<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

I've heard from about a dozen people, most of whom are
also casein intolerant and are having similar
experiences with legumes.

A couple of people have found that the recommendations
in "Eat Right 4 Your Type" steered them away from
legumes, or at least from specific legumes.  One has
trouble with kidney beans.

Apparently there are a couple dozen types of beans and
legumes covered in the book. [I've got a request in
for this book at the library.  In my attempts to
research legumes thus far I've been overwhelmed at the
numbers!)

One person said they had been advised by a
nutritionist that pinto, kidney, and black beans were
good substitute protein sources for the casein
sensitive, and also cautioned that medications can be
problematic for the casein sensitive.

Some people speculated that the structure of the
protein in legumes could be similar to milk casein,
and that it might affect some individuals who were
casein sensitive, but not others.  [I found this note
in The Merck Index, p. 1899, "Legumin, also known as
avenin or vegetable casein, occuring in beans and
nuts, is a globulin resembling casein."]

A few suggested investigating the autism websites, and
one provided these links: www.gfcfdiet.com and
www.autismndi.com.  Another came up with this link to
the autism archives that is very interesting:

http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/aut/autism94.html

This is an excerpt of one of the e-mails from that
group:

"Many children and adults with autism can present with
symptomology that highly resembles that of an
individual with celiac. Some biopsies even demonstrate
the same GI damage. *HOWEVER*, the mechanisms that we
are currently investigating do NOT suggest that the
alpha-gliadin fraction of gluten and casein found in
dairy are the only issues. We have been evaluating the
molecular makeup of these similar storage proteins,
and have found additional protein sources that pose a
problem. These include, but are not limited to, zein,
in corn, alpha (sub) S2 casein, also in corn,
conglycinin in soy AND other legumes. These
components( of proteins)are very complex, and some
still are not fully defined, so the evaluation is
going rather slowly..."

Finally, legumes, as well as nuts and some other
foods, have components, sometimes known as
"anti-nutrients," that can be very hard to digest.
Soaking nuts in salted water and then roasting them
slowly works for one of our listmates, and soaking
beans repeatedly before cooking is essential in making
them more digestible.  Here is a link to more info on
legumes and processing:

http://www.grdc.com.au/growers/res_summ/csn8av2.html

Kefir, to help supply the bacteria needed to produce
helpful digestive enzymes, was also recommended.  I'm
not sure how to obtain a non-dairy kefir, but I'm
putting it on my list of things to do : )

Thanks very much to everyone for your help!  I'm sure
I've lost some of the "flavor" of all the helpful
e-mails I've received in trying to summarize for the
list.  I'll be happy to provide more information if I
can upon request.

Deborah in OKC







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