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Grace-Motivated Dieting

MIKE COSPER|11:00 PM CT

Grace-Motivated . . . Dieting?

We're a few weeks into our new year's resolutions. How's that diet going?

According to The New York Times, Americans last year spent about $62 billion on diets, exercise, and gym memberships. But most us give up on these efforts by March.

It feels like an endless cycle. We're unhappy with our weight, we make grand commitments, and we stick to them rigidly . . . for a couple of weeks. Eventually, the drive-thru lanes, frappucinos, and buckets of ice cream get the best of us, and we fall off the proverbial wagon.

Our failures recall Paul's words in Romans 7:15: "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." I don't want to eat that giant burrito, and yet over and over again, I eat the giant burrito. What a wretched man I am!

Perhaps, as we start to feel the pangs of temptation against our new year's resolutions (or if we're simply struggling to stick to a diet) we would benefit from a shift in perspective. If dieting is like life under the law, then it's worth asking: Is there such a thing as grace-motivated dieting?

I think there is. There's a way forward for those of us who feel unhealthy and eager for change, a way that can be motivated by grace and love, rather than vanity, guilt, or shame. It takes three things:

Shifting Perspective
Seeking Wisdom
Enduring Patiently

Shifting Perspective

I'll never forget this moment, about six years ago. My best friend had recently gotten married, and my wife and I were spending time with him and his new wife, looking through the photo album from their wedding. As we turned to the back cover, I was horrified. The last picture in the album was from the morning of his wedding day, when the groomsmen had gone to a park to play basketball. For some tragic and inexplicable reason I am standing in this picture with my shirt off. I hadn't been near a basketball court (or, apparently a scale) in a few years, and the sight was . . . unhealthy. Round. Big.

"I'm going on a diet," I blurted out, eyes wide open, thinking photos are forever, photos are forever. For the rest of my friend's life, this awful picture of me would grace the back page of his wedding album.

This is how many of us begin. Our bodies lose their youthful shape, and in a revelatory moment, we jump on the dieting carousel: gaining, losing, plateauing, gaining, losing, crashing, gaining again. We're driven by a moment like this, a moment (or a long season) of shame and guilt. Words like fat ring in our ears, and every trip past a mirror is torture. Sometimes we blame ourselves, sometimes we blame our genes, sometimes we blame stress and work.

There are two possible motivations for the desire to transform our bodies, one that has the power to motivate and one that has the power to kill.

The latter motivation is more common. It's the reason young faces and bodies grace the magazine covers in grocery stores aisles. These images help drive the market for plastic surgery and much of that $62 billion dieting economy. This motivation cannot be limited to a single emotion or sin. But some combination of vanity, obsession with youth, and fear of death results in anxious discontent, a deep feeling of inadequacy and desperation for acceptance. We foolishly believe that if we could get skinnier, bulkier, younger, prettier, or stronger, we'll be satisfied.

This motivation literally leads to death. For some, the short-term fixes lead to crash diets, eating disorders, and a variety of other methods that do our bodies more harm than good. Ultimately, all of us face the ticking clock of time, slowing metabolisms, disease, grey hair, wrinkles, cellulite, and expired bodies. The desire to avoid death and old age that drives us to the gym can't ultimately stave off our inevitable end.

We become enslaved to the "law" of fitness, obsessively fighting a losing battle against our wills and the march of time. Our victories are short-lived, our defeats are crushing.

But there's a better way. Whatever we feel about our bodies, they don't have to be the source of shame or guilt. Shame and guilt are not motivators; they are masters, filling our days with anxiety. The alternative starts with seeing our bodies as part of the great story of the gospel:

Our bodies were created by God. God made you with a fantastic attention to detail (Matthew 10:29-31).
Our bodies are subject to the plague of sin. Disease, obesity, dysfunction, and weakness are results of the fall (Psalm 38:3-4).
The gospel tells us that in Christ, we're given a once-and-for-all seal of approval by the only One whose opinion matters (1 Corinthians 1:8).
That acceptance isn't conditional or partial; it includes our bodies.We're whole beings, bodies and souls inexorably knit together. The brokenness of both is covered by the sanctifying blood of Jesus (Romans 8:11).
One day, these failing bodies will be exchanged for gloriously restored and unbreakable bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42-45).

Our bodies are first and foremost a gift. God made them "fearfully and wonderfully" (Psalm 139:14) and intended them to be a part of the glorious harmony of creation, using them to serve him and others. Sin has disrupted that harmony, introducing sickness, weakness, and the vast host of problems that plague our bodies. We could despair of the brokenness, convinced that nothing will get better until the resurrection. But this despairing attitude neglects the fact that God has made us stewards of all of his gifts, including our bodies. As Paul says:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Rather than seeing our bodies in the light of the world's absurd standards, we see them as gifts meant to give God glory and to serve others.

There's no doubt that Americans have serious challenges related to fitness. Obesity is an epidemic, and health problems related to diets abound: cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes---the list goes on and on. Seeing our bodies as a gift should cause us to respond in much the same way we respond with our finances. As good stewards, we should examine all the ways we think about and care for our bodies.

Rather than being motivated by youth culture and absurd (and shifting) standards of beauty, we should be motivated by stewardship: how ready is your body to serve others?
When thinking about aging, rather than focusing on fighting the signs of age, or living in fear of the effects of aging, we should seek health for the sake of longevity. Should the Lord allow, we want to lovingly and enthusiastically serve God and others for the long haul.

Seeking Wisdom

Crash diets and exercise obsessions only make sense when they serve an idol in response to motivation like shame. We'll gladly risk long-term injuries and damages to our health, sacrificing them on the altar of youth or self-image, if we think the ends justify the means.

But if we're seeking health so we can be good stewards of the gift God has given us, the ends and the means are essentially the same. How we go about changing is just as important as the results that we're seeking.

This calls us for wisdom. We need to be patient and sober, wisely avoiding the recklessness that accompanies diet culture like "abs in two weeks" or "lose 20 lbs TODAY!" We should talk to doctors and trainers, adopting a long-range plan for a lifestyle that promotes health and embraces the realities of modern life.

We need to be realistic, both in the methods we adopt and the results we expect. Not everyone can go to the gym every day, and not everyone can adopt the same diets. Nor is it necessary. Food, like any good gift, should be enjoyed as a gift and avoided as a master. It can master us in excessive consumption, and it can master us in obsessive and fearful nitpicking. Food shouldn't consume all of our thoughts and conversations, and our decisions aren't grounds for judging others. A self-righteous dieter---whether low-carb, high-carb, low-fat, high-fat, Atkins, Weston Price, or Weight-Watchers---is just another Pharisee, destined to frustrate and annoy far more than convince those around him. Hold your convictions about food gently and loosely, recognizing (as Paul did with the Corinthian church) that it's an area open to a variety of convictions.

Enduring Patiently

Food is tempting. Exercise is not. And change is slow. Keep this in mind as you try to make real and lasting change.

My own efforts have resulted in mixed success. I lost a lot of weight after I saw the picture, dropping about 40 pounds in the year or so that followed. I focused on eating healthy and exercising, benefiting greatly from the counsel of a friend who worked as a personal trainer. In the years that followed, I've fluctuated a good bit, but I've enjoyed a base level of fitness that seems to help me bounce back quickly when I fall off the wagon. The first six months was by far the hardest.

In recent years, I find I'm far more motivated by how I feel than by how I look. When an injury required almost three months off from exercise last year, I once again stared at a bit of a discouraging "spare tire," but I was far more concerned with my general fatigue and weakness.

When we're healthy, we're better able to serve, love, and bless others. We don't wear out so quickly, and we're not daunted by requests to help, whether it's moving a table, leading a kids' Sunday school class, or traveling to Africa.

The dieting roller coaster isn't ending. So long as we have Big Macs and big screen TVs, there will be a host of people who wake up one day saying, "I need to lose weight." And in the world of diet books and exercise tapes, there is plenty of good science and helpful information. We don't necessarily need different goals for our weight and fitness. We need better motivations.

Mike Cosper is pastor of worship and arts at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He writes on the gospel and the arts for The Gospel Coalition.

posted under Biblical, Cravings, fitness, Food, Get It Together, Good Point, Inspiration, Lifestyles, Small Steps, Weight Loss | 0 Comments

God's Perspective on Fitness (in a way)

Posted by Clare@peak313 in Featured, Spiritual | 5 Comments
My Christmas Wish For You

I wish I could tell you that eating cookies, candy and chips would have no affect on our bodies.
But they do.
I wish I could tell you that not moving our bodies and challenging our muscles would have no bearing on the scale.
But it does.
I wish that I could tell you that filling our bodies with empty calories and non-nutritious (yet yummy) foods would give us endless amounts of energy.
But they don’t.
I wish I could tell you that instead of our body breaking down little by little as we age, it gets better and better.
But it doesn’t.
♥♥♥
You see. So many of us aren’t accepting the reality of the situation. It’s not my wish that we would have to discipline ourselves daily, activate self-control and work hard to keep our bodies and health in check. God has designed our bodies this way on purpose. Have you stopped to think why that is?
God is asking us to allow Him in, every day, in every area of life. He wants us to use HIM as our fulfiller of desires. He wants us to cry to HIM when our hearts cry for food. He wants us to ask HIM for the daily self-control needed to battle every day issues.
In this season, we are reminded of a beautiful thing.
God With Us.
We have been given a gift. A Spirit and Presence that lives inside of us.
God with Us.
He resides in these deteriorating bodies.
God with Us.
He resides in us whether overweight or not. He resides in us when we aren’t residing in Him.
God with Us.
My Christmas wish for you is this: That you would accept the beautiful challenge God has given us to steward these wonderful houses where our spirit resides. And that instead of constantly fighting and rejecting the notion that we have to work, that we embrace it fully with the energy, vigor and focus that God has given us. Ask yourself, “how can I present my life and body as a gift to the one who is with me always?”

posted under Biblical, Cravings, Exercise, Food, Get It Together, Good Point, Progress, Small Steps, Weight Loss | 0 Comments

Top 5 Paleo Diet Mistakes

Top 5 Most Common Paleo Weight Loss Mistakes

Paleo is an amazing lifestyle that can help you to regain your natural shape. Primal food plans are elimination diets that lower inflammation by removing irritating foods that will help your body promote it's own healing and weight loss. As a nutritionist I see a lot of people who try do Paleo their own way and sometime they stall in their weight loss efforts. Let me preface by saying that I am assuming you are 100% gluten free. To me there is no 80/20 policy on this issue because one slip up can flare up the immune system and undo much of your progress. Since most people who are going Paleo have health challenges in the first place, gluten is a non-negotiable irritating food that must be eliminated. If you don't believe me read more here about gluten and why it should be avoided.

1. Eating too many nuts
Most nuts are high in Omega 6. One thing we are trying to do on Paleo is get our ratio of Omega 6 and Omega 3 in balance. According to Dr. Mercola a 4/1 or even a 2/1 ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 would be optimal for reducing inflammation and preventing disease. Inflammation and weight gain go hand in hand, like a chicken or the egg situation. Visceral belly fat even can even make it's own inflammatory chemicals. If you lower inflammation from too much Omega 6 oils (canola, corn, soybean, and too many nuts) and allergenic foods (wheat, soy, and most dairy) you should lose weight. If you do choose to eat nuts I would recommend the Robb Wolf's way of cracking and shelling them yourself . A serving of nuts is 1/4 cup, which is what I recommend for my weight loss clients to keep omega 6 and portions in check.

2. Eating too much fruit
Fruit has amazing antioxidants, fiber and phytonutrients, but it also has a lot of sugar which can make you overeat. The fruit of today also does not resemble the fruit of ancient times. It has been hybridized to be very large and sweet. Think about if you ever saw a berry bush in the woods, does that fruit look anything like the huge overgrown fruit at the supermarket? Also there is the issue of fructose, a controversial topic. It has been shown to exacerbate cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's according in many studies and articles. So when you are choosing to eat fruit keep your portions small such as 1 cup of berries or 1/4 of a melon. It is ideal to eat fruit post workout with a meal. Never eat fruit alone without fat or protein because it will cause too much of a blood sugar spike and make you hungry.

3. Eating skinless chicken breasts
Thinking back on how many hundreds of shoe leather, hockey puck chicken breasts I have choked down in my life does not give me the warm fuzzies. Those days are over, thanks heavens. I grew up during the 90's when fat free marinara sauce and No Yolks noodles were all the rage. Then after college I was on a high carb, low fat diet for 10 years but thankfully I survived. Now I have learned that saturated fats from meat are crucial for satiety and health. Saturated fats are so important that the body actually turns carbs into fat for energy regulation and hormone production. Which means that if you don't eat fat from meat, you will crave carbs constantly. Many times clients come to me with their food journals and I see white chicken over and over. This misconception comes from Paleo diet books that instruct people to eat lean protein. These diet book are usually assuming the reader is eating conventional factory farmed meat that is full of toxins, hormones, and antibiotics, which means trimming the fat is a good idea. But ideally people are eating grass fed meats which are already leaner than their corn fed counter parts. The CLA in the fat of grass fed animals has been shown in many studies to help people lose weight, so eat up! Also organic animals will be free of antibiotics and pesticides which promote estrogen mimickers that can increase fat storage in humans. If you shop from a farmers market or get to know a local farmer you can also get great discounts. Trader Joe's and Costco have organic and grass fed animals at reasonable prices. So buy pastured and organic animals as much as you can. Then eat the fat and enjoy!

4. Using olive oil as a main source of fat
Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat which is a longer chain fat that resembles our own body fat stores. Olive oil is also not safe for heating because it has a low smoke point and can easily oxidize causing free radicals. I would rather see my clients eating Grass Fed butter and coconut oil. Grass Fed butter contains lecithin and Conjugated Linoleic Acid both of which support fat burning and muscle development. Vitamin A in butter is essential for a proper functioning thyroid gland which is a main regulator of body fat. Coconut oil is full of medium chain fatty acids which are used by the body for quick energy and are not stored as adipose tissue. Coconut oil is a very stable fat for cooking that even reduces belly fat. If you want to know more about how coconut oil can help you lose weight click here.

5. Dairy Delusion
Dairy has good and bad properties. We could argue about this all day long and they did at the recent AHS #11. Pasteurized milk has little benefit and there is more calcium in leafy greens than you will from dead overheated dairy products. In contrast raw milk and cheese have amazing vitamins like Vitamin K2 which may be a missing link to why traditional cultures were so healthy. I do think raw milk is a superfood but what I usually see is people overeating conventional dairy and then wondering why they are not losing weight. Dairy is a common allergen so I think most people should eliminate it for 2 weeks just make sure they don't have any sensitivity (mucus, brain fog, gas, bloating, diarrhea) reactions. One other thing about milk is that it contains a protein called Casomorphin which can have and opioid effect on the brain. If you find that you can't put down the raw cheese or you guzzle a pint of raw milk in one slurp this may mean you are sensitive to milk and should approach it with caution.

posted under Food, Get It Together, Good Point, Paleo, Progress, Weight Loss | 0 Comments

Maybe I shouldn't be so nuts about nuts

Another reason you shouldn’t go nuts on nuts

September 23, 2011 in Food & Nutrition | 152 comments

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picture of mixed nuts In a previous article¹, I suggested that nut consumption should be limited or moderated because of the high levels of omega-6 fat many of them contain. But there’s another reason you shouldn’t make nuts a staple of your diet.

One of the main principles of the Paleo diet is to avoid eating grains and legumes because of the food toxins they contain. One of those toxins, phytic acid (a.k.a. phytate), is emphasized as one of the greatest offenders.

But what is often not mentioned in books or websites about the Paleo diet is that nuts are often as high or even higher in phytic acid than grains. In fact, nuts decrease iron absorption even more than wheat bread². This is ironic because a lot of people on the Paleo diet – who go to great lengths to avoid food toxins – are chowing down nut like they’re going out of style.

What is phytic acid and why should we care?

Phytic acid is the storage form of phosphorus found in many plants, especially in the bran or hull of grains and in nuts and seeds. Although herbivores like cows and sheep can digest phytic acid, humans can’t. This is bad news because phytic acid strongly inhibits mineral absorption in adults³ – especially iron and zinc. Studies suggest that we absorb approximately 20 percent more zinc and 60 percent more magnesium from our food when phytic acid is absent⁴.

Phytic acid interferes with enzymes we need to digest our food, including pepsin, which is needed for the breakdown of proteins in the stomach, and amylase, which is required for the breakdown of starch. Phytic acid also inhibits the enzyme trypsin, which is needed for protein digestion in the small intestine.

As most people following a Paleo diet will probably have heard by now, diets high in phytate cause mineral deficiencies. For example, rickets and osteoporosis are common in societies where cereal grains are a staple part of the diet.⁵

How much phytic acid should you eat?

Before you go out and try to remove every last scrap of phytic acid from your diet, keep in mind that it’s likely humans can tolerate a small to moderate amount of phytic acid – in the range of 100 mg to 400 mg per day. According to Ramiel Nagel in his article “Living With Phytic Acid”⁶, the average phytate intake in the U.S. and the U.K. ranges between 631 and 746 mg per day; the average in Finland is 370 mg; in Italy it is 219 mg; and in Sweden a mere 180 mg per day.

If you’re on a Paleo diet you’re already avoiding some of the higher sources of phytic acid: grains and legumes like soy. But if you’re eating a lot of nuts and seeds – which a lot of Paleo folks do – you still might be exceeding the safe amount of phytic acid.

As you can see from the table below, 100 grams of almonds contains between 1,200 – 1,400 mg of phytic acid. 100g is about 3 ounces. That’s equal to a large handful. A handful of hazelnuts, which is further down on the list, would still exceed the recommended daily intake – and that’s assuming you’re not eating any other foods with phytic acid, which is not likely. Even the Paleo-beloved coconut has almost 400 mg of phytic acid per 100 gram serving.

[Disappointing side note for chocolate lovers: Raw unfermented cocoa beans and normal cocoa powder are extremely high in phytic acid. Processed chocolate may also contain significant levels.]

FIGURE 2: PHYTIC ACID LEVELS¹
In milligrams per 100 grams of dry weight

Brazil nuts	1719
Cocoa powder	1684-1796
Oat flakes	1174
Almond	1138 – 1400
Walnut	982
Peanut roasted	952
Brown rice	840-990
Peanut ungerminated	821
Lentils	779
Peanut germinated	610
Hazelnuts	648 – 1000
Wild rice flour	634 – 752.5
Yam meal	637
Refried beans	622
Corn tortillas	448
Coconut	357
Corn	367
Entire coconut meat	270
White flour	258
White flour tortillas	123
Polished rice	11.5 – 66
Strawberries	12

Can you prepare nuts to make them safer to eat?

Unfortunately we don’t have much information on how to reduce phytic acid in nuts. However, we know that most traditional cultures often go to great lengths prior to consuming them.
According to Nagel⁷:

It is instructive to look at Native American preparation techniques for the hickory nut, which they used for oils. To extract the oil they parched the nuts until they cracked to pieces and then pounded them until they were as fine as coffee grounds. They were then put into boiling water and boiled for an hour or longer, until they cooked down to a kind of soup from which the oil was strained out through a cloth. The rest was thrown away. The oil could be used at once or poured into a vessel where it would keep a long time.⁵⁰
By contrast, the Indians of California consumed acorn meal after a long period of soaking and rinsing, then pounding and cooking. Nuts and seeds in Central America were prepared by salt water soaking and dehydration in the sun, after which they were ground and cooked.

Modern evidence also suggests that at least some of the phytate can be broken down by soaking and roasting. The majority of this data indicates that soaking nuts for eighteen hours, dehydrating at very low temperatures (either in a food dehydrator or a low temperature oven), and then roasting or cooking the nuts would likely eliminate a large portion of the phytic acid.

Elanne and I have been preparing nuts like this for a few years, and I personally notice a huge difference in how I digest them. I used to have a heavy sensation in my stomach after eating nuts, but I don’t get that at all when I eat them after they’ve been prepared this way.

Another important thing to be aware of is that phytic acid levels are much higher in foods grown using modern high-phosphate fertilizers than those grown in natural compost.

So how many nuts should you eat?

The answer to that question depends on several factors:

Your overall health and mineral status
Your total intake of phytic acid from other foods
Whether you are soaking, dehydrating and roasting them nuts before consuming them

One of the biggest problems I see is with people following the GAPS or Specific Carbohydrate Diets, which are gut-healing protocols for people with serious digestive issues. Most GAPS and SCD recipe books emphasize using nut flour to make pancakes and baked goods. This is presumably because many people who adopt these diets find it hard to live without grains, legumes and any starch.

Unfortunately, nut flours have not been soaked and prepared properly, so they’re likely to be loaded with phytic acid. The same is true – I hate to say – for coconut flour, which is now all the rage in the Paleo/GAPS community. Soaking nut or coconut flour for 18 hours before using it can help, but it does change the texture significantly – which many find undesirable.

It’s also best to avoid most commercial nut butters, which are made with unsoaked nuts. However, some health food stores do carry brands of “raw, sprouted” nut butters that would presumably be safer to eat.

In the context of a diet that is low in phytic acid overall, and high in micronutrients like iron and calcium, a handful of nuts that have been properly prepared each day should not be a problem for most people. However, for more vulnerable populations – like those suffering from tooth decay, bone loss or mineral deficiencies, pregnant women, children under 6 years of age, or those with digestive malabsorption issues or serious illnesses – it’s best to consume as little phytic acid as possible.

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Going against the grain

Going Against the Grain Towards Better Health

Grains are often called the “staff of life,” having a sort of credibility that is biblical in proportion. So prevalent is the perception that grains make for “good food” that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – which is the United Nation’s international agency for defeating hunger – uses a head of wheat as its emblem, with the Latin Fiat Panis or “Let There Be Bread” as its motto.

Despite the rather lofty secular position a loaf of whole grain bread may hold in the international community, the biblical record actually shows that the first foods mentioned in the Bible were the Herbs and Fruit Trees (Genesis 1:29), and that by punishment for sin God gave man bread:

“…cursed is the ground for thy sake;…In the sweat of thy face shalt though eat bread, till though return unto the ground…” (Genesis 3:17,19).

The inherent wisdom of this biblical message has long been forgotten and today, according to the USDA MyPlate, grains should constitute a sizeable sector of our diet in the form of “bread, cereal, rice, and pasta.” Many of us, whose hyper-agrarian taste buds and gastrointestinal tracts have never once gone a day without some grain-derived morsel of bread or cracker, find ourselves expressing our dependency on these foods in telling, half confessionary phrases like: “I’m starving for a piece of bread,” or “that pizza is to die for,” forgetting that among non-agrarian peoples, grains were universally considered a last resort, or, starvation food only.

In an agrarian society such as our own, we should expect our government to recommend the consumption of grains and our contemporaries to consume grains in plenty. After all, we are no longer hunting and gathering our food. Cereal grasses, in fact, are at the substrate of nearly all modern food production, from the breads we bake, to the milk we drink and to the meats we eat.** With 10% corn ethanol gasoline now a federal mandate, even our vehicles are forced to quench their thirst at the table of the almighty grain.7

And yet despite all of this, economic pressures and cultural preferences can not delete the fact that our bodies did not evolve on a grain-based diet. Grain consumption en masse, in fact, stretches back only 1-500 generations (20-10,000 years)*, depending on how far from the bread basket of civilization, i.e. the Fertile Crescent, one’s ancestors happened to have wandered, or how fortunate they were in fending off invading agrarian societies, such as the Romans, whose moniker as the “Wheat Empire” was earned to it by the fact that that Roman forts were actually granaries, designed to hold a year supply of wheat in case of siege. Still today, the Irish, Scottish and Finns have some of the world’s highest levels of celiac disease, as their resilient ancestors managed – for the most part – to fend off the Roman invaders, while at the same time preventing them from adapting adequately to the radically different fair of a grain based diet. (Learn more in our article The Dark Side of Wheat)

Historical examples like these provide an interesting window to peer through, but it is to prehistory, as inscribed so perfectly into the very flesh and bone of the human frame, and then even further down to our very DNA, that we must look if we are to perceive with any clarity how alien cereal grass seeds are to our metabolism.

The most obvious physiological representation of this fact is that we are monogastric mammals, and therefore are not equipped with the multitude of forestomachs found in the ruminant animals which enable them to break down these difficult to digest grasses. Even the ruminants have great difficulty with the “seed” form of the grasses, developing metabolic acidosis, infections and other “diseases of affluence” not dissimilar to those that afflict humans who consume grains heavily, especially when fed wheat.

Seeds, after all, are the “babies” of these plants, and are invested with not only the entire hope for continuance of its species, but a vast armory of anti-nutrients to help it accomplish this task: toxic lectins, phytates and oxalates, alpha-amalyase and trypsin inhibitors, and endocrine disrupters. These not so appetizing phytochemicals enable plants to resist predation of their seeds, or at least preventing them from “going out without a punch.” (Learn about the ultimate "invisible thorn" in wheat seeds here)

We are monogastric mammals for a reason. Our gastrointestinal tracts have been intelligently constructed via millions of years of adaptation to environmental determinants, with diet first in order of importance. It is no longer a mystery why we are built the way we are. In fact decades of research in biology, evolution, anthropology and genetics have now brought to light the formative forces behind our present day metabolism and physiology.

We Are What We Once Ate Long Ago

A growing body of research has emerged which focuses on the relationship between agrarian or grain-based diets and diseases of affluence, and how increased susceptibility for obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes in agrarian societies can be linked to the absence of genetic adaptations to the consumption of grains in our species as a whole. These genetic aberrations can be further broken down, to varying degrees of intensity, in demographically distinct human populations who have had between 1 and 500 generations of biological time to adjust to their consumption. The greater the distance in space and time a human subgroup has spent from grain consumption, the less likely that group will have the genes necessary to handle the metabolism of grains effectively.

That we did not evolve eating cereal grasses was made perfectly clear in the published thesis: “Agrarian diet and disease of affluence – Do evolutionary novel dietary lectins cause leptin resistance?” where a group of European scientists** point out that:

“The grasses emerged between 65 and 55 million years ago. And since the last common ancestor of the humans emerged before this time, some 90 to 65 million years ago, it cannot have had a diet consisting of seeds from grass. Subsequent evolution of our primate ancestors up until 4-8 million years ago is thought to have taken place in the trees, where almost all potential plant food comes from dicotyledonous species and the monocotyledonous grasses are absent.”

At some point 4-8 million years ago our arboreal ancestors descended from their trees taking up a radically different livelihood as ground level foragers, and later as nomadic hunters and gatherers.

The advent of Homo Sapiens 200,000 years ago saw animal foods become increasingly important. As our ancestors moved away from equatorial zones, where vegetarian sources of food were available year round, carnivorous behavior sustained our migrations to less hospitable latitudes.

Carbon isotopic signature analysis of hominin remains from the Upper Paleolithic (28-29K years ago) reveal that these ancient hunters and gatherers were consuming animal protein year-round at a higher trophic level than the arctic fox.**

This is not surprising information, considering that thorough analyses of the data gleaned from the world’s historically studied hunters and gatherers show that 73% of them obtained 50% or more of their subsistence from hunted and fished animal foods.**

Perhaps the strongest case can be made for a grain free diet by looking a certain genetic defects all humans share in their genotype.

1. Humans share several distinctive genetic traits with felines: a) enlarged brain size and reduced gut size, in response to an animal based diet. b) the inability to synthesize taurine, an amino acid found in high levels in animal foods c) the reduced ability to convert 18 carbon omega 3 fatty acids found in grains and seeds, e.g. alpha linolenic acid, into the metabolically essential 20 and 22 carbon fatty acids like EPA/DHA found in animal flesh, e.g. wild fish.

2. Humans are incapable of deactivating the leptin-blocking lectin found in grains, which makes them prone to obesity. The exact gene sequence that deactivates this lectin is found in genetically diverse species such as rodents and birds; a homology, no doubt, which exists because both species have had many thousands of years more time than humans to adjust to grain consumption.

Moreover, different human populations have differing degrees of grain adaptation.

1. Scientists have identified an incomplete Angiotensin Converting Enzyme gene, and an incomplete alipoprotein B gene in groups of humans who have very high rates of cardiovascular disease, and have had little time to adapt to an agrarian diet.

2. Celiac disease afflicts, in greatest number, exactly those human populations that have had the greatest separation in time and space from the agrarian modality. (Learn how 30% of the world's population has the "celiac gene" here).

The story of our intolerance to grains is complex, and involves too many factors to address in this short article. We will briefly list the most dominant problems, which we hope to cover in future analyses:

1. High anti-nutrient content: enzyme inhibitors, mineral binding phytates and oxalates.

2. toxic lectins which increase gut permeability, aggravate distant cell types and organ systems in the body, and stimulate the production of autoantigens. (Learn how wheat lectin relates to potato, rice, barley and tomato lection here).

3. Unbalanced amino acid profiles: low in the essential amino acid lysine, and extremely high in the excitoxic amino acids aspartic and gluamtic acid,

4. DNA sequences in grains, e.g. gliadin in wheat, exhibit similar, if not identical patterns with certain pathogens and human tissue, e.g. pertactin (the immunodominant sequence form pertussis – the pathogen that causes whooping cough) shares the same sequence as the wheat protein known as gliadin. This ‘molecular mimicry’ can cause autoimmune reactions and disease.

(Learn about how over 100 diseases have been linked to wheat consumption)

5. Certain grains have opiate-like activity in the brain e.g. wheat contains gliadimorphin which activates the endogenous opiate receptors. (Learn more about Gluten exorphins)

6. Grains once processed and cooked have high glycemic ratings, causing the endocrine roller coaster that can lead to both forms of diabetes.

7. 70% of the industrial world’s grain production goes to feeding livestock, poultry and fish.

*It is possible that these estimations need to be revised to 30,000 years ago. Read "Bread was Around 30,000 Years Ago" To Learn More.

** Plio-Pleistocene Hominin Diets for Modern Humans, pg. 367

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