Quote from: kallyn on October 10, 2009, 04:46:24 AM

I've noticed other problems with Chinese food besides the ones you mentioned.

Soy sauce - commercial soy sauce is brewed with wheat.
Sesame oil - messes with your digestion if you're not accustomed to eating it.
MSG - nuff said.

Yes.  This place does not use MSG - or at last didn't last time I checked - and there's not a lot of soy sauce in the dishes, but there might have been quite a bit of sesame oil in the soup.

They always say that they don't use MSG because they probably don't buy it and sprinkle it on the food. But they don't  even know that it is in mostly all bottled sauces these days under different aliases.

I wonder if I should talk about the cake incident, even though it was three weeks ago.

Wow.  If there was ever any personal story which convincingly points out the poisonous nature of things like cake, and what a sugar overdose can do to a person, yours is it, Lone Wolf.   Thanks for that.  

I rarely have violent reactions to junk food.  For me, it's more of a slow cooking in a crappy metabolic stew.  During my two-year hiatus from eating healthful paleo foods, I had many bouts with just plain feeling lousy, bloated, and hopeless.  Another bad thing about eating all the junk foods- it's debilitating with regards to regular exercise.  It was probably most of the reason that I didn't do much exercise over that two years.  Just now and then I'd get frustrated and go out and jog, despite feeling crappy.  But then I'd go right back to eating my junk foods, and losing interest in exercise.  It's like a self-induced hibernation, for me - on top of the seasonal slowdown I experience in the Autumn and Winter months.  But it lasts year-round.

On the positive side, sticking to paleo foods for at least a couple of weeks causes your energy levels to soar, and you feel like doing more physical activity, just naturally.  Or it seems to be that way for me, at least.  Less than an hour ago, I had a little impromptu workout- just some pushups, and a few dumbell exercises - one-arm bent rows, bicep curls, and pullovers on a bench.  Nothing fancy; hardly even got sweaty, but I felt like expending a bit of my excess energy.  I hadn't planned on doing that; it was just on the spur of the moment.  I feel great.   And this is only two weeks into eating paleo full-time.

So, you'd think I'd learn, but apparently not.

We had Thanksgiving at my place - my brother came in with his wife and three sons, plus my mother, and of course our own family.  In anticipation of this, I bought a lot of groceries, including some nonpaleo stuff - especially the Green & Black chocolate, which was half price.

Well, after everyone left on Friday, I still had a whole nonpaleo pecan pie left over, plus a big bar of Green & Black 55% chocolate with hazelnuts and currants.  The other 45% is, of course, mostly sugar.

Well, I figured that if I only ate the insides of the pie and not the crust, I'd be skipping the flour and trans fats at least - and the chocolate did have hazelnuts and currants in it, so it wasn't completely nonpaleo!  So I split some with my wife - then over the course of the day yesterday, I ate the rest.  It was probably at least 200g of sugar.

Naturally, I woke up this morning with a sore throat.  Uh oh!  I gulped down some water and a vitamin C pill - fight nonpaleo with nonpaleo, I figure - and I got out of the house to get some sunshine, while staying well hydrated all day.

The sore throat actually went away by noon, but then I had a bad head cold with congestion and a headache all afternoon.

I'm actually feeling a bit better now after staying paleo for the rest of the day and having some bone broth - and I did get hungry in the evening, which doesn't usually happen until I'm recovering.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.

So, you'd think I'd learn, but apparently not....

Just to close the loop, I'll mention how this turned out.  That post was from a Sunday; I was sick enough to stay home from work on Monday, and was sick but went in on Tuesday.  I figured it was just a sore throat and thus not too communicable, as I wasn't coughing.

Then I felt well enough by that Friday to have a couple ounces of chocolate - talk about not learning! - and got sick again for the weekend!  That time I was well enough to go in to work on Monday, though.

So, anyway, not nearly as bad as tale #1, when I had a lingering cough for six weeks, and I'm fine now, but I really need to stay away from the sugar!

Being young definitely helps.

These particular cases happened when I was on a mostly meat diet and so had little or no vitamin C intake.  If you are eating fruit with vitamin C, which is perfectly allowed on paleo, that would likely help.

Finally, your cheats may not involve a lot of pure sugar or starch, or may involve inflammatory foods that compensate for the immunosuppressive effects of carbohydrates.

Surprised more people aren't posting about their christmas cheat mishaps

Warren, keep us posted!