Lectins - What Do We Need To Know About The New Gluten?
Author: Leticia Celentano
Time for reading: ~2
minutes
Last Updated:
August 08, 2022
Dietary hysteria similar to that around gluten is expected after a popular doctor said that tomatoes are dangerous to health.
Gluten-free diets, especially popular in the Western world, should not be promoted in people who do not suffer from celiac disease or gluten intolerance. This is convincingly stated by Harvard scientists after a study of more than 120 thousand people, which concluded that gluten-free diets are harmful to people who have no medical reason to follow them.
However, a new dietary mania is set, which will take the place of the aging gluten-free hysteria. In his growing book, The Plant Paradox , author Stephen Gundry discusses the topic of weight loss through dieting and argues that the path to a healthier diet should not include eliminating gluten from the diet, but eliminating lectins. .
The book discusses the alleged defense mechanisms of some plants through which they prevent eating and how the consumption of plant foods using these protections harms human health.
Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins that are abundant in plant foods such as tomatoes , legumes and some dairy products . They are said to bind the cell membranes of certain food tissues and prevent their proper digestion by humans, leading to inhibition of the digestive system in addition to the toxicity of lectins itself.
Lectins are also prescribed some toxic and pro-inflammatory properties, and some members of the group can cause vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Raw beans, for example, contain a huge amount of the toxic lectin phytohemagglutinin . Lectin concentrations between 20,000 and 70,000 hau (toxicity unit) can be found in only one of them . After heat treatment with proper cooking, phytohemagglutinin levels drop to 200-400 hau .
Ingestion of 3-5 raw beans can lead to the mentioned symptoms of lectin poisoning , they can last up to 4 hours. Another type of lectin, castor oil , is an even more dangerous toxin that can kill an adult in minimal doses.
Dr. Gundry shares that it is possible and very likely that lower doses of lectins, which are taken without heat treatment (such as from tomatoes in salads, etc.), will severely damage the human metabolism and lead to inflammatory reactions, accelerated gaining weight and deteriorating health.
Asked about the growing popularity of lectin-free diets, a nutritionist at King's College London and a spokeswoman for the British Diabetes Association, Dr Megan Rossi said not all people needed to lower their lectin intake. Lectin-restricting diets may be helpful for certain groups of people, but they should not turn into mass hysteria, such as gluten-free diets. Lectins play an important role in human metabolism (especially in fat metabolism and immune protection) and there is still no evidence of direct or indirect harm from their reasonable diet.