3 Health Benefits Of a Grain-free Diet
Nowadays, there are many diet options to choose from, depending on your health conditions, goals, beliefs, and lifestyle–one that best fits your needs and empowers you to make a healthy shift.
Many of these options eliminate some food sources. Whether it’s grains, dairy, animal protein, or a specific restriction due to allergies, it’s important to pay attention to the food you are eating to make sure you aren’t missing out on some key nutrients.
The good news is that you can get all the essential nutrients you need from different food sources by eating a well-balanced diet with lots of variety.
Taking a step beyond gluten, a grain-free diet eliminates, not only gluten-containing grains like wheat, barley, and rye, but also non-glutenous grains like dried corn, millet, rice, sorghum, and oats, and ingredients delivered from grains such as rice syrup and high-fructose syrup.
Naturally, grains are rich in carbs, and many believe that eating grain-free should also be low-carb. Unlike the keto diet, this lifestyle chooses alternative carb sources such as fruits, vegetables, and legumes.
Read along to learn some of the health benefits of a grain-free diet.
1. Promotes Home Cooking and Reading Labels
As our lives keep moving faster, we spend less time on home cooking. The U.S. diet is loaded with high-caloric, low-nutrient-dense foods including fast food and pre-packaged dishes. Around 57.5% of our diet is made up of ultra-processed food, full of refined grains such as pizza, pasta, cookies, cakes, burgers, and pastries. (1,2)
It isn’t a coincidence that obesity has become a major worldwide issue, and as we all know, it is a risk factor for many health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), between 2009 and 2012, almost 56% of American adults had either prehypertension or hypertension.
A grain-free diet encourages you to include nutrient-dense whole fresh foods like veggies, legumes, and fruits to ensure your carbohydrate intake, and to stay away from highly processed foods containing added salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats. Some studies show that eliminating processed food and refined grains lowers blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides and reduces sugar addiction. (3,4)
Another great benefit of a grain-free diet is that it requires you to cook at home and pay a little extra attention to food labels. Diet quality is essential for healthy living, and frequently home cooking is associated with eating a better quality diet whether or not you are trying to lose weight. (5)
2. May Reduce Inflammation and Benefit Autoimmune Conditions
For some bodies, gluten–a protein found in some grains like wheat, barley, and rye, is identified as a threat causing gut inflammation and thereby can lead to severe nutrient deficiencies and other digestive issues like leaky gut syndrome, which increases the entrance of toxins into the bloodstream.
Recently, this condition has been called a “danger signal for autoimmune disease”, due to its association with some autoimmune diseases such as lupus, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, celiac disease, and other conditions like chronic inflammation, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, thyroid problems, skin issues, digestive ailments, food sensitivities, and arthritis. (6,7)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that autoimmune diseases affect more than 24 million people in the United States and that their prevalence may be increasing. Even though the mechanisms of these diseases are not fully understood, a grain-free diet can improve their health.
3. Might Improve Mental Health
Over the past years, we’ve learned that there’s a connection between gluten-containing grains and mental health, due to the increase of intestinal permeability mentioned above. Some studies show that people who have celiac disease can also have neurologic and psychiatric manifestations due to their gluten sensitivity. (8)
Even people without celiac disease who suffer from brain and mental problems like ADD, epilepsy/seizures, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, migraine, and autism spectrum disorders can benefit from eliminating grains from their diet. (9)
It’s important to note that most of these studies look at the effect of gluten-containing grains, and currently, it is impossible to know whether or not grains cause these disorders. But even though there isn’t much research on grain-free diets, many people have benefited greatly from eliminating grains from their diet.
