If you’re confused about including grains in your diet, you’re not alone. While highly processed grains offer little nutrition, whole grains offer a lot, but are hard to digest. They’re seeds, which means they’re supposed to endure the harsh environment of the digestive system. It’s how they’re propagated and spread. They go in whole and are often expelled at a distance to start a new plant. While they may be ground when we consume them, there are other reasons they can cause digestive problems, but also ways to avoid those problems.
In order to digest food, you require enzymes. In fact, lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance comes from a lack of specific enzymes. Without enzymes, food doesn’t digest. Grains contain enzyme inhibitors that are beneficial for the seeds. Those enzyme inhibitors prevent the plant from sprouting in conditions where they couldn’t survive. If there’s not adequate water and warmth, the inhibitors play a role in the plant’s survival and continuation, waiting to sprout those conditions exist. Those same protease inhibitors in grains can prevent the enzymes necessary for digestion.
Simple sugars digest and are absorbed quickly. It’s why it’s the easiest to break down, but not necessarily the healthiest. As food becomes more complex, it requires more steps to fully break down the food. Those with additional chemical bonds are more difficult to digest and may not even be completely digested. That can make you feel uncomfortable and cause an imbalance in your microbiome, which can lead to inflammation and irritation of your digestive tract. It can cause health issues such as autoimmune disease, allergies and leaky gut.
The phytic acid helps protect the seed, but can do damage to your digestion. There are no enzymes to break it down, so it blocks the nutrients available in the seed, such as phosphorus. It also attaches to calcium, zinc, iron and magnesium, which makes it impossible to absorb them in the digestive system. Phytic acid inhibits, pepsin, amylase and trypsin that aids in the digestion of protein and carbohydrates. While there are ways to eliminate the phytic acid, they aren’t done in normal commercial processing. Some problems caused by phytic acid are bone loss, cell and organ damage and leaky gut.
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