MICROSCOPIC COLITIS SUPPORT

Arlene,

How about "organic flavoring" - even friendlier! It always makes me laugh.

Polly

Sara wrote:I don't think I react to it, but I can smell and taste the shrink wrap they use in grocery stores, sometimes even after food is cooked. What's THAT?

Could it be Bis(2-ethylhexyl) adipate, (DEHA), which a plasticizer. DEHA is an ester of 2-ethylhexanol and adipic acid, and it's used as a functional hydraulic fluid, and a component of aircraft lubricants. It's also sometimes used as an ingredient in PVC-based plastic wrap.

DEHA has been demonstrated to induce liver adenomas and carcinomas in mice, but not in rats. Apparently, the EPA considers humans to be closer to rats, than mice, because they claim that DEHA "cannot be reasonably anticipated to cause [...] irreversible chronic health effects."

Tex

In Oz, butchers that specialise in selling organic and gluten free meats sell 'nitrate free' cured meats


Tex i am sure could definately clairify if nitrates are good or bad, articles on the net talk about nitrate converting to nitrite and links to cancer


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3 Nitrates Many foods, especially cured meats such as bacon and hot dogs, use nitrates to preserve color and maintain microbial safety. Nitrate is harmless, but it can convert to nitrite, which can form nitrosamines, a powerful cancer-causing chemical, in your body. Whenever possible, look for nitrate-free preserved meats. When you do eat foods containing nitrates, have a glass of orange juice at the same time (for instance, orange juice with your morning bacon). Vitamin C is known to inhibit the conversion to nitrosamines in your stomach

Given that MC'ers can be reactive to preservatives, sulphites, I wonder if nitrate could be the issue for some?

In the past I had a D reaction to gluten free bacon, and i think it might be the nitrate.

tex wrote: Apparently, the EPA considers humans to be closer to rats, than mice, because they claim that DEHA "cannot be reasonably anticipated to cause [...] irreversible chronic health effects."
Tex

Well, I must be getting more unreasonable by the day, then ;) YUM, aircraft lubricant!

We were buying our cheese in a store where we could get it wrapped in paper instead of shrink wrap. Now, of course, we don't buy cheese at all... so, problem solved!

Thanks, Tex. It's funny how much we go through to figure out our trigger food ingredients and avoid them, while there are still so many more 'ingredients' in our food that are omnipresent. It seems plausible to me, unreasonable as I am, that at least some of those other things we ingest could be contributing to the problem - if not causally, then at least once MC is triggered.

And apparently, the lab mice agreed.

Sara

Gabes,

Nitrates certainly don't have a very good reputation, from a cancer-risk viewpoint. Of course, not all nitrosamines are carcinogenic, but that's little comfort. Unfortunately, nitrosamines can be found in various other foodstuffs, especially beer, fish, and fish byproducts, (in addition to meat and cheese products which are preserved with pickling salt).

That said, I'm a big fan of bacon. I have a hunch that like most foods, (possibly every food?), how it affects us depends on our individual genetics.

Tex

Sara wrote:It seems plausible to me, unreasonable as I am, that at least some of those other things we ingest could be contributing to the problem - if not causally, then at least once MC is triggered.

Well, when you think about it, there really is no such thing as a perfect food. Every food has some negative attributes or effects, along with the benefits, and benefits can be found, in even the worst foods. Even poisons contain certain ingredients that can be utilized for beneficial purposes.

Apparently, the best we can do is to try to maximize the benefits, and/or minimize the negative effects, in the foods that we choose for our diet. Sometimes it may not be possible to do both.

Tex

We cooked this more natural turkey today. And I must say, it didn't taste as good. My stomach didn't gurgle, but it still tasted like shoe leather.

Maybe we'll add some broth to baste it with next time.

Gourmet lunch? I think not. But, I will still eat it.

Hi All,

Tex said:
Well, when you think about it, there really is no such thing as a perfect food.

This comment got me thinking......since eating in general is loaded with landmines, I guess that's the reason that the GI system has such an active immune sysytem. All of those billions of white cells/antibodies, etc. standing at attention along the inside of the GI tract, just waiting to pounce on a food. It's a beautiful system, except in our case, when the system is broken.

Love,

Polly

Manna was a perfect food, but God hasn't provided it for us in a while...

Speaking of turkey... I used to buy a whole turkey breast from the deli and slice it at home on my electric meat slicer. It was much less expensive to buy the whole thing than to buy the exact same product already deli-sliced. The deli soon caught on to that (I was probably not the only person doing it) and now they don't offer the whole turkey breast. I just wanted to mention that as a possibility for cutting down on the price of buying more with less, if you can find it.

Polly, I was just thinking about that the other day - how the GI system is tuned to be able to tolerate a little "hit" from a pathogen or novel food or even a toxin, without (most of the time) dropping us to our knees... and on the other hand, it can also hit the brakes to clean out what it considers an emergency.

Except, of course, when the definition of emergency gets a little out of joint ;)

Sara