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Medicine and Health Sciences
Nutrition and Dietetics

Dietary Lectins as Disease Causing Toxicants

Profile image of Akbar MasoodAkbar Masood

2015

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Abstract

Abstract: Lectins are carbohydrate binding proteins present in most plants, especially seeds and tubers like cereals, potatoes and beans. It is now well established that many lectins are toxic, inflammatory, resistant to cooking and digestive enzymes and present in much of our food and sometimes cause "food poisoning." The global pattern of varying prevalence of diseases such as coeliac disease, autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity, cardiovascular disease and insulin dependant diabetes mellitus, suggests that some dietary factor specific to plant foods could initiate these diseases. Of the food lectins, grain/cereal lectins, dairy lectins and legume lectins are the most common ones associated with aggravation of inflammatory and digestive diseases in the body and improvement of these diseases and/or symptoms when avoided. Recent research has suggested that these lectins may effectively serve as a vehicle allowing foreign proteins to invade our natural gut def...

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