Grain Free Diet
While many people are out here battling with cutting out processed foods as a way of eating healthy, many others have moved on grain free diet plans, processed or not. They may be one of the staples in most traditional diets, but cutting them out can help revolutionize your health totally.
What is a Grain Free Diet?
This is a diet that requires the cutting out every form of grain from your meals, either for health reasons or to lose weight. Examples include rice, wheat, barley, millet, oatmeal, etc. This “cutting out” also applies to any food product made with grains. This is a more general way of answering the question what is a grain free diet?
A doctor may suggest that you live the rest of your life on this diet if they affect your health in adverse ways. Owing to how unique our bodies are, your immune system may kick against this type of food, causing you to develop some health issues. These issues may be minor in some cases, and complex in others. On that note, you need to do some research and learn more about how eliminating this food group can help your health and lifestyle.
Talking about lifestyles, can vegans also benefit from this meal plan? Yes, they can. Their meal plan would be a grain free vegan diet where all they have to do is eliminate all grains from their diet while sticking to their no-meat code.
Here are a few things you need to know about this meal plan.
- Grain-free is not completely gluten-free
- Your body might have to put in a little more effort in fighting diseases as a result of vitamin deficiencies
- You may develop skin problems
There are also a bunch of grain free diet benefits you can enjoy after eliminating grains from your meal.
- It can help you kick back on snacking
- It can help improve your mood
- Your learning ability and general mental state will improve
- Prevents dementia
- It helps in the reversal of neurological impairments
Why You May Need a Grain Free Diet?
As always, the major reason anyone would want to cut out such a staple is for better health. If you suffer from wheat allergy (for instance), it is in your best interest to cut it out from your daily meal plan. Refusal to do so can result in anaphylaxis – swelling and tightness in the throat and difficulty swallowing, tightness and pain in the chest and difficulty breathing, nausea, watery and itchy eyes, etc.
Another reason you may need to adopt a grains free diet could be to improve your health. People with autoimmune conditions, imbalanced gut microbe, chronic fatigue, and a mental health condition can also benefit from this diet.
Following a grain-free diet
Considering that many people eat grains and its products on a daily basis, it may be a little bit of an uphill task following such a diet, especially for a beginner. First of all, you have to eliminate them from your meal plan, and start adjusting to other types of foods. You can try pseudocereals like amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat. These pseudocereals are very similar to grains, but they are not technically considered as grains.
What You Should Eat?
If you eliminate grain from your diet, what then can you eat? Here is a grain free diet food list with a lot of other food options you can enjoy.
- Citrus fruits, including oranges and grapefruit
- Legumes (beans, lentils, peas, peanuts)
- Butter and ghee
- Olives and olive oil
- Avocados and avocado oil
- Coconut oil
- Vegetable and seed oils, including sesame oil, canola oil and sunflower oil
- Nuts and seeds
- Seafood (fresh fish, scallops, shellfish)
- Traditional soy foods (tofu, tempeh, edamame, etc.)
- Bananas
- Apples
- Berries
- Peaches
- Pears
- Cruciferous vegetables, including cauliflower and broccoli
- Greens, such as spinach, kale and Swiss chard
- Bell peppers
- Mushrooms
- Red meat (fresh beef, pork, lamb, bison)
- Poultry (fresh chicken, turkey)
- Onions
- Carrots
- Radishes
- Green beans
- Starchy vegetables, including potatoes, corn and squash
- Milk
- Butter and ghee
- Cheese
- Cream
- Cottage cheese
- Sour cream
- Yogurt