En route to my mother’s surprise birthday party, which happened a full two months after her real birthday, one of my cousins, who carpooled with us, was reading “The Plant Paradox.” Essentially, the premise of this diet is to eliminate, or at least seriously restrict, the amount of lectins in one’s food.
Lectins are proteins, the most famous of which is gluten. Since plants evolved lectins to deter predators from eating them, insects learn to avoid plants that make them sick. If humans were the size of insects, then we’d be more aware of these naturally-occurring poisons when we ate certain plants.
Yet there are a slew of autoimmune diseases, cancers, inflammation, weight gain and such caused by eating lectins. When I saw that Crohn’s disease was one of them, I texted one of my nieces to see if she’d heard about the connection between lectins and Crohn’s. She very wisely asked me which foods contain them. So, I took a picture of the list, which easily has over 100 things. She texted back: oh nvm lol I’ll stay on medicine.
Typical.
Yet, I love a good challenge. I already choose about two recipes a week to make; so this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to shift the ingredients. As a matter of fact, unlike the “success story” people in the book, I had no immediate health issues. So, I could ease my way into a new diet.
Nonetheless, I wanted to make a good attempt, which means getting rid of foods that aren’t on the “yes” list. The biggest three culprits are wheat products, corn products and potatoes. But that’s not all! Ripe fruit, which I usually buy a huge amount of every week for smoothies, signal the human body that winter’s around the corner and it should start storing fat.
I mulled it over and decided that I’d bag up everything that wasn’t in the diet and give it out to the ubiquitous panhandlers around Austin. After all, the food was still good quality even if this particular diet told me to avoid such things as wheat and corn flour, oatmeal, peanut butter, sunflower seeds, refined sugars, canola oil, sugar snap peas, cornstarch, baking powder, ramen noodles and other things that filled 5 banned single-use (but now they may make a comeback) plastic bags.
The only two things I kept were brown and wild rice and two packets of microwave grits. I wasn’t sure if grits contained lectins, but I had both of them for breakfast the next day. As far as the rice was concerned, I coupled it with one of the lectin-free recipes. (I know, already starting out sacrilegious.)
So the first time after I bagged all the contraband food up, I’d left to go to my screenwriting class. In addition to my backpack, I took a bag of groceries in each hand. I didn’t pass a single panhandler en route to class nor back. I chalked it up to the recent cold front.
So those bags of food stayed in the car since it was all nonperishable plus the weather made it seem as if they were refrigerated. Besides, I figured I’d pass them out en route to yoga.
Of all things! The panhandlers I thought would be out weren’t–except in the intersections that had green lights. As much as I wanted to give the bags away, I wasn’t about to cause a traffic jam or accident to do a good deed. So, I thought I’d hand them out on the way home. Wrong again. This time, they were at another part of the intersection than where my car was at a red light.
In the meantime, I made my first two lectin-free dishes: salmon with sautéed spinach and red onions with avocado oil and lemon juice; and seaweed wrapped chicken strips with spinach, avocado and cilantro sauce.
So for the first dish, I cheated a bit and used the rest of my brown and wild rice. You see, contrary to popular belief, the best rice is white. All that brown rice that’s supposed to be healthy really isn’t because the brown hulls contain the lectins. Even something like gluten free foods have a lectin worse than gluten, wheat germ agglutinin or WGA for short.
Proving once again that the third time is indeed the charm, on the third day, returning from exercise class, I gave away both bags to the same panhandler–a black man who thanked me profusely for the groceries. As I drove away, I felt lighter than the absence of two bags of groceries.
The next day, at the same intersection, this time coming from yoga class, I gave away two more bags to a younger guy who looked Latino. He took both bags, saying he’d share with the other guy, but as far as I could watch where he went, I couldn’t see who “the other guy” turned out to be.
Then, later in the evening, I helped run the Women in Film & TV (WIFT) booth on 6th St as part of the SXSW’s celebration of International Women’s Day. This was the first time I’d met some of the other board members. Throughout the event, servers circulated around and passed out free food samples. At that point, I made up my mind that in observation of this diet, I’d eliminate my consumption of lectins at home, but since I didn’t have any dire health issues, I wouldn’t be absolutely miserable about it. I enjoyed every free wheat flour treat that came my way.
On the way back from that event, I gave out the last bag. Thus, accomplishing a major task in pursuit of healthier eating.