🚫 Why I Don’t Recommend Nuts, Seeds, Grains, or Legumes
Nuts, seeds, whole grains, and legumes are often promoted as health foods — but if you're dealing with gut issues, low thyroid, hormone imbalance, or chronic fatigue, these are the last foods you want in your diet. Behind the wellness branding is a harsh biological reality: these are the most chemically defended foods in nature.
Seeds (which include grains, beans, legumes, and nuts) are not pro-metabolic. They are anti-metabolic. They stress the gut, block mineral absorption, suppress thyroid function, and promote inflammation — the opposite of what your body needs to heal.
🌱 They're All Seeds — and That's the Problem
Whether you're eating almonds, oats, black beans, or quinoa, you're eating a seed. From an evolutionary perspective, seeds are how plants reproduce — and plants protect them aggressively with natural toxins:
Phytic acid blocks absorption of key minerals like zinc, magnesium, and iron
Lectins & saponins damage the intestinal lining and increase gut permeability
Enzyme inhibitors interfere with digestion and reduce protein bioavailability
PUFAs (omega-6 linoleic acid) suppress thyroid function and slow metabolism
Your gut isn’t just digesting calories — it’s decoding chemical signals. And seed foods are sending the wrong ones.
🦜 You’re Not a Bird — You Don’t Have a Gizzard
Birds can eat seeds because they evolved a gizzard — a muscular organ that grinds them up with stones. Rodents have enzymes that help them digest seeds. Humans have neither.
We aren’t built to eat seeds in large quantities. Most wild seeds are inedible without extensive processing. Our ancestors only consumed them in emergencies or after soaking, fermenting, or chemically altering them (like nixtamalization of corn). They were survival food — not the foundation of a healing diet.
🔥 PUFA: The Metabolic Saboteur
Linoleic acid — the primary omega-6 PUFA in seeds — disrupts nearly every system in your body:
Inhibits the conversion of T4 to active T3
Increases estrogen and lowers progesterone
Drives fat storage while slowing fat burning
Promotes mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress
A tablespoon of almond butter or a handful of walnuts can contain as much linoleic acid as a serving of soybean oil. If you're cutting seed oils but still loading up on seeds, you haven’t solved the problem — you've just changed the packaging.
🦠Healing the Gut Means Removing the Offenders
If you’re actively working to heal your gut — whether through biofilm disruptors, antimicrobials, collagen, or motility support — you need to remove the triggers.
Seeds feed dysbiosis, aggravate leaky gut, and sabotage efforts to restore intestinal integrity. I’ve seen time and again that clients doing “everything right” — except removing nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes — stay stuck until those foods are out.
🌍 Traditional Cultures Knew the Risks
Ancient peoples respected seeds — they didn’t rely on them. When consumed, seeds were soaked, sprouted, fermented, or nixtamalized to reduce anti-nutrients. Even then, they were used as condiments — not daily staples.
Modern wellness culture has flipped this script — replacing nourishing ancestral foods with PUFA-rich granola bars, nut milks, and grain bowls. That shift has come with a cost: widespread gut dysfunction, hormone imbalance, autoimmune conditions, and burnout.
âś… What to Eat Instead
If you want to heal deeply and restore your metabolism, this is the foundation:
Pro-metabolic proteins: collagen, dairy, eggs, meat, bone broth
Digestible carbs: fruit, honey, maple syrup, white rice, cooked potatoes
Safe fats: butter, coconut oil, cacao butter
Gut-healing tools: gelatin, mineral salt, raw carrots, customized antimicrobial protocols
This approach doesn’t just remove irritants — it gives your body what it needs to repair mucosal barriers, rebalance microbes, restore thyroid output, and regulate hormones.
🔊 Ray Peat Wisdom
“Nuts and seeds are rich in unsaturated fats and enzyme inhibitors, which are stressful to the body and interfere with digestion.”
“Plants don’t want you to eat their seeds — that’s why they load them with toxins, allergens, and irritants. Animals that eat a lot of seeds tend to have short lives.”
“The increase in degenerative diseases in the 20th century parallels the increase in seed oil consumption.”
⚡ Final Thought
Seeds are not sacred. They are defense systems. If you're dealing with fatigue, gut issues, hormone imbalance, or metabolic slow-down, seeds are a major — and often hidden — source of stress.
Most of my clients don’t fully heal until we remove them.
If you’re ready to rebuild your gut and metabolism from the inside out using the right carbs, the right proteins, and the right timing — book a consult. I’ll show you how we combine food-based antimicrobials, biofilm enzymes, and collagen strategies with pro-metabolic nutrition to help your body actually heal.
