Eat to maintain proper digestive function.

Eat to maintain proper blood sugar regulation.

Follow a plan that will help you reach your own personal health goals.

It is the root of your health, and much of what goes on in the rest of your body begins with what happens in this organ, otherwise known as your gut.

So, how does your gut become “leaky”? Clinically known as increased intestinal permeability, leaky gut is a condition in which the cells that line your small intestine begin to lose their integrity. Remember that the foods you eat don’t actually get into the cells of your body until they have been broken down and allowed to pass through the small intestinal lining. For a myriad of reasons led strongly by the consumption of food rich in anti-nutrients day in and day out, this process stops working properly. The normal tight junctions between the cells loosen, causing the entire defense system to become compromised.

IT’S IN THE GUT

When I say “gut” in this section, understand that it means your small intestine—which you already read about just a few pages back, right?

what are anti-nutrients?

They are primarily plant-based defense mechanisms that are concentrated around the reproductive force in a seed or grain. Consider this: every living thing has a defense mechanism. Plants can’t run away when they’re under attack, so to ensure that they continue to thrive and grow, they have internal defenses to fight against predators. To the plant, and more specifically the seed or grain of a plant (its reproductive force), your digestive system is just such a predator. These defense mechanisms in the plant fight against your digestion, blocking your ability to fully break the food down into harmless amino acids that are easily absorbed into your cells. In other words, anti-nutrients are elements within a food that either prevent or disrupt the proper digestion and absorption of the nutrients contained in that food.

the foods richest in anti-nutrients are:

Whole grains, whole grain products, grain-like seeds and legumes that include, but is not limited to, wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt, brown rice, corn, quinoa, lentils, red beans, black beans, pinto beans, and navy beans.

Refined grains and refined grain products, including white rice, flour, bread, cereal, crackers, cookies, or pasta.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, that our culture’s diet is centered around these anti-nutrient foods? If I told you I had an omelet for breakfast, a slice of quiche for lunch, and an egg soufflé for dinner, you might say, “Isn’t that a lot of eggs?” Yet, if I had eaten cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and pasta for dinner, it probably wouldn’t occur to you to ask, “Isn’t that a lot of grains?”

Still, if you don’t think ahead about what you will eat, most of the foods you will find at the store, restaurant—pretty much everywhere—are partially grain-based. Even though our eating habits didn’t center around grains for most of human history (our ancestors ate whole foods, not foods from factories), we’re so accustomed to grain-based foods today—both refined and so-called “whole” grains—that we seldom question if we’re overdoing it. We have been incorrectly taught that it’s easy to digest grains. Not so!

why are anti-nutrients such a problem?

The truth is that we lack the digestive capacity to break down those gnarly anti-nutrients in grains. Some believe that over thousands of years of human evolution, our bodies have simply not adapted the digestive enzymes necessary to process grains. Plus, the methods of preparing grains and legumes that were used by traditional cultures are a thing of the past in the industrialized world.

It may also be that our modern upbringing has not supported the complete and healthy development of our digestive systems so that we might be able to tolerate these foods when eaten as a small part of our diet. So many of our modern habits contribute to weakened digestive function—a lifetime of eating refined foods, grain products, processed/pasteurized dairy products, and sugar, as well as round after round of antibiotics, stress, NSAID painkillers, and alcohol.

While your system is fully equipped to handle animal proteins that don’t carry these anti-nutrients, eating large quantities of digestion-resistant foods day after day can wreak havoc. Large quantities, in this case, can mean even just one slice of bread, one cracker, or a small serving of pasta. Any portion of grain products can cause problems in your body. Each time you eat one of these small portions, you consume hundreds or even thousands of tiny anti-nutrient-bearing Trojan Horses.

Even just a few decades ago, people realized that there were ways to make grains and legumes more digestible and that simply picking them from plants and grinding them did not make them suitable for consumption. Soaking, sprouting, and fermenting them essentially “tricks” grains and legumes (as well as seeds and nuts, for that matter) into thinking that they’ve been planted, allowing them to release some of their anti-nutrients and make their actual nutrients (vitamins and minerals) available and accessible. While the outer portion of grains and legumes forms a barrier when planted, the nutrients inside are there to fuel the seed on its mission to grow into a plant.

Nevertheless, even if most people were willing to soak, sprout, and ferment their grains before eating them, these processes only help us digest grains and legumes slightly better. The reality is that meat, vegetables, and naturally occurring fats are all more nutrient-dense and less irritating to the gut than sprouted grains.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14