Grains are actually among the first “processed foods” in the human diet? Unlike meat, fruits or vegetables, grains aren’t typically eaten in their natural state — rather, they’re first milled (processed) to help make them more digestible.

If something is not digestible in it’s natural state, that might mean that we are not suppose to ingest it. This is not a cause for use to find a way to break it down, process it until we can ingest it. Our bodies evolved on this earth with these grains around us, yet our bodies did not form in such a way that digesting these grains on their own was ever an option.

This goes back to when I first began eating raw foods and was looking at purchasing a high powered blender to make my smoothies. In trying to decide, I called up one of the online stores and spoke with the vendor. While explaining the benefits of one blender he had, he told me that it was powerful enough to blend the whole avocado pit into my smoothie. Wow, why on earth would I want to do that? This man seemed to believe that there were nutrients in the pit that I was missing from my diet. To me this seems ridiculous, if man has evolved fine to this day, and the only way to ingest these needed nutrients ‘locked away’ was to use this one specific blender, I was not sold on that reason. I do believe there is great benefit to using a high powered blender to enable your body to ingest more dark leafy greens by breaking them down a bit… no one could chew that much everyday. But these are foods that you can chew and will digest.

So back to grains, if it is a food that must be milled, dried, and then cooked before our body begins to recognize it – ummm, need I say it, NO thank you. If in the future, as our bodies continue to evolve, whole unprocessed grains are digestible, then there is a reason. But as I see it not there is an obvious reason why we cannot digest them in their natural state now.

As for me, keep your avocado pits and un-sprouted grains. I will feed my body with the whole foods that don’t need a machine to pre-digest them.

Ready for a change yourself? If you are having digestive difficulties, especially IBS and belly bloat, wheat or grains may be the cause. A good way to find out whether this is so is to completely eliminate wheat from your diet for two weeks. You may find yourself craving wheat and you may also notice an increase in digestive disturbances in the first few days, both of which will slowly subside and eventually vanish. After two weeks, try a single serving and listen to your body, digestion, energy levels and look at your skin over the next 72 hours.