Sometimes people fall sick and fail to trace the source of illness or sometimes are treated symptomatically. There are circumstances where you feed on a meal or food substances in a normal or routine way and you subsequently fall sick. There are naturally occurring food toxins in foods that are not manmade chemicals.
There are several toxins which are found in natural foods. Some can be neutralized through proper preparation techniques such as soaking, fermenting or cooking. Others can be poisonous in any form.
For example, aflatoxin is a naturally occurring chemical found in some food stuff. It is a carcinogenic toxin produced by the Aspergillus flavus fungus. This fungus can contaminate foods such as grain and legumes.
Aflatoxin-producing members of Aspergillus are common and widespread in nature. They can contaminate grain before harvest or during storage. Aspergillus lives in soil, decaying vegetation, hay, and nuts. Crops which are frequently infected include corn, sorghum, pearl millet, rice, and wheat.
Other food plants that can be contaminated include oil seeds such as peanuts, soybeans, sunflower seeds, and cottonseeds. Spices such as chili pepper, black pepper, coriander, turmeric, ginger. Tree nuts including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, coconuts, and Brazil nuts.
The aflatoxin can also be found in the milk of animals which feed on these contaminated plants. Virtually all sources of commercial peanut butter contain small quantities of aflatoxin.
Another toxin is ergot. A person affected by this toxin presents with severe burning sensations in the limbs caused by vasoconstriction of blood vessels.
The vasoconstriction sometimes resulted in gangrene and loss of limbs due to severely restricted blood circulation. The neurological symptoms of an ergot infection include hallucinations and irrational behavior, convulsions, and death.
Goitrogens is a class of toxins in foods which suppress the function of the thyroid gland by interfering with iodine uptake. Long term exposure can cause an enlargement of the thyroid (goiter). Foods containing these substances include soya beans, peanuts, millet, strawberries, and vegetables such as cabbages.
Hydrazine toxins are volatile carcinogens found in many raw mushrooms. Mice display a significant increase in the incidence of several types of tumors after they are fed uncooked mushrooms. Cooking the mushrooms destroys a third of the hydrazine compounds.
Lectins are toxic protein compounds found in most foods, especially seeds, grains and legumes. Large amounts of lectins can damage the heart, kidneys and liver, lower blood clotting ability, destroy the lining of the intestines, and inhibit cell division. Cooking neutralizes lectins to some extent, and digestive juices further destroy them.
People living at high altitudes, where water boils well below 100 degrees centigrade should cook lectin-containing foods in pressure cookers to avoid poisoning.
Lectin toxins are found in foods such as grains, especially wheat and wheat germ, rice, oats, millet and corn, and all products made from them such as oils, vinegars, alcohols, and flours. Other lectin-containing foods are legumes, all dried beans, soya and peanuts and products made from them.
The toxin can also be found in dairy products from cows fed grains instead of grass. This involves most commercial milk products. It can also be found in plants in the nightshade family, such as potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers.
The lethal toxin Ricin is made from castor beans, which contain large quantities of a particularly deadly lectin. In this case raw black beans contain enough lectins that can kill rats in one week.
On the other hand, lectins have the ability to bind to insulin receptors in body cells, and thus enabling the transport of glucose into the cell, much like insulin does.
It is important to mention that even vegetables and nuts, which are staples in a low carbohydrate diet, can cause weight loss if they contain active lectins which mimic insulin.
Opioid peptides: Most people with food intolerances have digestive issues with wheat and dairy products. The common factor between these foods seems to be opiate-like substances. When proteins from these foods are broken down during digestion, the opiate substances act on the body's internal opioid receptors and can alter the perception of pain, affect respiration, digestion and mood. These opiate substances are found in food compounds such as milk and spinach.
Phytates and phytic acid compounds are found in many foods, especially soya beans and wheat. In the human gut, phytic acid acts as an anti-nutrient, which reduces the absorption of valuable minerals such as calcium, iron, magnesium, and zinc by binding the minerals into an insoluble salt.
Relatively high concentrations of phytic acid occur in foods such as wheat, rice, oats, nuts and seeds, soyabeans, potatoes, green beans and strawberries.
Soaking or sprouting grain foods will neutralize much of the phytic acid, except in soya beans, which must be cooked for more than 10 hours at very high temperatures to remove the anti-nutrients.
Trypsin inhibitors: these toxins are foods that reduce the availability of trypsin, an enzyme essential to protein digestion and metabolism for humans and animals. They are found in soya beans, and in lesser amounts in raw egg whites.