Beware: If you ate nuts and seeds the day before and the next day you experience joint, muscle or any mysterious pain anywhere this could be lectin’s effects on your body.
What about Seeds and Nuts? Are they healthy for you? It’s a yes and a no at the same time. Just don’t eat too many nuts and seeds in a day (no more than about an ounce or handful.) Overexposure to lectin may cause autoimmune disease, leaky gut syndrome, digestive problems, and celiac disease (just to name a few.)
Many plant based foods contain lectin, which can cause damage to the small intestine, leading to Leaky Gut Syndrome and inflammatory conditions in the body and joints.
Cooking that which has lectin can lessen the effects. That’s one reason why I avoid buying beans in cans. They don’t seem to be cooked thorough enough. If I eat them from a can, I get the effects of lectin. So, I buy them dry and cook them like I do my rice, myself. The only grains and legumes I eat are beans, potatoes and brown rice. I bake my potatoes, boil my rice and rinse, soak and boil my beans and rinse them…
Note- try to limit eating foods with lectin. If you eat more than one together, you might get unfavorable results. Know what foods have lectin in them and don’t eat a lot of each one or many together. For example, I eat no more than about a cup of brown rice a day plus two medium baked potatoes.
Get your Nuts and Seeds in the Shell
If you eat seeds and nuts every day, better to get them roasted, but without salt. I know it sounds healthier to get them raw, but don’t. Seeds and nuts do have nutritional value, but are mostly fat. And, the fat you eat is goanna be the fat you’re goanna wear. Also, too much fat may cause cardiovascular problems.
A better idea is to buy your nuts and seeds in the shell so it’s harder for you to eat too many. It’s easy to eat half a bag of nuts, if not the whole bag. And, when I do I pay the price in weight gain and achy joints, etc. (it is funny how my favorite nut happens to be the Cashew and favorite seeds are the Pumpkin and Sunflower.) These nuts and seeds are some of the highest in lectin!
If you have to crack them, you likely won’t eat very many if you have to work hard at it. Furthermore, salting or adding sugar does make them taste better, so you eat even more. We don’t need the extra salt, sugar, lectin and larger love handles.
What else has Lectin?
What about Rice, Potatoes and Beans? Like Seeds and Nuts, Beans, Rice and Potatoes all have Lectins, so make sure you cook them well. I used to use a crockpot and cook my beans overnight and into the next day.
Crockpots with their slow cooking do help lessen the effects of lectin on beans and lentils. I used to put all kinds of spices and a can of diced tomatoes and a cut up onion, etc. It tasted great, but I am going for a simpler less spicy diet, these days. Currently, I soak beans for an hour and simmer them for about two hours. They turn out just fine and you can top them with homemade salsa or hot sauce. This is how I cook my beans, here. As far as I am concerned, simple is better. Nothing fancy for me.
The Plant is the Mother and their Babies have Lectins to protect them from predators
Seeds, Nuts and Legumes like beans are the babies of the plants. This is how nature regenerates itself. The plant is the mother.
Potatoes are of the Nightshade variety, so try not to buy them green. And, make sure you always bake or cook your potatoes, long enough. Also, buy everything Organic if your store has it.
In addition to lectin, Rice has Arsenic, so boil it in water instead of a rice cooker and rinse it off before you bag it up and freeze it in the individual sandwich bags you will thaw out for later.
Highest Lectin
- Most grains and rice – Wheat, Oats, Barley, Millet, Quinoa
- Beans and Legumes – Chickpeas, Kidney beans, Lentils, Peas, Peanuts and Soy
- Nuts and Seeds like Chia seeds, Pumpkin seeds, Peanuts, Sunflower seeds, Almonds, Hazelnuts, Cashews, Pine nuts
- Nightshades like Tomatoes, Potatoes, Peppers, Squash, Eggplant, Corn, Zucchini, Cucumbers and Pumpkin
Lowest Lectin
- Amaranth
- Wild Rice
- Macadamia
- Pecan
- Pistachio
- Walnut
- Chestnut
- Flax
- Sesame
- Apples
- Citrus
- Blueberries
- Nectarines
- Plums
- Strawberries
- Raspberries
- Coconut
- Green Vegetables – Don’t worry about it. Eat all you desire
‘Ingestion of the lectins present in certain improperly cooked vegetables can result in acute GI tract distress, but the mechanism of toxicity is unknown |1 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov|’.
