But diets done wrong can lack nutrients and fuel inflammation.
Let’s take a closer look to avoid these common plant-based pitfalls.
Vegan diets can rely too heavily on carbs.
This belief causes one of the biggest problems with a conventional plant-based diet.
Our current food supply, soil depletion, and environmental toxins have all been new introductions to human existence.
Researchers now argue that these factors are essentially a mismatch with our genes.
Our genes are living in a whole new world.
Bottom line: Grains (and a lot of other foods) are not what they once were.
These refined grains are also high in sugars.
Grains are also high in a class of sugars calledFODMAPs.
This funny-sounding acronym stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyolsin other words, fermentable sugars.
These short-chain sugars are not fully digested in your gut and can be excessivelyfermented by your gut bacteria.
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Vegan diets can affect gluten sensitivities.
Researchers estimate that around18 million Americanshave a “gluten sensitivity.”
What’s the bottom line?
Is gluten intolerance actually real?
One trial published inClinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology2studied people who thought gluten was causing them digestive problems.
For one week participants were given either a small amount of gluten or a placebo pill of rice starch.
Other randomized control trials have sharedsimilar findings3.
To understand gluten intolerance, we need to understand autoimmune conditions.
Many people think when we talk about gluten intolerance we are referring to the autoimmune condition celiac disease.
Celiac disease is really the extreme end of a broader gluten-intolerance spectrum.
The other end of that spectrum isnonceliac gluten sensitivity (NCGS)4.
What are thesymptoms5of gluten intolerance?
Most patients who ask to be tested for gluten intolerance get a simple alpha-gliadin lab test.
If it comes back negative, you are told you are not gluten intolerant.
Vegan diets can be high in lectins and phytates.
Lectins are another jot down of protein found in grains, even the gluten-free ones like rice and corn.
These grain defense mechanisms are highly indigestible by the body.
Lectins can also bind to insulin and leptin receptor sites, causing hormonal resistance patterns such asweight-loss resistance.
If you haven’t already found yourself emptying your cupboards, then we can talk about phytates.
Grains also contain these nutrient leeches.Phytates7are anti-nutrients that bind to minerals in your body and make them unusable.
The little nutrients that grains do offer arediminished by phytates, which make them unavailable for your body.
It’s important to remember that grains today are not what they were in the past.
With crossbreeding and genetic modification, grains are chemically different today than they were even a few decades ago.
A common argument for eating grains is to get in an adequate amount of fiber.
However, vegetables offer ample amounts offiber8not to mention a whole slew of othernutrients8.
Another primary food in typical plant-based diet is legumes.
This category encompasses all types of beans, lentils, and peanuts.
The problem here is thatlectinsandphytatesare also found in legumes in high amounts, similar to grains.
Vegan diets can cause nutrient deficiencies.
And the sources that do have decent nutrient levels also contain phytates, which end up blocking nutrient absorption.
In other words, healthy fat is essential for optimal brain health.
The average American consumes a large amount of their omega-3s in the form of ALA.
These are derived from plant sources.
No other vitamin can hold a candle to vitamin D when it comes to importance and influence on health.
Typically, vegetarians and vegans, on average,have more vitamin D deficiencies compared to meat eaters18.
The “calm down” message uses vitamin A.
In fact,research suggests that just 3 percent of beta-carotene gets converted in a healthy adult20.
B12
This is potentially the biggest deficiency for all types of plant-based diets.
In short, if methylation is down well, a lot can go wrong with your health.
However, these don’t contain true B12.
Instead, they are B12 analogues known as cobamides,which are not as bioavailable23.
And that’s not taking into account any possible genetic weaknesses.
Iron
Iron is needed to get oxygen to your cells.
Some typical symptoms I see with low iron arefatigue and low sex drive29.
There are two ways to look at iron levels in your body.
One is serum iron, which measures the levels of iron currently circulating in your blood.
The other is ferritin, which measures long-term iron storage in the body.
There are also two different types of ironheme and non-heme.
Heme is the most bioavailable iron for your body and is found only in meat.
Non-heme isn’t absorbed as easily and is found in dairy, eggs, and plant foods.
Many plant foods contain iron but only the non-heme variety.
And again, plant sources just do not have the same level of bioavailability as animal sources.
All of these factors contribute to an85 percent lower non-heme iron absorption rate in plant-based diets.
As our deficiencies continue to escalate, so does our need to supplement.
