What About Green Beans and Snow Peas?

“I can pick those and eat them.  They don’t need any processing.  How can those plants be bad for me?”.

Because they still contain those darn anti nutrients, that’s why!

While I’m the first to admit I’ve made statements in the past along the lines of Paleo being a balanced diet of ‘things growing on the land or running across it, or swimming in the sea’, it doesn’t mean we should go ahead and eat any plants we see.

Poison mushroom anyone?    Or how about some of those nice, mysterious red berry-looking plants you saw while hiking?  Fair game?

Not really.

While the effects of eating a green bean or snow pea from  your garden might not be as immediate or dire as those of eating a poisonous plant, the consequences are still damaging.   High in anti nutrients including lectins and saponins, amongst others, ingesting legumes, just as much as eating grains (remember, this is all grains, including those that are gluten free), leads the way to leaky gut, inflammation, a suppressed immune system…and that’s just the beginning.

Legumes are actually not a good source of protein, contrary to what the USDA tells us.  Yes, they may contain more protein than a cup of leafy greens, but we simply cannot digest plant protein the way we are able to digest animal protein.

The bottom line is that we need flesh protein, we need natural sources of fat and complex carbohydrates and we do not need legumes or grains.   To eat the latter two is only to contribute to our own path to illness.

If it takes rethinking those green beans and snow peas growing in your garden as one in the same with poison mushrooms, then so be it.   Neither have a place on our Paleo plates!