The Poison on Your Plate

Have you ever eaten a great meal that tasted good, was full of healthy things and still, after eating, you didn’t feel quite right?

Chances are you've just eaten something that your immune system has taken offence to.

A lot of people notice when they eat commercial foods they just don't feel well.

It is certainly obvious that commercial foods contain a lot of additives not found in nature, and in an attempt to feel better, many people avoid commercial and genetically modified foods (GMO’s) and bread, cereals, crackers and the carbs associated with them.

In addition to that, many others focus on eliminating something called gluten.

If you're living in the United States, the term gluten-free can be seen everywhere and more and more people are going gluten-free.

But what does it really mean and why would anybody want to go gluten-free?

Clearly humans have been eating grains, beans and legumes for thousands of years. Why after all of these years are so many people cutting them out? All these are good questions and here come some answers…..

If you live in the United States or in a country that farms with recommendations from Monsanto, the grains are likely sprayed with Roundup ®. You know, that stuff sprayed on weeds to kill them. Would you believe that is exactly why they spray your food? Believe it or not, they spray your food with Roundup ® to kill it.

You see, when wheat, barley, rye, oats and rice are sprayed with Roundup ® and start to die, the plant sends its remaining energy into the seeds to ripen them and hopefully propagate its children as new plants for the next year. That doesn’t happen in this case, because the Roundup ® kills the plant and it is harvested. As a result of killing the grain it loses moisture and, through the dying process, it is easier to remove the seeds from the stalk.

That is good for profits, but not so good for anyone eating it, because now the food made from these fields --and that is virtually all of it these days-- consists of Roundup ®- soaked, dead grains.

There are no laws against this, so all these farmers are acting legally, at least in this country. They don’t allow this in Europe and many other countries around the world but for some reason, it seems like a good idea here.

It is pretty convoluted as to why our Government allows it, but to say the least, there has been some pretty shady, non-ethical science “proving” Roundup ® is safe to spray on our food, be eaten and also safe for the environment.

Another aspect of Roundup ® is it’s patented for use as an antibiotic. As you probably know, antibiotics kill bacteria and we are supposed to have a digestive tract packed with healthy, life-promoting probiotic bacteria. When we eat Roundup ®-soaked food, which at this point is pretty much any food out of a box….. our happy healthy gut bacteria take a serious beating and start to die. What is left is a wasteland of pathogenic bacteria and inflammation that challenges our body’s ability to differentiate between toxins and food.

As this process continues, and our immune system becomes more challenged with the need to attack this Roundup ®-soaked food, it gets much more aggressive and the ability to differentiate between the proteins in the food and some of the proteins in our body begins to fade.

You see, the proteins in food and the proteins that make up our body are in many cases, very similar and, if the immune system is ramped up and attacking with lightning speed Roundup ®-soaked food, sometimes a mistake is made and the immune system may start attacking our body too. This is called autoimmunity and, depending on what part of the body is being attacked, it can be called Hashimoto’s, MS, lupus, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, type-one diabetes and many more. This process can lead to chronic fatigue and a shortening of our lives and certainly reduces the quality of our lives.

Fortunately for the people living in many other countries their government doesn't allow this rampant spraying of toxic chemicals on food.

So that's just one part of the reason many people in the United States would be better off just avoiding all grains that have Roundup ® sprayed on them.

But that's not all.

In addition to that, there's a pesky molecule called gluten.

Most people have heard of it, and what it is really is, is a member of a family of proteins called lectins. Just like all families, they are all kind of similar and our immune systems often see the whole lot as dangerous.

Lectins are compounds plants make to prevent bugs and animals from eating them. Lectins are basically the plants defense mechanism.

As you can imagine, nothing really likes to be eaten and if a predator is around animals are ready to run to save their lives.

It appears plants are aware and apparently don’t like to be eaten either, but they cannot run, so they make these compounds called lectins which are digestion-disturbing compounds revolting enough to many animals and insects, they just won't eat them.

Humans are a unique lot, though, and we seem to enjoy many of the plants that have extremely high concentration of these plant-protective, toxic elements called lectins.

Lectins are found in large amounts in all the grains, beans and legumes.

A gluten-free diet is a diet that avoids all of the foods that have the very particular lectin called gluten and for people with celiac disease, this is very important. It happens to be one of the more irritating lectins to our immune system, particularly if sprayed with Roundup ®.

As it happens, Gluten in the new and modified wheat grown in the US comes along with a whole host of compounds that act like Gluten and may be just as bad, and may be even worse than gluten for some. That is a challenge of gene modification and crossbreeding for profit.

In addition, for better baking, they treat the grains to make the lectins water soluble and more digestible so they enter the blood stream at a higher rate and interact with our immune system more than grains from even just 25 years ago.

On a more positive note though, this process makes the foods softer and sweeter, so you want to eat more and this is good for profits, but obviously bad for our health.

If you’re set on using beans and legumes that you are confidant have not been sprayed, a nice trick to deactivate the lectins is to get out the old pressure-cooker. The extra heat breaks lectins down so they don’t cause the same problems. There is a new generation of pressure cookers that are computer-operated and really safe so if you’re going to eat the beans and legumes do yourself a favor and use one.

Unfortunately, cooking grains in this way really doesn’t work well, so with the processing our food goes through in this country, we are better off just saying no to them and eating more nutritionally-dense food that is better for us anyway.

In conclusion, choosing quality foods has become more complicated as the growing process becomes almost criminal in nature. We really get to be aware of the country of origin. Some countries have enormous pollution problems and the water used for irrigation comes with PCB’s and heavy metals which of course absorb into the food and then into us.

We also get to be aware of what we eat, eats. Imagine an animal raised on polluted grains and all the toxins that end up being stored in their fat. Then we eat them and we get to process all those toxins.

Who would have thought that we would be taking our life into our own hands just by eating; but that is the world we live in, so eat well, eat lots of plants, with limited meat and take care of your immune system by avoiding toxin-laden foods.

You will live a much happier, healthier life in return.