If the primary goal of raw nutrition is to consume nutritious plants and animals, secondary or inevitable goals include: Avoid anything toxic. For most of human history, the biggest problem was acute poisons and toxins.
For example, plants that are incredibly toxic and can kill people or make them sick immediately after eating them. Or they may contain spoiled meat and other animal products or foodborne pathogens that can quickly kill or weaken you.
In modern society, there are very few acute poisons in our food supply. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of years to figure out how to avoid acutely toxic foods, and food safety laws are mostly effective at limiting exposure to foodborne pathogens.
What we should worry about and what our ancestors generally did not worry about Food we are not used to. It is a modern food that was virtually unavailable before the advent of agriculture and completely unavailable before the industrial food system.
These days, avoiding the toxic means avoiding sources of hidden danger in our food system.
Grains use chemical anti-nutrients to prevent or dissuade animals from eating them. After all, grains are seeds, and for seeds to reproduce, they must avoid animal digestion and survive until they germinate. These anti-nutrients include key proteins in grains such as phytates, lectins, and even gluten.
These compounds won’t kill you in a day, a week, a month, or even a year, but they can suppress your immune system, impair mineral absorption, and have long-term negative effects on your gut health. Grains consumed as a staple food can make the diet less nutritious than it appears on paper, leading to nutritional deficiencies, poor growth, and decreased vitality.
List the grains you want to limit in order from worst to worst.
wheat: Wheat is the richest source of gluten in the diet, and even if you have diarrhea or are not sensitive to gluten, there is evidence that wheat triggers zonulin, a compound that opens the intestines to invaders.
Ancient wheats such as emmet, spelt and korasan: More ancestral forms of wheat do not have the same problems as modern dwarf wheat. It has low gluten content and gluten is not harmful to the intestinal lining. They are often produced in more organic ways, using fewer pesticides. And because they maintain deeper root systems, they tend to be richer in minerals.
Rye and barley: Rye and barley both contain gluten, but it is weaker and less potent than the form of gluten found in wheat.
millet: Although millet has anti-thyroid properties, it is an ancient grain that has been used by humans for a long time. In fact, in vivo studies have shown that consuming normal amounts of millet can produce anti-thyroid effects similar to anti-thyroid drugs.
oats: Oats are neither the worst grain nor the best. Oats are high in phytic acid, which can inhibit mineral absorption if over-relied on, but they also have some beneficial properties, such as beta-glucans.
corner: Corn isn’t the worst. If possible, eat nixtamalized or sprouted corn.
rice: Rice is fairly harmless. White rice in particular has little to no anti-nutrients and is a good source of pure carbohydrates (if you need that kind of thing). Great for replenishing glycogen after a hard workout.
Refined sugar is another. Naturally, in whole foods, sugar is attached to nutrients and other compounds that aid and maintain the body’s ability to metabolize sugar. The phytonutrients in fruit, the fiber in fruit, and minerals such as magnesium and potassium help improve glucose tolerance, process sugar, and maintain insulin sensitivity.
For tens of thousands of years we have not eaten sugar without these nutrients, vitamins, minerals and fiber. It was simply not available.
That’s why modern clinical trials show that people have vastly different metabolic responses to honey, a whole food source of sugar, and white sugar, a refined sugar with all its nutrients removed. This is why a piece of fruit is very different from a bottle of Coke. Hell, that’s why a glass of orange juice is so different from a glass of Coke. Orange juice contains as much sugar as cola, but it also comes with phytonutrients and vitamins and minerals that alter metabolic outcomes when consumed.
Industrial seed oils have probably brought about the greatest change to the human diet in the last 10,000 years, with the introduction and replacement of traditional animal fats with industrial seed oils. The fat we eat is used to build cell membranes. The fats we eat literally determine the structure of our bodies, and a body built on seed oils is very different from a body built on traditional fats. Cells made from polyunsaturated linoleic acid, found in industrial seed oils, are prone to oxidative damage and mitochondrial dysfunction. This means that we cannot produce enough ATP to power our body’s cells. And the unsaturated fat composition of our tissues helps determine the inflammatory response. When we consume too much industrial seed oil and have tissues rich in highly unsaturated omega-6, the result is more inflammation.
Industrial seed oils are prone to oxidation not only in the body but also in the kitchen. Most restaurants use seed oil extensively in fryers, pans, sauces and dressings. The processed food industry adds seed oil to their products because it’s cheap, makes food taste better, and promotes the formation of endocannabinoids that make us crave more junk food.
Concentrated sources of linoleic acid found naturally in whole foods contain antioxidant nutrients and vitamins such as vitamin E, which help protect fragile fats from oxidation and spoilage. But once the seeds are slurried and treated with hexane and other solvents to extract the oil, you create a fragile source of concentrated linoleic acid that is prone to oxidation in the kitchen or in your cells.
It is also worth noting that most wild animals from which we evolved had lower linoleic acid content than modern animals such as poultry, pork, and farmed fish. The concentrated linoleic acid found in seed oils and processed foods made from seed oils is an evolutionary anomaly that we cannot deal with.
Oils to avoid:
soybean oil
Sunflower/safflower oil
Canola oil/rapeseed oil
grapeseed oil
rice bran oil
Cottonseed oil
peanut oil
Thanks for reading!
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* This blog reflects my personal views and opinions and is not intended as medical advice, but I hope it will be informative and inspiring in your pursuit of a healthy and fulfilling life.
