Have you ever heard of lectins? Could you give me the one sentence summary of what they do to you? This column will teach you what that means.

Lectins are the proteins made by plants to protect themselves from their predators. They are, in effect, poisons that prevent the plant from being eaten. Plants need to be eaten to propagate – at least their seeds do. That delicate balance leads to lectins needing to be poisonous enough to keep the bugs away long enough so that animals will eat the seeds and spread them around.

Animals need to be able to tolerate the poison to not be too harmed, but still be benefited by eating some of the plant while spreading the seeds around. Lectins are sticky. That results in many useful functions, such as allowing cells to bind to one another, like Velcro. But it also leads to lectins binding to…