I just listened to the 2ketodudes podcast last night. It was wonderful to listen to Paul Mason’s discussion on lectins, vegetables and leaky gut. I hope you have him back on to talk about Parkinson’s. @CarrieBrown It got me thinking about whether or not the fibers of plants are also full of lectins. Like what about psyllium fiber, or oat fiber?
Mercola seems like a hack but here is a an article that talks about the husks of grains and skins of nuts as well as other sources of lectin
In his book The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain covers how and why plants fight back at us. He also includes a Keto food plan. He is big on fish and shellfish, not so much red meat, pork and chicken. It was a diet I could follow if I didn’t care about mercury concerns, so I won’t be, just was interesting to see him offer such an option. I got the book from my public library via Overdrive app. Worth a read.
Edited to add: Important info in that book is pressure cooking plants kills the lectins in most plants. He is a fan of instant pots for that reason.
It doesn’t destroy them in grains so he is anti grains of all kinds. Check out this book Omar, he has lots of science and study references in there. He used to be on the staff at Loma Linda, but left, because he saw the value to be had in meats and other animal proteins.
I became familiar with lectins from Dr. Peter Mason’s talks. That led me to Gundry’s book.
Looking at this chart above Glyca-binding proteins (GBPs), it looks like Lectins are in everything we eat, it would be hard to escape Dr. Gundry’s Lectin pseudoscience[13] without starving to death? And how somebody with his kind of brains reached such a conclusion defies logic? Dr. Gundry’s secret is really about cutting back on the sugar and eating whole organic ancestral foods[13], it is basically a Ketogenic Diet (low to no sugars with complex carbohydrates) without saying it?
What are lectins?
“…Lectins are a defense mechanism which all life forms appear to have. Essentially, they are a low level toxin. The purpose of lectins is to discourage other animals from eating that life form. By triggering a negative reaction in the predator, that life form is then viewed as an undesirable food source. Hence, aiding its future survival1. …”
Glyca-binding proteins (GBPs): Seems like something we really ought to know more about, right? Glyca-binding proteins (GBPs) are a category of proteins which bind specifically to certain sugar molecules. The “glyca” is the same prefix you see in the word “glycation.” That describes what happens after a protein or fat binds with a sugar molecule? This binding process can cause inflammation and the creation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which are compounds associated with numerous age-related diseases. It’s why the apparent anti-glycation benefits of carnosine are so intriguing. …” …More
Footnotes:
[1] “…Many people will be familiar with the fact that variation in red blood cell turnover confounds this measurement. Less well known is that variations in the deglycating enzyme fructosamine 3-kinase (FN3K) also confound the measurement. Counter-intuitively, if you have a higher rate of this deglycating enzyme but a lower rate of downstream metabolism of 3-deoxyglucosone, your lower Hba1c could actually mean MORE glycation. I conclude that Hba1c is a useful test, but only in the context of a bigger picture put together with more information. …” …More
[2] Regulation of Methylglyoxal Accumulation by Glutathione and Dietary Antioxidants (thesis paywalled)
[3] Advanced glycoxidation and lipoxidation end products (AGEs and ALEs): an overview of their mechanisms of formation: Advanced lipoxidation end products (ALEs) and advanced glycation end products (AGEs)
[4] Chris Kresser: “…To put the most accurate picture together, I like to have all four: fasting blood glucose, A1c, post-meal glucose and fructosamine. But if I only had to choose one, it would definitely be post-meal glucose…” …More
[8] Zinc, copper, and carnosine attenuate neurotoxicity of prion fragment PrP106-126.
[9] Involvement of trace elements in the pathogenesis of prion diseases.
[10] Neurotoxicity of Zinc: The Involvement of Calcium Homeostasis and Carnosine
[11] Anti-Aggregating Effect of the Naturally Occurring Dipeptide Carnosine on Aβ1-42 Fibril Formation
[12] Carnosine inhibits ß-sheet formation of PrP106-126 and protects against its neurotoxicity
[13] A MUTATION IN COWS; “…This one might sound like a bit of science fiction, but it’s actually just science. Turns out, about 2,000 years ago, a spontaneous mutation in cows in Northern Europe caused them to start making a new protein – casein A-1. But, the normal protein humans were used to for centuries was casein A-2. The problem is, casein A-1 actually morphs into a lectin-like protein called beta-casomorphin (BCM) during digestion. BCM then latches onto the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. These are called beta cells. When the BCM latches, it instigates an immune attack on those who’ve consumed the milk.5 The cows in Southern European – along with goats and sheep – never experienced the mutation. Thankfully, A2 milk is available in stores – along with goat and sheep milk products. So skip conventional dairy – your body will thank you. …” …More
Why just remember Paul Mason saying last night on the 2ketodudes podcast that some people that are having trouble losing weight lose when they cut lectins out essentially going to a carnivore diet. Then I started thinking about the oat fiber flour I’ve been using and that lectins are more concentrated in the husks of grains and seeds. Sooooo just wondering if That might be one of the big benefits of carnivore.
Lectins are in meat too! If animals are eating the Lectins so are you?
Dietary sources: ”…Animal-derived foods that are high in fat and protein are generally AGE-rich and are prone to further AGE formation during cooking.[3]However, only low molecular weight AGEs are absorbed through diet, and vegetarians have been found to have higher concentrations of overall AGEs compared to non-vegetarians.[4]Therefore it is unclear whether dietary AGEs contribute to disease and aging, or whether only endogenous AGEs (those produced in the body) matter.[5] This does not free diet from potentially negatively influencing AGE, but implicates dietary AGE may be less important than other aspects of diet that lead to elevated blood sugar levels and formation of AGEs.[4][5] …More
I want to break this down a little bit more, we have two types of carbohydrates;
complex carbohydrates (the kind you get on a ketogenic diet natural organic ancestral Whole Foods ect.)
simple carbohydrates (high octane, highly refined processed foods and sugars like high fructose corn syrup HFCS {does not trigger insulin and acts as if it were an artificial sweetener which it is} and sucrose from sugar cane and beet sugars i.e. junk food etc.)
Using a Lima Bean (phaseolus lunatus L) as an example which is high in lectins (carbohydrate blocker), which of the above two carbohydrates will it block (amylase inhibitor) more or less and prevent your body from absorbing the micronutrients and NOT turn it into body fat? That is what I want to know? My guess is that, it is the complex carbohydrates that it (lectins) blocks because it kills crickets when they try to eat it (lectins) because they starve to death (and drop dead on the spot) when trying to eat e.g. tomatoes (organic things grown in nature or a genetically modified GMO to produce more lectins)? Which makes me speculate even further that we are really dealing with malnutrition, the only nutrients we are really getting is from the simple carbohydrates???
Then there is a sugar blocker Chromium and Gymnema Sylvestre which is a whole other subject…
I heard about that. But it requires 45 minutes at high to do it. I cooked a variety of beans for 45 minutes in my instant pot.
It was a vile result. That was beyond merely overcooking them. I was pretty sad about that. 
Thanks for that ref. I once added beans to my previously-keto diet, as I ate a lot of stews they worked well in.
What I noticed is that I ended up wanting to eat more than I usually did. And I did not gain weight, despite a lot of extra carbs and calories. (Low cal for my size, though.) Unfortunately, I didn’t lose any, either. So I stopped eating them. I’m thinking of starting again, though, in small occasional dose. They work great in some of the meat-cheese-veg casseroles I make (based on tacos, enchiladas (red and green), etc.).
Nearly every food on earth has a whole group of people who are utterly against it because it will kill us all, and another group that thinks it’s totally groovy and great for us.
I first noticed this when I was eight and heard on the radio that carrots could give you cancer. (Seriously.) I asked my mom about it but I don’t remember her response. Over the remainder of my nearly-54 years I have seen so many foods go on the “OMG THIS WILL KILL YOU” list only to be eventually exonerated.
Eggs and butter are horrible for you according to modern college textbooks (still!!!) teaching our to-be-medical professionals. (I worked for a textbook corp for 14 years. I used to offer to paypal coworkers to handle the nutrition materials, I would get so enraged reading them!) Even very public changes apparently don’t affect the education industry.
Man’s “industry” issues for growing/raising food are certainly concerning. Modern wheat has nothing on ancient Einkorn, the original wheat, read up on that, it’s fascinating. (Most ‘gluten intolerant’ people can eat it fine. Everything is different - the gluten, the gliadin, the chromosomes, etc.) We’ve hybridized a lot of things into a disaster (modern wheat for example, but other things too).
But excluding all that, in general, I am not going to stress over the most recently villainized “real food” item.
Today for example I read a page on why a certain kind of fish was horrible. In the end it was either “it doesn’t have as much Omega 3 as salmon” (so what that is not my sole criteria for food, I eat walmart meat FFS), “it has a bit more Omega 6 than Omega 3” (see point 1) or “But in China they raise them on animal feces” (thanks I’ll be sure to look up which brands aren’t from china). None of those were in my mind a good excuse for why I should not eat Tilapia, which is on the list of one of the least-likely-to-be-mercury-polluted of fish. I don’t eat salmon because it tastes more like archetypal-“fish” than Tilapia. If I don’t eat something not-so-fishy-tasting I won’t eat fish at all, and I’d like to have just a little of it.
I think we wreck our gut biome with antibiotics, modern frankenwheat, a whole spectrum of crappy food, even bad water, chronic stress, messed up circadian rhythm and a host of other things. And we not only suffer from messed up gut biome and damaged gut, issues from that alone, but when “large proteins” get through the now-leaky gut, especially if they’re toxic due to farming practices, the body goes nuts with inflammation, and in some cases auto-immune response.
And then we blame things like beans for having large proteins. They do, and they are probably just as dangerous as every plant food, which are only slightly more or less dangerous than every animal food. We “pay” for our food. But if we have a good gut integrity and healthy body, we are able to deal with that stuff and eliminate what’s needed and recover where necessary.
I like to think that this is a parallel to things like, “A strong immune system is better than living in a plastic bubble.”
Any “real food” (short of toxic breeding or manufacture) that hurts people is usually a perfectly decent food for people throughout history. For example garbanzo beans have lectins. Yet it’s one of the most common foods for people in some parts of the world that have the greatest longevity studied. So one of the world’s experts on nutritional longevity, who just published a book I read called “The Longevity Diet” (he btw is not fond of meat or saturated fat alas, based on epidemiology studies) waxes on happily about chickpeas, go figure. If those lectins are hurting people, they certainly aren’t hurting their lifespan.
Or, maybe those people are not suffering all the BS we do in our culture, which is not the fault of chickpeas or any other bean.
To each their own. For every PhD I find waxing on in one direction about any real-food item, I find others with the opposite perspective. I do care, and I often read and listen, but I just can’t take every negative warning about a ‘real food’ item that seriously anymore… I’d have nothing left to eat!
My son has been on a low lectin diet for a few years. We are feeding him keto and still trying to keep lectin low for him. Autistic people seem to have a high percentage of leaky gut and it causes
neurological issues to be worse. I did some reading on it and learned that lectins are in all kinds of foods, and they have different effects on the body. We produce lectins in our own bodies and they are essential for various biological functions that can’t happen without them.
Some lectins like certain types in seeds are highly poisonous, and are a mechanism for the plant to thrive and not be a food source. Ricin is well a known extremely poisonous lectin found in cherry pits and some beans. Others can cause GI distress.
Meat has lectins.
Dairy products have lectins.
Tree nuts have lectins.
All “fruit” type veggies have lectins in the skin and seeds. Squash summer and hard, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and eggplant and others. If it has seeds and is a fruiting body it has lectins.
Lectin can be leached or minimized by cooking. Soaking beans is an example. If you were to put a 3-5 dry kidney beans into a grinder and consumed them raw you would be dangerously ill. Fava beans have the most toxin and raw are extremely poisonous. But soaking and cooking disables the lectins to a level that most people don’t react to. Bad gas from bean consumption sometimes is a lack of an enzyme for some people. It can also be caused by eating undercooked beans.
Tomato lectins either bond to the wall of the stomach or pass through. I have read both opinions. Some think tomato lectins are a cause of leaky gut and I have also read the opposite, that the lectin in tomatoes increases the ability to keep harmful bacteria from entering the bloodstream as easily because it helps form a strong barrier in the stomach wall.
The whole lectin thing is heading towards being the next gluten free, and by the way gluten is also a lectin…one which many people are sensitive or allergic to.
The whole lectins are good/bad is highly controversial still and confusing. You can’t eliminate lectins from your diet because they are in almost everything we eat. You can target certain lectins and eliminate them. But really if you don’t have an allergic reaction then why eliminate a food that doesn’t cause you harm.
Theories about exposing children to peanuts are changing again with 1 in 4 children having peanut sensitivity or allergies. This huge amount came after the peanut allergy crisis a few years back when schools were asking parents to not send PBJ sandwiches to school. Introducing peanuts later in a kid’s life made the percentage of allergic reactions to skyrocket. Now they’re starting to recommend fist tastes of peanut butter at 6 months old in tiny bits. Less of the kids seem to be developing sensitivity. 
It’s also points to several vegetables that I consider reasonably safe and keto. Things like green beans, cucumbers, zucchini are not ok. Although it includes beets and carrots as OK
The seeds in them are where the lectins are located, if you remove them they are ok to eat. The root veggies do not carry the seeds, so that is why beets and carrots are ok.
Some of us are more sensitive to lectins than others, because we evolved by being able to tolerate them in both the animal and plant kingdoms. Otherwise we would have died off a long time ago.
Dr. Gundry also markets products that he claims are necessary for his treatments. So it’s a supplement selling diet, not something you can do just with the knowledge of eating “correctly”. He has lots of testimonials and success stories.
Lectins are proteins that bind to specific sugars and are found in a wide variety of plant species, but are abundant in legume seeds. Typical lectins have multiple binding sites in each molecule, and thus they have cell agglutinating property, but some lectins have single binding site. Some lectins bond with other amino acids in the blood effectively making them unavailable for your body to use. We’ve all heard from the science that carnivores tout about nutrition in plants being less bio available than flesh foods. I think the bulk of this concept stems from lectin in veggies interfering with the metabolism and digestion in some causing Crones Disease, IBS, leaky gut, and other metabolic GI diseases.
@Alpha I hear your skepticism and I don’t equate this to Ancel Keys by any means. This is about the differing immune responses to various proteins in the same family that some have negative reactions to at different degrees and sometimes everyone is affected, in the case of ricin for instance. We’ve all heard about anti-nutrients found in some plants and the superior bio availability of those compounds from eating liver and other organ meats. I know from your posts that you’re eating carnivore if I am correct you suffer from GI disorders that worsen when you consume plant foods? The mechanism of lectins in vegetables that you eat could be the culprit. This isn’t about telling you what to eat and what not to eat as much as identifying weak spots in your food choices that can create problems for some people that are more extreme than others. As I said earlier it’s about how our immune system sees these compounds and the reactions that happen on an individual basis. some people are ok with dairy, grains, peanuts and tree nuts, etc and some developing an immune system response or allergy. It’s not fake science like Ancel Keys promoted, eating a low fat- high carb diet to prevent heart disease. This is auto immune stuff. Your carnivore diet has eliminated lectin compounds from the plant kingdom and I would suspect that this is why carnivore works better for you, your immune system is under attack by foreign compounds that your body can’t tolerate. Read up on it before you poo poo the concept .
@David_Stilley
I really appreciate your explanation.
yes I was carnivore for several months. and yes I have diverticlusis. many vigitables hurt my gi track.
but lately I have been eating lettuce with minimum issues.
The point I was trying to make not based on knowledge, but simple common sense.
if lectin is present in almost every food, it makes a person who want to avoid it almost impossible.
nature or God or whoever running the show is not very smart to let something like this happen.
I am not a big fan for nuts and seeds and vigitables but billions of people eat nuts and seeds and the world population does not seem to suffer from and continue to flourish
as I said I did not study the science of this claim but I am not planning to worry about this because I do not like vigitables and seeds anyway.
thanks
