I’ve been giving this whole low histamine Paleo diet/eating thing a lot of thought these last few months. The idea of giving up grains entirely is certainly attractive, but when considering the idea of going Paleo, a few things sprung to mind:
1. Why label myself concretely as one thing or the other? Unless it’s for marketing purposes?
2. It’s high in animal flesh – something that my nutritional hero Dr. Furhman doesn’t consider healthy. It’s also hard to do when you’re restricting your histamine intake. (Animal flesh begins accumulating histamine raising bacteria the moment it’s slaughtered).
3. I think beans should be consumed once in a while (if you can tolerate the lectins), mainly for their vitamin B content, protein and their role in treating/preventing various cancers.
While we’re on the subject – lectins are something I hear a lot about. People write to me asking why I include beans, or telling me the reason they went ahead with the Paleo thing is because they can’t eat them. And so I ask: do you eat carrots or lettuce? Because they have lectins too. Yes, it’s an interesting point that I don’t see many people making.
“Most edible plants contain some lectins and some have substantial amounts.” – A. Pusztai, Plant Lectins. Pg. 108. (Find the book online here.)
So, the lectin thing didn’t seem like a good reason to me. What always seems like a good idea is to take on board the scientifically sound points that any nutritional philosophy/trend highlights. And so I finally realised that my desire to cut back on grains just happens to agree with the prevailing Paleo movement, rather than being a good reason to jump in whole hog. But, having taken to heart the many positives of the healthy Paleo diet movement, I’ve decided that my next book – featuring ONLY antihistamine and anti inflammatory ingredients – will be released in two editions: low histamine or low histamine Paleo.
The only downside (apart from more work!), is that there’s a lot of nuts. Nuts nuts nuts everywhere on Paleo. That raises the question – is a recipe still low histamine if it has two cups of almond flour? Especially given the bizarre habit of calling for blanched almond flour, thereby removing the polyphenol rich almond skins. Why on earth would you do that? To make it look pretty naturally! But as those of you who follow my blog have seen, nutrition trumps beauty every time. That’s not to say I’m into ugly food…as you can see by the photo of my (still in progress) low histamine Paleo pancake recipe. I’m trying to figure out how to fit in as many antihistamine and anti inflammatory ingredients as possible!
I won’t be breaking too much new ground Paleo-wise, but the recipes will be unique in that they’re packed full of the healthy nutrients needed for proper histamine metabolism.
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