Lower Your Lectin Intake

Not all plant foods are created equally. Some plants contain LECTINS. A single or group of proteins that act as the plants defense mechanism against predators, ie. hungry mammals that want to eat the plants. Lectins act as anti-nutrients in the human body preventing us from absorbing other essential nutrients from the foods we are consuming. In other cases, these proteins can really harm us, this depends on how sensitive you are to lectins and which specific lectin is at play.

You Can Still Eat Lectins, Just Follow my Tips!

Some of the foods that contain lectins are: beans, legumes, most nuts, tomatoes, seeded vegetables (which are actually fruits), and grains.  Whole grains contain higher levels of lectins, becauselectins are found in greater concentration in the outer bran.
It doesn’t mean we can’t eat these foods ever again. If you know how to lower the load of lectins that you give your body, you will be way ahead of the game. You will avoid damage to your body and you will be able to properly digest and absorb the nutrients in foods containing lectins. Read on for a few ways to reduce lectin toxicity and increase the digestibility and nutrition absorption of lectin containing plant foods.

• SOAKING: Reduce lectins in grains, beans and nuts by soaking them overnight preferably in baking soda water, rinsing them out a couple of times prior to cooking them.
• PRESSURE COOKING: For further elimination or reduction of lectins, cook these foods in a pressure cooker. Modern electric pressure cookers are a better and less scary option than the old fashion manual pressure cookers.
• FERMENTING: I love fermenting foods! This method has so many benefits, apart from helping us attain or maintain a healthy gut biome and digestion. The bacteria in the foods being fermented, pre-digests the food, doing the hard work for your digestive system while using those foods to feed themselves, this process significantly reduces the lectin content. It’s a win win!
• PEEL AND SEED: According to Dr. Steven Gundry(Read his great book on lectins,) the most harmful part of plant foods high in lectins, such as eggplant, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes is the peel. So remove the peel as well as the seeds which also contain lectins before you eat these foods.

Proper Cooking

Along with reducing lectins, proper cooking of foods is essential for optimum digestibility and assimilation of nutrients. Many people, like me, have a weak digestive fire, aka Agni, in Ayurvedic terminology. There are many reasons for weak agni, one of them being one’s constitution. When someone has a weak agni, it is somewhat difficult to properly digest the food we eat, especially when cold and raw foods are thrown into the mix.

Digestion is a process that requires lots of energy from our bodies, so we must strive to make the very exhausting task of digestion as easy as possible.

For the longest time I noticed that my belly would get very bloated after eating certain foods. One day, I noticed that this would happen especially when I consumed raw and cold foods like cold smoothies, acai bowls and raw salads. Since then, I’ve been lightly cooking my vegetables and even steaming the veggies I put in my smoothies. This has really helped me prevent getting bloated.

Lubricate Your Plant Foods

Now, after eating a carefully constructed plant based diet, I’m able to handle some raw vegetables every now and then, but I absolutely make sure I add plenty of olive oil or avocado oil and mix it in with my salad really well about 10 min before I eat it. I “marinate” my veggies because the oil breaks down the cell walls the longer it sits in on the vegetables.

One other reason to add plenty of good fats to our veggies is enhanced bioavailability of nutrient absorption, since many of the vitamins and minerals contained in vegetables require fat to be optimally absorbed and utilized.

Ayurveda very accurately suggests – we are what we digest– if we don’t make sure that our bodies properly digest and assimilate what we eat, it doesn’t matter if we are eating the purest of the foods, we won’t be able to completely reap the benefits of the foods we are ingesting.

Food Diversity

With so much availability and diversity of plant foods within our reach, it’s very surprising to me how little variety of plants make it into our diet. Diversity is very important! When we eat the same foods over and over, we run the risk of becoming nutrient deficient and developing food sensitivities. It is to our benefit to begin experimenting and start trying out new foods. Next time you go grocery shopping, buy a new vegetable that you’ve never tried before.

Last week when I went grocery shopping, I picked up a few sunchokes, a new one for me (by the way, at the end of the article I’ll attach a simple recipe for sunchokes). I’m so happy about these because they actually contain prebiotic fiber which is my gut microbes favorite food. Yay!

Fruits

Fruits have so many amazing nutrients and benefits for your health, but most of them are loaded with sugar. You might say, but it’s from fruits and they’re natural. Well, you can say what you want but, sugar is sugar and there is no way around it. As you may already know, consuming a diet high in sugar negatively affects your health. Sugar causes inflammation, weight gain, and other issues. You must consider the amount of sugar you consume daily. Don’t completely avoid fruit for the rest of your life. You just need to choose wisely and eat responsibly. Some of the fruits with the highest sugar content are: mangos, ripe bananas, grapes, pomegranates and all dried fruits, especially raisins. Berries on the other hand, are ones that contain significantly lower amounts of sugar and hold high amounts of antioxidants, so, start eating more berries! When in season of course.

A final factor to consider when adopting a plant based diet. Keep it simple and follow your internal GPS, aka your intuition, it knows how to best care for your body. Intuition + information, basic knowledge and common sense will help you fully reap the benefits of eating a great variety of plant foods provided by the mighty and abundant MOTHER NATURE.

You will feel supported, full of energy, more alive, lighter and more joyful adopting this way of eating and applying some if not all of the tips I’ve given you.

To your health, cheers!

My Favorite Recipe for Tandori Sunchokes

Crispy Rosemary And Tandoori Sunchokes (Aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

strong>Ingredients

• 2 tbsp ghee (or as much as you want)
• 1 tsp tandoori powder
• ½ tbsp dried rosemary or 3 sprigs fresh rosemary
• ¼ cup bone broth
• Salt + pepper to taste

Preparation

Heat ghee in a large skillet, over medium-high heat. Add the quartered sunchokes and the remaining ingredients. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally until sunchokes are tender (to test, stab with a fork), about 8-10 min.

Uncover skillet and cook until broth is evaporated and sunchokes begin to look crispy, about 5-7 min longer. Remove from skillet, serve and top off with a bit more ghee.

Information Overload

There’s so much information out there about food, nutrition and the perfect diet. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and confused. One thing that everyone can agree on is that a plant based diet is the most beneficial diet for humans to thrive on. It’s ancient wisdom and common sense.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a weak digestive system. By trying to heal myself and achieve better health, I became somewhat of an expert on adopting a nutrient dense plant-based diet.

I want to share tips that I have learned along my journey and want to share how you can make better and informed decisions when it comes to what you feed your body.

I was a vegetarian for about 6 years. At the time, I didn’t know much about nutrition.  I decided to become a vegetarian to uplevel my health. When I first started, I ate a diet full of sugar and processed vegetarian foods.

That diet had nothing to do with being healthy. As I started to learn more about nutrition, I began to incorporate a variety of vegetables and plant foods into my diet. I began to understand what a plant-based diet really was. I’m no longer exclusively vegetarian, I have come to the conclusion that my body needs some good quality animal-based foods. But that doesn’t mean I no longer eat a plant based diet, on the contrary, I eat more plants now than I have ever before.

What Is A Plant-Based Diet?

To me, the definition of a plant-based diet is just that- a diet based on plants. This does not mean exclusively plants, however. While some people could thrive on a diet solely composed of plants, other people like me, need the help of animal based foods. It is undeniable that a diet largely composed of plant-based whole foods is the most beneficial for our bodies to thrive and receive the all the nutrients that it needs to function best. Whether or not you eat animal-based foods, fill most of your plate with unprocessed or minimally processed good quality plant foods. This rule is essential to achieve optimal health. To give you an example, my dinner plate is usually filled with 75 – 80% plant foods. The remaining portion is some kind of animal based food, like good quality wild-caught fatty fish or organic pasture raised chicken. Many days a week, my plate is filled with a 100% plant-based foods.

Not So Fast!

You might think that the process of eating plants is pretty simple and straightforward — fill up your dinner plate with a bunch of kale and sprouts and poof your health and body will shine and improve magically. Nope. Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of your diet.

Eating Locally And With The Seasons

These days, we have almost unlimited access to all kinds of foods, from exotic fruits to vegetables, herbs and even meats and animal based products coming from all over the globe.

Thanks to modern transportation and chemical preservation of foods, we have been able to enjoy blueberries in december, cucumbers in january, and tomatoes in February. What many people may not be aware of, is that most produce gets transported great distances. It’s picked from the tree or vine UNRIPE to prevent them from spoiling during transit. The longer a fruit or vegetable sits after being picked, the more nutrients it loses. Not only does your body suffer from the long distance it travels from farm to table, but so does mother earth.

Natural Foods Are Seasonal Foods

Having unlimited availability of foods makes us unaware of the seasonality of the food we are eating. What is naturally grown in nature during the current season gets lost and this separates us from our original ways of living in tune with nature.

We get disconnected from our ‘source’ and our instincts. When we respect nature’s rhythms and live in sync with them, we become healthier by allowing nature to support our needs with her inherent and infinite wisdom. We are meant to eat foods that are in season. Fresh foods, organic and real (in all sense of the word), harvested not too long before they are eaten.

Nature knows Best!

Eat with the seasons for optimal assimilation of nutrients and to support for your bodies’ seasonal needs. The Fall offers tubers, squashes and variety of plants foods that can either  be eaten immediately or stored in the pantry for later use.

Nature understands the scarcity and austerity of winter and spring seasons, providing the perfect foods for the season. The light, young and leafy plant foods of early to mid spring help us lose and scrape away all the weight gained and toxins stored from the seasons prior. The high sugar, high carbohydrate, cooling and watery produce from the summer are there to keep us cool and hydrated and provide all the energy that such demanding and productive season requires from us.

A Diet that’s Downright Dirty

Many people might not know this, but soil contains vast amounts of microbes that actually change with the seasons, so when we eat the plants we are also ingesting the microbes they acquired from the soil they grew in, helping us diversify our microbiome. If we are eating with the seasons, our own gut microbiome will also seasonally change which will positively impact our health.

Please comment below on how you fill your plate, what works and what doesn’t?
Stay tuned for Thursday’s blog-Part Two of Adopting a Plant-Based Diet, I have more to share with you, especially if you have weak Agni.

Plants are producers, they make their own food using energy and materials from their environment.  Humans are consumers, we cannot make our own food from within.

These life producers are here to nourish us in many ways. Take a look at what happens when you make a green smoothie or green juice to start your day. Hemoglobin, a protein found in our red blood cells, carries oxygen from our lungs to the cells of our body. Chlorophyll, a pigment found in plants, produces oxygen. Hemoglobin and chlorophyll are only one molecule away from each other. Hemoglobin is organized around iron while chlorophyll is organized around magnesium and because they are so similar when ingested, chlorophyll helps do the job of hemoglobin. Meaning, more plants equals more oxygen to our cells. You’re green smoothie or green juice in the morning is allowing you to bathe your cells in fresh, nourishing oxygen.

Plants live in sync with nature, they live by the laws of nature and respect the cycles of the seasons. We should not think we are so special to live outside of these laws of nature ourselves. Our plant friends are here to thrive and help us live in sync with the season and thrive too. Take a look at what the plants are offering us as they grow in sync with the seasons.

Plant Nourishment Through the Seasons

Spring Growth

Spring is the season of Kapha, it’s a time of new beginnings and nourishment as seeds are planted.  The seed and earth contain Kapha energy from the hibernation of winter which is heavy, moist, stable and grounded.

As the season progresses Pitta begins to fill the earth and air, the sun comes around stronger adding the qualities of light, hot, mobile and liquid giving the seed the transformative energy to take root and then to sprout.

The sprout holds massive energy, it’s dense with nutrients and new life energy.  Sprouts by weight are the most nutritious food you can eat. They hold 300x more nutrients than any other part of the plant. That is the dense and nurturing energy of Kapha.  

Summer Gifts

Summer is the season of Pitta, in the peak of summer qualities are hot, sharp, liquid and mobile. The sprout that started in a Kapha stage uses the energy of Pitta to move from the root up toward the sun, into the stalk and leaves which provide us with oxygen rich nutrients.

In mid summer when greens are their leafiest is the best time for us to take advantage of this gift of oxygen and chlorophyll that the plants offer. If the plant is fruit, vegetable or flower bearing this is it’s time to reach its full expression of Pitta; colourful and beautiful.  

Fall Balance

Fall is the season of Vata, bringing the elements of dry, light, cold and mobile into play.  At this time if the seed is a root vegetable the energy starts to move downwards back into the moist, heavy and dense earth producing our plant meals.  

Root vegetables thrive in the dirt so they hold those qualities of dense, heavy, moist and grounding. In this Vata time of year, taking in foods that hold the qualities of heavy, dense, moist and grounding will help us keep our heads, feet and (bowel movements) where (and when) they should be.  

Winter Restore

Come winter, activity in nature slows right down, almost to what seems to be a stop. This is nature’s cycle of rest and restore. To recharge for the energy of new life in spring.  Ideally up until late winter we are still eating the nourishing, dense, warm, heavy, moist and grounding foods that fall harvest brought to keep Vata energy in balance and grounded.  

Once late winter arrives we begin feel the energy of Kapha arise which brings on the qualities of heavy, moist, stable and nurturing. It’s time to start the cycle all over again.  If we follow the cycle of nature and eat what the plants are offering we will thrive in our bodies and minds like the effortless thriving of our ecosystem.

If you are ready to thrive in your body, then start by taking a look around you.  What season are you in?  What plants are readily producing food for you to eat?  The plants are trying to nourish you – are you listening?

Click here for an Ayurveda Fall Cleanse Stew