Why "should" one consider avoiding even gluten-free grains?

In my last post, I said I'd entertain questions on food and health. Here was my first question, and it was a great one!

Why "should" one consider avoiding even gluten-free grains?

Most people know that folks with celiac disease shouldn't eat gluten and that, if they do, they can have a very bad reaction. To serve this population, a growing number of foods are being made with alternative grains and are labeled gluten-free. Most of us assume there’s something ‘wrong’ with those people with celiac, but lets look at grains in general and what they contain.

From an evolutionary standpoint, everything wants to survive at least long enough to procreate. Animals, plants, bacteria, viruses... everything has the same ultimate goal to keep the species alive. Animals have legs so they can run away from predators or they can use their claws and teeth to defend themselves. Plants on the other hand are stuck in the ground. Some plants have developed spines, thorns or thick skin to prevent themselves from being eaten. Some plants have developed bad taste as a deterrent, while others create toxins. That’s what we’ll be focusing on to answer this question.

Different plants, and the grains or seeds of those plants have different defense mechanisms for deterring their consumption.  The most commonly talked about, is gluten, which is contained in wheat, rye and barley. Gluten is one of a large group of lectins.  Lectins are essentially nature’s pesticide.  Lectins are toxins found in a variety of foods, including gluten-free grains; but not limited to, rice, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, oats, and corn.  They attempt to prevent the grains from being eaten by causing the eater distress. Some grains have higher concentrations or more potent lectins working through different pathways to prevent the eater from consuming too many grains and wiping out the species.

We’ll use rice as an example because it can be ground into flour and used in some gluten free recipes. Rice has “haemagglutinin-lectin” which can bind to intestinal cells, but instead of damaging them, it just causes the cells to be less able to absorb the nutrients you do want. Luckily, nearly all the “bad” stuff is contained in the rice hull, so white rice, which is rice with the hull removed is pretty safe. Brown rice though is rice with the hull still intact and, therefore, contains the lectin as well as phytates that bind to the nutrients. This makes even more nutrients unavailable to the eater, and also inhibits trypsin. Trypsin is used by humans to break down proteins, so you won’t be able to digest that steak you ate as effectively if you eat a bunch of brown rice at the same time. So remember, white rice is better than brown if you’re looking to avoid lectins.

These gluten-free grains contain different lectins that can cause varying degrees of discomfort to the eater, but most don’t produce any immediate acute symptoms. Some lectins bind to the sugars molecules on your cells. By binding to the cells on the intestinal wall, causing inflammation, and damaging the barrier between your guts and your blood, particles of incompletely digested food could make their way into the blood stream. This is sometimes called “leaky gut” and might be linked to a number of autoimmune diseases. You won't often notice this right away and might think “grains aren’t a problem for me”, until you start getting allergies, or arthritis, or diabetes.

Other lectins can also bind to insulin receptors on a cell, meaning the cell can’t get the vitamins and minerals necessary inside, or they can reduce leptin receptor sensitivity. Leptin is a hormone your cells release to tell the hypothalamus in your brain that they are full and you should stop eating so if your brain doesn’t get the “stop eating” message, it becomes much easier to over-eat.  

So, one reason to consider being “grain free” is to avoid the lectins in grains and therefore avoid the problems they might cause.  But it gets to be pretty slippery a slope, because other foods have other lectins, like soy, legumes, dairy and nightshades. You could eliminate a lot of otherwise good foods just to avoid lectins. Different lectins bind to different simple sugars (mono and oligosaccharides), so if you can eat those foods that essentially neutralize the particular lectin, you’ll get better absorption and nutrient use.  

There isn’t a lot of research on which simple sugars inactivate which lectins though. There is some research that shows glucosamine binds to gluten, but there’s no way to eat enough glucosamine to balance out the lectins. Overall it seems to be easier to avoid the lectins and get your vitamins from safer foods, and when you do eat a lectin filled food, properly preparing it to reduce the over lectin load is best.

At the end of the day, I still eat white rice and some corn chips on occasion, but one might consider avoiding grains all together to reduce a large portion of ones daily intake of lectins. Those with GI tract issues would be most likely to feel better from a reduction or elimination of grains.  Since their GI system is actively damaged, by removing some of the damaging chemicals, they might be better able to heal, as some lectins even prevent healing.  Most of the time replacement grains are used in recipes that could be questionable for other reasons anyway; like gluten free cookies...


Please let me know if there are more questions or I need to clarify or expand on something in this post.