Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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Just a thought, and wanted to start a discussion about it. Not asking for any particular reason. What's worse eating nuts or beans? Don't they both contain phytates?

flag	asked Mar 13 2012 at 9:42 Clayton 187●2●7

Paleo2.0 · Answer 1 · 2012-03-13 13:53:45Z UTC

I eat Brazil nuts for the selenium, but in general I would go for beans over nuts because I tend to overeat nuts.

Phytates, lectins, and all that kind of stuff is just pure speculation – just attempts to explain maybe why a Paleolithic diet without beans and grains might be healthier. It might be totally unrelated though. It might be that if these foods are not significantly displacing other nutritious foods in your diet they might not be that big of a deal. Maybe as Melissa suggested that storage itself causes problems on its own (microbial contamination, rancidity, etc…).

Peanuts and soy and maybe wheat seem to have their own unique problems, so I do limit these as well as crap-in-a-box grain products.

Beth-WeightMaven · Answer 2 · 2012-03-13 11:52:59Z UTC

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The bigger problem is the proteins in legumes and grains. Mat Lalonde is doing his AHS12 talk on this topic, but Robb Wolf discusses the role of these undigestible proteins in leaky gut and autoimmune in this fab talk.

answered Mar 13 2012 at 11:52

Beth-WeightMaven
15.3k●1●11●55

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Oh noes, the lectins! – Matt Mar 13 2012 at 12:56

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Actually, Robb points out it isn't the lectins, as they are inactivated by cooking. The culprits look to be the prolamins in grains and the globulins in legumes. Properly prepared legumes (soaked, sprouted, fermented) may be less problematic, but the question was about nuts vs beans. I'd choose nuts. – Beth-WeightMaven Mar 13 2012 at 13:23

May be inactivated. Depends on the lectin really. – Matt Mar 13 2012 at 13:34

Robb's point was that it does not look like lectins are the problematic protein as far as leaky gut goes. – Beth-WeightMaven Mar 13 2012 at 13:39

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True, but in the end it's all how we all individually react to X Y or Z. Just as there's a spectrum of gluten tolerance, there's a spectrum for bean proteins as well. Robb likes to paint us all as being completely helpless when it comes to wheat and legume proteins, but that's not really the case. Maybe in the paleo realm, because that's where folks with these problems tend to end up. – Matt Mar 13 2012 at 15:19

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Dave S. · Answer 3 · 2012-03-13 10:42:50Z UTC

Most beans are worse than most nuts but not because of phytates or n6 content. It's other things like raffinose (the bean sugar that makes you fart) in kidney beans, phytoestrogens in soy, the mold (aflatoxin) in peanuts that are really bad. I think beans should be evaluated case by case - as should nuts. Lentils and chickpeas don't seem too bad, but you may or may not want to include them. I eat them on rare occasions without problems (that I'm aware of). Walnuts are supposed to be a superfood according to the MSM (for the n3 content, mostly) but they have 10 times the n6! Again, I eat nuts several times per week (usually almonds) in small quantities. Macademias have little PUFA (mostly MUFA) and can be eaten at will - assuming you can afford to.

And, as Melissa (The Melissa) has so frequently pointed out, all plants contain some phytate. I wouldn't make food choices based on phytic acid content. The real problem with wheat is the gluten proteins and the lack of nutrients, especially when refined.

Anti-nutrients in beans and nuts

3 Answers