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Next up: George Diggs on "Plant Defense Chemicals: The Dark Side of Food Plants" #Carnivorycon
He says it's a bad trip. 
Grapefruit interacts with 80 or more prescription drugs. Because the grapefruit toxins compete for liver enzymes which should be breaking down the prescription drugs [or metabolites thereof? —Ed]
Some people are exquisitely sensitive to plants, e.g. Mikhaila. Others probably less so. Not surprising because of bio-individuality.
But in addition to bio-individuality there is also bio-similarity.
We are very similar to each other at the cellular level. In fact, most of the plant toxins probably evolved to defend against other animals, not against us, but they still harm us because of bio-similarity.
Digestive enzyme inhibitors. E.g. soybean protease inhibitor. Affects bettles, tobacco horn worm, corn earworm, and also lab animals. What about humans?
Next, wheat protease inhibitors. Shown to trigger a strong immune response in cells from both celiac and non-celiac patients. Gluten affects both celiac and non-celiac cells. Not surprising that wheat protease inhibitors do as well.
This is totally different from gluten. It's a whole 'nother compound. I'm not gonna focus on gluten at all because there are other things I think that are more worthwhile to talk about today.
How about other toxins that damage the gut? Lectins.
I want to put it in an evolutionary context -- what did these compounds evolve to do? They've been around since long before mammals.
So they didn't evolve to protect against mammals. Probably against pathogens. But because of bio-similarity, they are also effective against us.
As mentioned in the previous talk, 5 raw red kidney beans are enough to make a human sick.
What Germ Agglutinin (WGA) -- a lectin. A potent anti-fungicide. It affects wheat rust for instance. It inhibits fungi and also binds against bacteria cell walls, so probably defends against bacteria as well.
This is so potent that crops have been genetically engineered to express WGA. Disturbing. Great for the farmer, maybe not so great for the eater.
We know that WGA affects Leaky Gut [cites study that I didn't catch].
We know that cooking and other processing can reduce the amount of WGA/lectins. What about uncooked or poorly cooked wheat products? Cookie dough. Uncooked wheat germ as a "health" additive. How much WGA are they getting, and what's that causing? Ironic.
Ironically, WGA damage to humans is probably a quirk of our similarity to pests like fungi and insects.
Next toxin: caffeine. Alkaloid. Chocolate. Xanthines.
Turns out that we're able to metabolize xanthines with one of our liver enzymes. But dogs can't detoxify these as well.
We've all heard that you can poison a dog with chocolate. You could poison them with coffee too, but they aren't likely to drink it, because it's bitter.
They're evaluating cocoa and coffee derived xanthines as a pesticide to poison coyotes.
So it's not surprising that some people are much more affected by caffeine than others.
Another type of toxin is something refers to oxylates. A scientist named Sally Norton is doing a lot of research on this right now.
Calcium oxylate is the most abundant insoluble mineral found in plants.
In plants it is present in both a crystalline form and an ionic form.
The crystals can actually cause physical damage to the human body. [ ? —Ed]
The ionic form can build up. Calcium oxylate kidney stones. I had that. A very unpleasant experience.
Two of the most common houseplants.
These plants have "raphids" -- needle-like structures of calcium oxylate.
This was actually used as a torture mechanism at one time in the past.
The sap has so many of these crystals that just working with them can cause a horrible reaction to your hands just from the oxylate crystals penetrating.
We apparently vary greatly in our individual ability to deal with oxylates. So this goes back to teh idea of bio-individuality.
Some humans may be very sensitive to oxylates, othersmay be very sensitive to [some other compound], others may be [something else].
Final category of defense chemicals that I'll mention are hormone disruptors. These are things that mimic the hormones of herbivores. These are present in many, many plants.
This insect pupa has three heads. Problematic for this creature.
Isoflavones. Hormone disruptors. Known to interfere with reproduction in animals e.g. sheep. Probably evolved to be a fungicide.
If you infect a soybean with "rust", it will upregulate its production of isoflavones.
So how about consumption of large amounts of soy products in a human diet?
You can go into any health food store and find soy supplements for menopausal women, to promote estrogen.
But why would you do this ? It doesn't make any sense to me that I can see.
This research raises real concern about children. I would just say "Why do it?".
Urine levels of isoflavones 500 times higher in infants fed soy formula. Is it harming the child? I don't know. It may depend on the bio-individuality of the child. There are obviously kids that are lactose-intolerant, but
there have to be better alternatives than to feed a child this compound with a number of different kinds of toxins, including goitrogens, all in one package.
From an evolutionary context, it is not surprising. Plants evolved to fight back. And we did *not* evolve to eat large quantities of plants, like we do in the modern world. Some people get a very high proportion of their food from plants. Plants are not necessarily your friends.
