.
Willpower gives way, we reach for more sugar, and
feel the “reward” from the brain reinforcing this behavior. What results is binging, cravings, and
addiction.
In this vicious “sugar cycle” we
are always hungry and always storing more fat. We disrupt hormonal signaling
and lose the ability to tap the abundant energy stored in our fat cells.
Fructose
Refined white sugar is bad.
But in 1956 we made sugar even
more dangerous. We discovered how to further process it to give us high
fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – which was even sweeter and cheaper than refined
white sugar.
By the 70s and 80s HFCS
infiltrated our diets. It was loaded into soft drinks and juices, snacks and
desserts, syrups and salad dressings.
Fructose, “fruit sugar,” has to
be processed by the liver in a special way. It must be detoxified.
Not unlike alcoholism, chronic
HFCS consumption bombards the liver with a toxin in excess. This can fatten and
damage the liver. In fact, it’s a primary player in nonalcoholic fatty liver
disease.
With this abuse, the liver eventually starts ignoring
insulin, thereby impairing its ability to process glucose. Again, blood glucose
builds up, the pancreas pumps more insulin, fat accumulates, appetite gets
dysregulated, and hormonal systems dysfunction. (r, r, r, r)
Glycation is especially dangerous with fructose – causing
glycation at 7-10X the rate of glucose. And for diabetics who already have high
blood sugar, this is a recipe for accelerated aging and vascular damage. (r, r)
Technologic Revolution: Man-made Poisons – Beyond
the Big 3
Perhaps the deadliest inventions
are the mass production and consumption of grains, vegetable oils, and sugar.
And while these may be the biggest culprits in deteriorating health – there are
many other “food” inventions that are hiding in our meals and causing harm.
Food
Additives
Today our food comes in a box or a
bag, with an ingredient list that most biochemist don’t recognize.
Pick up an item at the grocery
store, and there is a very good chance you don’t know what most of the
ingredients are. We assume these chemicals are well tested with stringent
health and safety research validating their consumption. But this is far from
the truth.
Our foods are loaded with synthetic chemicals – acidity
regulators, anti-caking agents, antifoaming agents, antioxidants, bulking
agents, dyes and food coloring materials, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, and
artificial flavors, gelling agents, glazing agents, humectants, preservatives,
stabilizers, artificial sweeteners, and thickeners. (r)
Many are potentially toxic and
very little is actually known about their combined impact.
What happens when these chemicals
are mixed together, or taken with medications, or how do they interact within a
complex environment – like the human body?
We don’t know.
But evidence is
growing that these chemicals aren’t harmless. Artificial
Sweeteners
Astute observers
witnessed the damage associated with our massive consumption of sugar. The
obvious answer was to create artificial sweeteners.
In the 70s, one such sweetener called cyclamate was pulled
from the market due to its association with testicular atrophy and cancer. But
not to be deterred, others have popped up. Today saccharin and aspartame have
gained widespread appeal and use. Though research suggest this may not be such
a great thing. (r)
Aspartame is a classic example of money and politics
winning over health and science. The aspartame industry funded numerous studies
on the sweetener, all of which showing its safety. Yet over 90% of independent
studies demonstrated problems with the sweetener including increased risk of
brain tumors and lymphoma. (r, r, r, r)
It’s thought that these
artificial sweeteners also confuse the brain about energy consumption.
With the sweetness the brain
thinks calories are coming in. But they don’t. And this misinformation
interferes with proper hormonal signaling.
When sweetness sometimes accurately reflects energy
consumption and sometimes does not, appetite gets dysregulated. And evidence suggest
this is leading to overeating and more sugar cravings. (r, r, r)
Artificial
Colors and Dyes
There are big marketing dollars in bright colors.
Artificial colors and dyes are added to make products more appealing. Some of
these come from petrochemicals and coal tar like Blue No. 1 and Citrus Red No.
2, and Green No. 3. (r)
In animal studies many of these
have been shown to be toxic, cause tumors, and are associated with other health
problems like allergic reactions.
Human clinical trials even show
evidence that they may contribute to hyperactivity.
Artificial dyes are classified as excitotoxins, which can damage nerve
cells by excessive stimulation.
In fact, doctors have successfully treated hyperactivity
by eliminating artificial colorings. MSG (monosodium glutamate) is another
example of an excitotoxin that is widely used as a flavor enhancer. (r, r, r, r)
Emulsifiers
Human are known for trying to make
substances behave in unnatural ways – like getting oil and water to mix.
Well that’s what emulsifiers, also
known as surfactants, do. They allow the mixture of substances that normally
wouldn’t mix.
Many processed foods are made
possible by complex emulsions. For example, the chemicals that allow the food
to have a long shelf life have to mix with the chemicals in the food. And it
takes high concentrations of synthetic emulsifying agents to get it all to
stick together.
Obviously, our bodies are not
adapted to deal with these novel synthetic chemicals. They are thought to cause
damage to the digestive tract and contribute to “leaky gut” (intestinal
permeability).
A case in point – pharmaceutical companies actually use
emulsifiers in their pills to help oral drugs move across the intestinal
barrier. (r, r)
Food
preservatives
Fresh food goes bad. This is not
good for shelf life or profits, so food preservatives were invented to prevent
the growth of microorganisms and avoid chemical changes associated with
exposure to oxygen (i.e. oxidation).
If you look at the ingredients on
a bag of food you’ll likely see chemicals like sodium benzoate, calcium
propionate, disodium EDTA, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated
hydroxytoluene (BHT), sulphites, sodium sulfite, sodium
and potassium bisulfite, sodium and potassium metabisulphite. (r)
Little is known about their
effects on human health. Though we do know that some people are seriously
affected by these. For example, allergic reactions to sulfites are quite
common.
Processed grains need preservatives like BHT to block the
oxidation of the PUFA in the oils. It’s also an endocrine disruptor that acts
like estrogen. This is a trifecta of damage – grains and oils mixed together
with a synthetic preservative. (r, r)
What scares me is that we know how essential our microbiome is to
our health. Yet we readily add these chemicals to our food…chemicals
specifically designed to hinder bacteria and other microorganisms.
Today: Toxins Transformed to Poison
“The Toxin-Time Continuum”
For 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59
seconds the human species did not eat any refined sugars, refined grains, or
refined vegetable oils.
Plant-based natural toxins were
cultivated into unnatural doses and transformed into poisons.
Our staple foods, which many
consider “health” foods, include grains and soybeans, which are loaded with
antinutrients and plant defense phytochemicals that damage our guts and cause
disease.
Our carbohydrate intake flipped
from minimal to most of our calories. Simple sugars, fructose, and refined
carbohydrates dysregulate our hormones and appetites, lead to overeating and
obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, and are implicit in the deadliest
diseases today including heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
We replaced natural animal fats
for industrialized plant-based fats that get incorporated to our cells, ruining
their structure and function. Omega 6 fatty acids overwhelm omega 3s promoting
inflammation. The PUFA are readily oxidized, and thus readily damage those who
eat them.
We replaced nutrient dense meats
with nutrient poor grains and sugars. Although we are fat, we are malnourished.
We have widespread artificial
toxin exposure. Insecticides and additives are all over and in our food.
We do know that all of these
“foods” were invented in less than 1 second on the human history clock.
And we know that grains, sugar,
and vegetable oils make up a majority of all the calories eaten.
Yet somehow, we have propaganda
that meat, the very food our species evolved eating, suddenly started to cause
diseases and epidemics in the modern world.
It seems obvious there might be a
mismatch between what we are designed to eat and the food inventions of the
last 5 minutes.
We have powerful human engines
designed to run on a specific fuel, and we not only diluted this fuel, but we
completely changed it. And we wonder why we are getting weighed down, running
slower, getting sicker, and developing disease at an alarming rate.
Technologic
Revolution: The Fuel Weighing Us Down
To recap the “Toxin-Time
Continuum” I think looking at a couple examples will highlight the issues we
face today with our plant-based diets.
Soy
Let’s say you eat a soybean – the
body can handle its ill effects, detoxify it, and in general not cause any
issues.
Let’s say you eat soybeans
everyday – now the body is detoxifying on a continuous basis. Still the dosage
at any one time is low enough that you don’t recognize any ill effects.
Now let’s take those soybeans
and refine them and process them to give you soy milk, soynut butter, soy
protein, and soybean oil. All of a sudden soybeans are hiding in concentrated
forms in all your food.
There are a number of issues with
just eating “natural” soybeans. They are high in antinutrients like trypsin
inhibitors, phytates, and tannins as well as bioactive compounds like
isoflavones and phytosterols that have estrogenic properties.
But when its refined and concentrated in these
food-like-products, products which are everyday staples, the dosage inches
closer and closer to poison. We see hypothyroid effects and goiter,
testosterone and fertility problems, and even promotion of breast cancer. (r)
Corn
There’s a big difference
between eating an organic ear of corn vs high fructose corn syrup extracted
from genetically modified corn.
That said, an ear of corn is
quite unnatural itself.
Originally corn was small,
about the size of your little finger. The seeds of this wild grass easily fell
off and dispersed.
Today we’ve engineered it to
give us massive ears of corn. The seeds cling to the cob so tightly it can’t
even exist on its own in the wild.
So although an ear of corn is
quite unnatural today, it’s not even close to the other versions of corn that
make up so much of our diets.
Today most of us eat the version
after we steep it, take the starch, refine the syrup, and further process it to
yield HFCS. This is the version of corn that we eat in massive quantities.
Corn is a good example of what we
tend to do with many plant-based foods. In the wild the plant part is
relatively scarce, small, and low in sugar. It would be difficult to eat in
large quantities.
But we selectively breed,
genetically modify, and change these natural plants into unnatural variations
for bigger versions, sweeter versions, higher yield versions.
We then take it a step further.
· We process and refine them.
The low dose toxin gets transformed to a high dose unnatural breed.
· We take the corn starch made
from the endosperm and using it as a thickening agent.
· We squeeze
the germ of corn and get oil, that we use to fry our food in. It gets further hydrogenated to make margarine.
· We use corn to make cereals,
snack foods, salad dressings, soft drink sweeteners, gum, peanut butter, and flour products.
When we eat these end products,
the fact that we are eating plant-based foods become obscured.
The Confusion
The whole world is already on a plant-based diet. We just don’t realize
it. And this is where so much of the nutrition confusion arises.
Someone on a
whole food plant-based diet that is eating unrefined, minimally processed
plant- based foods, is eating a diet far better than most of the world that is
eating the more refined and
processed versions of these foods.
But just
because it’s unrefined doesn’t make it healthy – it makes it less unhealthy – a
toxic dose that the body may be able to handle in low quantities when eaten
infrequently.
It’s why if
someone switches from a Standard American Diet (SAD) to a vegetarian whole food diet they notice improvements –
they ditched the worst offenders.
More
confusion arises when we see that there are so many other confounding
variables, biases, and deceptions.
Health science
is not immune to profit motives and popular press incentives. It’s not immune
to dogma ingrained in government agencies, health organizations, and taught to
professionals who then pass it down as “conventional wisdom” repeated and
reinforced in echo chambers. It’s not immune to faulty assumptions and poorly
done research.
Health Dangers of Plant-Based
Foods
As we can see in our 24-hour human
history, our diets have drastically changed in the last 5 minutes, even further
in the last second, and even further in the last split-second.
Almost no food today is free from
the impact of the Agricultural, Industrial, and Technological Revolutions.
Eliminating the 3 biggest
offenders will go a long way. Get rid of grains, vegetable oils, and sugar.
Soy is a close 4th.
And an
interesting thing happens when you do this. You start eating a meat-based diet. A healthy diet is one build
around meat.
I hear good health advice every-so-often, one such
statement is “Don’t eat anything that
wasn’t around 100 years ago,” or “Don’t
eat anything your grandparents didn’t eat.”
But they need to zoom out just 5
minutes.
Better advice:
“Only eat what was eaten during the first 23 hours and 55
minutes,”
or
“Don’t eat anything that was eaten for the 1st time
within the last 5 minutes.”
If you want to know how to do
that, you can check out the 30 day guide to going full carnivore –
even if you have no intention – the concepts about how to succeed on that diet
apply across the board.
On the Clock
The alarm should have sounded 5
minutes ago. We hit snooze. Ignored the impact.
It sounded again 1 second
ago.
We hit snooze.
Ignored the impact. It’s ringing right now.
Time to wake up.
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