So I had a snafu, my introduction to legumes was put over 2 days as on Saturday I didn’t plan ahead enough and I only had peanut butter for breakfast and no other legumes for the rest of the day. Thus on Sunday I started over. PB for breakfast. Hummus with lunch and I made a delightful chili for dinner. My initial reaction to the legumes was “meh”. No symptoms from the peanut butter or the hummus. But in the evening, the chili kind of caught up with me and my bowls started to talk to me. By the time I went to bed I was having a worse reaction to legumes than dairy. Alrighty then.

When doing some re-reading of It Starts with Food, I discovered that legumes, specifically peanuts and peanut butter,  contain a disruptive protein called a lectin. Peanut lectins are not destroyed by heat, and thus are resistant to digestion, which means they arrive in your gut mainly intact. They then fool your gut lining into letting them through, and into your bloodstream. Once inside the body, these peanut lectins provoke an immune response, promoting systemic inflammation. Well holy shit {literally} I can confirm I had this reaction! Oh man was I inflammed last night and today. I knew I was having a reaction to something before I started this process, and now I feel like I have figured out some of it.

Going forward I am going to try hard to not consume the following for the sake of my body:

• peanuts
• soybeans
• peas
• beans
• lentils

I think the possible hardest will be peanut butter, I don’t really eat anything else and I would much prefer having my coffee in the morning with milk than soy anyways. In the end, I am fascinated that dairy worked out better then legumes. Who knew? Now I do.