Chickpeas, mung beans, soybeans, common beans, lentils, and lima beans are some examples of grains. Figure 2: Types of Rice Grains.
Furthermore, grains are a staple food for people all over the world. When compared to other staple food, grains are more durable and can be stored for long periods of time. They can also be milled into flour or pressed into oil. Moreover, grains are used to make different varieties of food including bread, noodles, pasta, flatbreads, cakes, and pastries. Cereals are members of the grass family Poaceae or Gramineae family that are grown for their grain.
These plants provide food to feed people all over the world and provide food energy than any other type of crop. We usually call cereals staple crops because they are essential to the diet and are grown in huge quantities. Wheat is the most common cereal plant grown in the Western world.
Rice and millet are also very popular cereal grains, popular in developing countries. These are eaten by millions of people. All grains contain prolamins, but the types found in wheat gliadin , rye secalin , and barley horedin , seem to be particularly irritating to the immune systems of susceptible individuals. The problem with gluten being poorly digestible is not just that we have a hard time extracting nutritious proteins from gluten-rich foods.
People who are have a true allergy to wheat are reacting to a specific wheat protein called omega-5 gliadin. This protein is only found in wheat—not in barley, rye, or triticale. An antinutrient is anything that interferes with the ability of the body to digest, absorb, or utilize a nutrient.
Antinutrients in seed foods include enzyme inhibitors and phytic acid. Seed foods contain compounds that work against our digestive enzymes, making it harder for us to break foods down. These include protease inhibitors , which block protein digestion, and amylase inhibitors , which block starch digestion. Amylase inhibitors do not survive digestion, so they are not a concern. Protease inhibitors are mostly destroyed by cooking, so, in well-cooked seed foods, these would also not be a problem.
Phytic acid, however, cannot be destroyed by cooking. It is located primarily in the bran-rich outer coating of seeds, which is one reason why even whole grains are not necessarily healthy. Phytic acid is a mineral magnet. It binds to certain minerals in the foods we eat, and removes them from our bodies. This can lead to mineral deficiencies, such as iron-deficiency anemia.
Below are results from two human studies of phytic acid. This demonstrates that, even in people who have been eating high-plant diets for years, the body does not adapt to the antinutrient effects of phytic acid. The second graph [Solomons ] shows the degree of interference that phytic acid can have on zinc absorption. Oysters are rich sources of zinc. When oysters are eaten alone, you can see the zinc level rise nicely in the bloodstream, indicating excellent absorption.
When the oysters are eaten with black beans, people absorbed only about half the zinc from the oysters, and when oysters were eaten with corn tortillas, people absorbed virtually none of the zinc from the oysters.
This is not a subtle effect. This study is important because it illustrates that phytic acid doesn't just prevent the absorption of nutrients from the seeds themselves, but also from other nutrient-rich foods consumed with those seed foods.
Phytic acid can also bind to food proteins and to our digestive enzymes, interfering with protein absorption. Phytic acid is found in all parts of plants, and therefore is found in all plant foods; however, the vast majority of it is located in seeds, where its job is to hold on tightly to the essential minerals phosphorus, iron, zinc, etc.
Once the seed begins to sprout, phytic acid gets broken down so that those vital minerals can be released to the baby plant. This is why non-seed parts of the plant contain extremely low concentrations of phytic acid. The phytic acid content of nuts runs the gamut from low to high. Most phytic acid is not digested; it survives our stomach acid and our intestinal enzymes, making it all the way down into the colon, where bacteria can start to break it down. Phytic acid does not appear to be absorbed by our systems, so it can only interfere with minerals in our digestive tract, not in our bloodstream or inside of our cells.
Most phytic acid leaves our system intact, carrying minerals away with it. Phytic acid is not affected by prolonged storage. Phytic acid cannot be destroyed by cooking, not even with prolonged boiling.
Extrusion cooking, which is used by manufacturers in the industrial production of breakfast cereals, for example, barely reduces phytic acid content.
Fermentation, particularly sourdough fermentation, is the most effective method for removing phytic acid from foods, because microorganisms, unlike humans, have the ability to digest phytic acid. Plants store energy as starch, which is just a bunch of simple sugar molecules linked together. Seeds are very high in starch because the baby plant will need a source of energy when it starts growing. Much of the starch inside seeds is either amylose or amylopectin, which are both made of long chains of glucose molecules, and therefore easily broken down into glucose and absorbed as glucose into the bloodstream.
Most seed foods contain some combination of the indigestible carbohydrates listed above, but beans are best known for causing digestive problems. This is because legumes are especially high in the galacto-oligosaccharides stachyose and raffinose.
Of note, rice is extremely low in indigestible carbohydrates , and therefore very little gas is produced during its digestion. Spelt is also quite low in these substances. These innocent chemicals are mainly found lurking deep inside the rugged pits of fruits, such as apricots, peaches, cherries, mangoes, and plums.
Other foods that can generate cyanide include: bitter almonds, marzipan, bamboo shoots, cassava root tapioca , lima beans, sorghum, apple seeds and pear seeds.
Proper processing of these foods by grinding, boiling and soaking can remove the cyanide and make them safer to eat. The human body can detoxify tiny quantities of cyanide, but at higher doses, cyanide can interfere with iodine within your thyroid gland and cause goiter or hypothyroidism. Of all natural plant and animal foods available to humans, seed foods are the foods most likely to endanger human health. Therefore, eliminating foods from this family is the single most important dietary change you can make to improve and protect your health.
For people who either choose not to eat animal foods, or do not have access to animal foods, this food group does contain the highest amounts of protein of all of the plant foods, and can be a far less expensive source of protein than meat and dairy products.
Some of the starches in seed foods cannot be digested by our intestinal enzymes, therefore they ferment in the colon, creating gases. The mineral-thief phytic acid is very difficult to completely remove from these foods, even with fermentation techniques, therefore these foods significantly increase the risk for mineral deficiencies, especially iron deficiency and associated anemia. Taking vitamin C can improve the absorption of iron. If you choose to eat seed foods such as grains, it is best to eat them whole, rather than ground into refined flours.
Quantification of fructans, galacto-oligosacharides and other short-chain carbohydrates in processed grains and cereals. J Hum Nutr Diet. Identification of the dietary lectin, wheat germ agglutinin, in human intestinal contents.
Iron absorption: no intestinal adaptation to a high-phytate diet. Am J Clin Nutr. Carbohydrate terminology and classification. Eur J Clin Nutr. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. Plant lectins: the ties that bind in root symbiosis and plant defense. Mol Genet Genomics. Fassano A. Leaky gut and autoimmune diseases. Clin Rev Allerg Immunol. The chronological distribution of enamel hypoplasias from prehistoric Dickson Mounds populations.
Am J Phys Anthropol. Nutritional significance of lectins and enzyme inhibitors from legumes. J Agric Food Chem. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: evidence from the bioarchaeological record.
Econ Hum Biol. Lectins in the United States diet: a survey of lectins in commonly consumed foods and a review of the literature. The word stems from the latin word puls , meaning seeds that can be made into a thick soup. Pulses are an affordable source of plant-based protein, with about times as much protein per serving as cereal grains such as rice, oats, barley, and wheat.
A one-cup serving also has almost half your daily needs of fiber, including both soluble and insoluble fiber, as well as resistant starches. These types of fiber can aid in digestion and help improve gut health and motility. For reference, it is recommended that women aim for 25 grams of fiber per day, and men should aim for 38 grams.
As mentioned before, beans and legumes are often used interchangeably. However, even though beans are legumes, there are other legumes that can not be classified as beans. Beans are also a type of pulse. Some of the most common types of beans include:.
Research shows that including beans as part of a healthy diet may help reduce the risk of heart disease and certain types of cancers, lower blood pressure, support weight control, and help manage diabetes.
The difference between pulses and legumes, and how beans fit into the mix, is actually quite simple when you look at the big picture.
0コメント