{"id":14030,"date":"2020-08-30T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=14030"},"modified":"2020-09-10T21:27:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T01:27:16","slug":"foods-containing-lectins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/foods-containing-lectins\/","title":{"rendered":"Foods Containing Lectins: What Should You Avoid?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What foods contain lectins? Are there any foods containing lectins you can eat? What does eating lectins do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more to understand what lectins are, what they do, and why foods containing lectins may cause you problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Impact of Foods Containing Lectins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lectins are large proteins contained in the seeds, grains, skins, rinds, and leaves of most plants <\/strong>(gluten is a type of lectin). <\/strong>Lectins have several harmful effects in your body, which we\u2019ll explore in more detail in the upcoming sections and chapters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Lectins can create gaps in your intestinal wall barrier.<\/li>
  2. Lectins that breach your intestinal wall trigger an attack from your immune system, causing inflammation.<\/li>
  3. Lectins\u2014sometimes called \u201csticky proteins\u201d\u2014bind to sugar molecules in your body and interrupt the communication between cells.<\/li>
  4. Lectins mimic other proteins, fooling the body into taking unnecessary actions like storing fat and attacking certain cells. <\/li>
  5. Lectins help viruses and bacteria attach to their intended targets, so that people who are particularly sensitive to lectins are more susceptible to viral and bacterial infections. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Everyone has different sensitivities to lectins; if your ancestors ate a certain plant, your immune system and microbiome have evolved to better tolerate foods containing lectins of that kind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Human Diet Is Overloaded With Foods Containing Lectins<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    For millennia, humans\u2019 immune systems have adapted to their changing diet, but relatively recently, humans\u2019 diets have changed drastically and exposed our gut bacteria to new compounds that it hasn\u2019t yet evolved to tolerate.<\/strong> What foods contain lectins? Many do, but to understand the problem, you have to understand the drastic changes to the human diet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There are four factors that brought about this major change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. The Agricultural Revolution<\/a> not only introduced grain and beans into the human diet for the first time, but it also made them the primary food source; this was a shift from a diet of mainly leaves, tubers (like sweet potatoes), and some animal fat and proteins. This meant more foods containing lectins.<\/li>
    2. A mutation in Northern European cows caused them to produce a different kind of protein in their milk, called casein A-1; during digestion, casein A-1 turns into a protein similar to lectin that causes your immune system to attack your pancreas.<\/li>
    3. When Europeans landed in the Americas, they brought foreign food from the New World back with them that people in Europe, Asia, and Africa had never before been exposed to and, thus, hadn\u2019t adapted to tolerate these foods containing lectins people weren’t used to. These included