People who have a healthy digestive system can easily handle lectins from potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, grains, nuts, and beans. Preparing these foods per-traditional methods reduces the negative impact lectins interaction with our digestive system @josediccus. The inflammatory nature of lectins can trigger migraines, malabsorption of nutrients, muscle, and joint pain.

Of particular interest is the implication for autoimmune diseases. Lectins stimulate class II HLA antigens on cells that do not normally display them, such as pancreatic islet and thyroid cells.9 The islet cell determinant to which cytotoxic autoantibodies bind in insulin dependent diabetes mellitus is the disaccharide N-acetyl lactosamine, ten which must bind tomato lectin if present and probably also the lectins of wheat, potato, and peanuts. This would result in islet cells expressing both class II HLA antigens and foreign antigen together—a sitting duck for autoimmune attack. Certain foods (wheat, soya) are indeed diabetogenic in genetically susceptible mice.11 Insulin dependent diabetes therefore is another potential lectin disease and could possibly be prevented by prophylactic oligosaccharides.