Health Warning To Fellow Farangs!

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

thanks - I'm sure you're right. I/we really need a proper "farang kitchen" with hob and oven. Meanwhile, I'm changing my diet already

That's one of the problems for farangs here, especially those on a budget, and that's that so many basic room and apartment places don't have any built-in facilities for cooking or washing dishes, thus making home cooking difficult.

I mentioned above what my wife and I have been doing for dinner lately, not because we have to, but because we like it: gai yang bought pre-cooked at our local supermarket, along with diced fresh onion, canned corn, a bag of pre-washed and cut organic lettuce from the market, and bottled no-fat salad dressing.

That's something that could be kept and fixed by anyone with a refrigerator. Nothing much in the way of cooking or cleaning required.

[Tolley]

thanks - I'm sure you're right. I/we really need a proper "farang kitchen" with hob and oven. Meanwhile, I'm changing my diet already

That's one of the problems for farangs here, especially those on a budget, and that's that so many basic room and apartment places don't have any built-in facilities for cooking or washing dishes, thus making home cooking difficult.

I mentioned above what my wife and I have been doing for dinner lately, not because we have to, but because we like it: gai yang bought pre-cooked at our local supermarket, along with diced fresh onion, canned corn, a bag of pre-washed and cut organic lettuce from the market, and bottled no-fat salad dressing.

That's something that could be kept and fixed by anyone with a refrigerator. Nothing much in the way of cooking or cleaning required.

It is not as hard as you think.

Just go to the supermarket and buy some meat already cooked not fried and then go to the salad bar and grab yourself a salad and if you want rice many places now in Pattaya anyway have brown rice as well. Total cost for a meal for two around 120 baht.

[manarak]

Home cooking is quite expensive in Thailand :-/

But I too will have a proper oven fitted into my kitchen, because I miss crispy chicken wings, can't stand the stuff they sell here.

A grilled chicken with real chicken taste from time to time will be nice too.

[bartender100]

I have a nice kitchen in my condo including an oven, I cook 90% of my own food, people talk about the best breakfast in town, well its the one I cook myself, with good quality eggs, mushrooms and bacon etc.

[pomozki]

I have a nice kitchen in my condo including an oven, I cook 90% of my own food, people talk about the best breakfast in town, well its the one I cook myself, with good quality eggs, mushrooms and bacon etc.

outstanding - what time can I come around?

[Tomtomtom69]

Mcdonalds and KFC are probably healthier and have more nutrition than most Thai street food.

Think about it. Chicken skin is pure cholestoral same as squid and most non-fish seafood served with tiny bits of meat which are usually the fat and skin deep fried first in high cholestoral oil. All either fried again in lots of high cholestoral oil or like the OP says in water flavoured by animal fat or served in very high cholestoral coconut milk or just plain deep fried.

Served with none or very little vegetables with have often sat cooking in liquid all day having all the vitamins removed and either high starch rice or dried noodles which are dehydrated by deep frying them at the factory.

At least mcdonalds actually has sonme meat and potatoes. Not saying it's healthy at all but better than most street food.

Coconut milk being a plant based product does not and can not contain cholesterol. This is a bad myth perpetuated by the FDA to get consumers to switch to unhealthy vegetable oils. Coconut milk (and oil) may contain a lot of saturated fat, but interestingly the traditional diets of some Pacific Islanders, which included a large amount of coconut based products including coconut milk and oil, fish, bananas and taro roots was keeping them healthy; in fact, heart disease, diabetes etc. was virtually unknown amongst those peoples until sugary soft drinks, fried foods etc. entered the market and now rates of cardio-vascular disease, dementia, alzheimer's etc. are skyrocketing.

Yes, the problem with coconut milk is it contains a huge amount of saturated fat per serving. And if you keep eating it a lot over a period of time, it's surely going to elevate one's risk for heart and circulatory problems.

Well that would be the same as for any other high saturated fat food - having said that the jury is out on exactly whether it's all about saturated fat, because many poly and trans fats are actually responsible for the increase in cardiovascular problems. I'm still doing my research and there seems to be a lot of debate from both sides, from people like Dr. Chauncey Crandall and others who have blamed the vegetable oils, particularly when they're exposed to high temperatures and thus oxidized changing their chemical structure etc. Apparently that is not the case with coconut oil (coconut milk is only used in curries, candies etc. and not for general cooking of course) but both are more likely to be cooked at lower temperatures anyway.

[laislica]

Things you maybe need to research:

Olive oil - source Olives

Coconut oil - source Coconuts

Can o l a - source a chemical factory? There is no such thing as a canola seed.

Acronym Definition

CANOLA Canadian Oil Low Acid

Canola oil is made at a processing facility by slightly heating and then crushing the seed. Almost all commercial grade canola oil is then refined using hexane. Finally, the crude oil is refined using water precipitation and organic acid, "bleaching" with clay, and deodorizing using steam distillation. Approximately 43% of a seed is oil. What remains is a rapeseed meal that is used as high quality animal feed. 22.68 kg (50 lb) of rapeseed makes approximately 10 L (2.64 US gal) of canola oil.

A plant with the unfortunate name of "rape" produces a seed that, when crushed, makes an excellent vegetable oil. Unfortunately, the oil contains lots of something called erucic acid, which, in high doses, is toxic to humans. So back the late 1960s, Canadian agriculturalists used traditional breeding techniques to come up with a new version of the rape plant that had only trace amounts of that nasty acid. In honor of the country of its birth, they called this new edition "Canola" which is an acronym that stands for, "Canada oil, low acid."

Canola oil's ancestry has led to some confusion and controversy. Critics have gone so far as to claim that the oil is a toxic, genetically modified "frankenplant." In fact, the process that created canola is as old as human civilization. Plant breeding and hybridization are what brought us wheat, rice, corn and just about everything else that we eat. On the other hand, while canola is not, by definition, genetically modified, some 80 percent of today's canola crops are modified to make them more resistant to pesticides. According to the canola industry, by the time the oil has been extracted from the plant, none of the parts that were altered are left. But if you have concerns about genetic modification, make sure to buy organic canola oil. Organic certification ensures that the product has never been tinkered with in a lab.

Biodiesel

Because of the lower levels of the toxic and irritating properties of genetically modified rapeseed oil, Canola oil is a more promising source for manufacturing biodiesel than the natural oil as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels.

Canola oil has many non-food uses, and often replaces non-renewable resources in products including industrial lubricants, biofuels, candles, lipsticks, and newspaper inks.

This is something you really want to eat?

A poster said that his father had to avoid eggs for years, only to be told later that the food scientists had got it wrong, the cholesterol in eggs is not the harmful sort!

Coconut oil is a saturated fat but it is of the right kind, do the research, it regulates insulin and curbs appetite amongst many good things.

Scientists are only human, they can and do make genuine mistakes, then there are those who are funded by industry and they can tell blatent lies and hide truths.

[robblok]

I calculated i pay double the amount that i could pay if I only ate street food. Guess its true that everyhing has its price.

[laislica]

As a young man of 47, hoping soon to be a young man of 50 rather than an old man of 50, what sort of thing should I be getting the doctor to check for whenever I go for a routine service?

SC

To live long and healthy, here is one approach:

When people ask what her secret is, the 104-year-old tells them she stays away from sugar and doctors.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161243/Rosario-Schielzeth-Maria-Garcia-Mother-104-takes-care-daughter-87-dementia.html

As far as Prostate cancer is concerned, do some research and take the above advice.

I read that many men over 70 may die WITH prostate cancer but the cancer is so slow in progressing that it is not a killer.

Medical intervention, on the otherhand may be a killer, even after many very unpleasant side effects like erectile dysfunction......

The major cause of death is - LIFE - so mindfully, live it to the full, only be stupid occasionally.

A little of what you fancy will do you good - too much of a good thing is the killer.

[manarak]

Can o l a - source a chemical factory? There is no such thing as a canola seed.

Acronym Definition

CANOLA Canadian Oil Low Acid

...

This is something you really want to eat?

why not - depends on taste and effects on health - all the rest is bla bla.

[laislica]

Can o l a - source a chemical factory? There is no such thing as a canola seed.

Acronym Definition

CANOLA Canadian Oil Low Acid

...

This is something you really want to eat?

why not - depends on taste and effects on health - all the rest is bla bla.

It is apparently chemically treated so that it is no longer toxic so I suppose that is a good thing.

What nutrients do you gain by eating it?

[laislica]

I calculated i pay double the amount that i could pay if I only ate street food. Guess its true that everyhing has its price.

We use coconut oil for cooking and it is quite expensive but worth the cost IMO.

Since we've added it to our diet, food cravings have reduced.

When we bought our house it didn't have a kitchen. There was space to build one : so we did.

It's hard to get my wife to cut down on the amount of MSG/salt/sugar she adds to her food but there is none in mine and I feel much better for it.

When we eat out my wife asks for food without MSG for me and I really appreciate that because on the occasions that she forgot, I was quite unwell afterwards.

[partington]

Coconut oil, which has become a kind of fad nowadays, probably should be used fairly sparingly, the Chairman of the of Human Nutrition at Harvard says in a recent Harvard Health Letter.

It's a balanced statement, and really says that the claims currently being made about coconut oil are not evidence based, that is, they have not been tested long-term on human beings, so people just don't know as yet whether they are true or not.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Health_Letter/2011/May/coconut-oil

Q. I have started noticing more coconut oil at the grocery store and have heard it is better for you than a lot of other oils. Is that true?

A. I've also noticed that coconut oil seems to be catching on these days. Coconut oil is about 90% saturated fat, which is a higher percentage than butter (about 64% saturated fat), beef fat (40%), or even lard (also 40%). Too much saturated fat in the diet is unhealthy because it raises "bad" LDL cholesterol levels, which increases the risk of heart disease. So it would seem that coconut oil would be bad news for our hearts.

But what's interesting about coconut oil is that it also gives "good" HDL cholesterol a boost. Fat in the diet, whether it's saturated or unsaturated, tends to nudge HDL levels up, but coconut oil seems to be especially potent at doing so.

..EDIT FOR LENGTH...

Coconut is a wonderful flavor and there's no problem using coconut oil occasionally. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature, so cooks are experimenting with using it instead of butter or vegetable shortening to make pie crust and other baked goods that require a solid source of fat. And if you're preparing a Thai dish, cooking with coconut oil may be essential.

But, for now, I'd use coconut oil sparingly. Most of the research so far has consisted of short-term studies to examine its effect on cholesterol levels. We don't really know how coconut oil affects heart disease. And I don't think coconut oil is as healthful as vegetable oils like olive oil and soybean oil, which are mainly unsaturated fat and therefore both lower LDL and increase HDL. Coconut oil's special HDL-boosting effect may make it "less bad" than the high saturated fat content would indicate, but it's still probably not the best choice among the many available oils to reduce the risk of heart disease.

— Walter C. Willett, M.D.
Harvard School of Public Health
Department of Nutrition
Harvard Health Letter Editorial Board

[Tolley]

I calculated i pay double the amount that i could pay if I only ate street food. Guess its true that everyhing has its price.

I dont really worry about the cost of food and vitamins which set me back quite a bit each month because I dont spend much on going out or on alcohol.

Further all the money I save on not getting sick via doctors bills, operations and days off work make it well worth while to spend extra.

I am back working in Oz and the quality of the food here is far superior to what i can get in Thailand so I am feeling better than ever.

[laislica]

Coconut (Cocos nucifera) The Tree of Life

The scientific name for coconut is Cocos nucifera. Early Spanish explorers called it coco, which means "monkey face" because the three indentations (eyes) on the hairy nut resembles the head and face of a monkey. Nucifera means "nut-bearing."

http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/

[JSixpack]

I calculated i pay double the amount that i could pay if I only ate street food. Guess its true that everyhing has its price.

Mostly rice, innit? Yeah, that's cheap, but compared to just cooking rice at home?

[JSixpack]

thanks - I'm sure you're right. I/we really need a proper "farang kitchen" with hob and oven. Meanwhile, I'm changing my diet already

That's one of the problems for farangs here, especially those on a budget, and that's that so many basic room and apartment places don't have any built-in facilities for cooking or washing dishes, thus making home cooking difficult.

Been there, done it. Hot plate + microwave is all you need.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

street food doesn't have to be bad

Lots of great choices

low sugar fruits

Som Tom (you can tell them to leave out the sugar/salt/fish sauce)

spring rolls

lean grilled meats

vegetable and fruit juices. (select low sugar ones and ask if it has Nam Taan(sugar) added)

It's not my first choice but it can be done well

[pomozki]

street food doesn't have to be bad

Lots of great choices

low sugar fruits

Som Tom (you can tell them to leave out the sugar/salt/fish sauce)

spring rolls

lean grilled meats

vegetable and fruit juices. (select low sugar ones and ask if it has Nam Taan(sugar) added)

It's not my first choice but it can be done well

abs agree, surely you can't just say "avoid street food" - what about all that rotisserie chicken and grilled/barbecued fish? that looks pretty good (apart from being delicious!)

I don't think it helps to just say "stay at home, cook with extra virgin olive oil, avoid saturated fats" etc - your suggestions are a lot more helpful I reckon

[laislica]

street food doesn't have to be bad

Lots of great choices

low sugar fruits

Som Tom (you can tell them to leave out the sugar/salt/fish sauce)

spring rolls

lean grilled meats

vegetable and fruit juices. (select low sugar ones and ask if it has Nam Taan(sugar) added)

It's not my first choice but it can be done well

I've had very little success in finding juices with no added sugar.

[Sheryl]

street food doesn't have to be bad

Lots of great choices

low sugar fruits

Som Tom (you can tell them to leave out the sugar/salt/fish sauce)

spring rolls

lean grilled meats

vegetable and fruit juices. (select low sugar ones and ask if it has Nam Taan(sugar) added)

It's not my first choice but it can be done well

I've had very little success in finding juices with no added sugar.

Doi Kham brand. Pure fruit juice and no added anything AFAIK.

Their lychee juice is spectacular.

[pomozki]

street food doesn't have to be bad

Lots of great choices

low sugar fruits

Som Tom (you can tell them to leave out the sugar/salt/fish sauce)

spring rolls

lean grilled meats

vegetable and fruit juices. (select low sugar ones and ask if it has Nam Taan(sugar) added)

It's not my first choice but it can be done well

I've had very little success in finding juices with no added sugar.

Doi Kham brand. Pure fruit juice and no added anything AFAIK.

Their lychee juice is spectacular.

now that's a useful tip - since this thread has been so popular, how about starting a new one: Food and drink tips for fellow farang!

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Doi Kham brand. Pure fruit juice and no added anything AFAIK.

Their lychee juice is spectacular.

The Doi Kham strawberry juice in 700 or so ml cartons is pretty good too... though the price went up about 5 to 7 baht per carton immediately after the floods.... not sure why.

In the past news items here, I remember reading news reports about fruit juices that supposedly claimed to be 100% fruit but actually had sugar added. Unfortunately, as best as I recall the news reports, they never seemed to say WHICH brands had been analyzed or studied for that.

Lately at home, I've been drinking Malee strawberry and rasberry juice 1L carton, given that strawberry and rasberry juice are supposed to be very good for you...actually...berry juices in general....and not as high in sugar as things like apple juice.

But I've always wondered, which brands were the ones that were actually adding sugar while claiming they weren't?

You can see the sugar levels on the nutritional labels of the juices, and some are higher and others lower per serving. But if a seller is lying about the 100% juice label on the front of the package, hard to know if they'd be telling the truth about sugars on the nutrition label.

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

Doi Kham brand. Pure fruit juice and no added anything AFAIK.

Their lychee juice is spectacular.

The Doi Kham strawberry juice in 700 or so ml cartons is pretty good too... though the price went up about 5 to 7 baht per carton immediately after the floods.... not sure why.

In the past news items here, I remember reading news reports about fruit juices that supposedly claimed to be 100% fruit but actually had sugar added. Unfortunately, as best as I recall the news reports, they never seemed to say WHICH brands had been analyzed or studied for that.

Lately at home, I've been drinking Malee strawberry and rasberry juice 1L carton, given that strawberry and rasberry juice are supposed to be very good for you...actually...berry juices in general....and not as high in sugar as things like apple juice.

But I've always wondered, which brands were the ones that were actually adding sugar while claiming they weren't?

You can see the sugar levels on the nutritional labels of the juices, and some are higher and others lower per serving. But if a seller is lying about the 100% juice label on the front of the package, hard to know if they'd be telling the truth about sugars on the nutrition label.

even 100% fruit juice is high in sugar. raises insulin, lowers growth hormone, adds body fat.

Just for a goof try cutting out sweet fruits and sweet fruit drinks for low sugar fruits like lime, avocado, grapefruit(pomello)

You can always go back to high fruit sugar but you might be surprised how quickly the body composition improves and corresponding decrease in inflammation.

If your a guy and already under 10% body fat then disregard but that is pretty rare these days.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Whenever I drink fruit juice here, I always mix it with fresh water 50-50... At least that's a start.

Usually I'll have one glass (actually half a glass of juice) with breakfast in the morning. The rest of the day it's unsweetened home-prepared herbal and/or green iced tea.

Edited March 19, 2013 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[pomozki]

Doi Kham brand. Pure fruit juice and no added anything AFAIK.

Their lychee juice is spectacular.

The Doi Kham strawberry juice in 700 or so ml cartons is pretty good too... though the price went up about 5 to 7 baht per carton immediately after the floods.... not sure why.

In the past news items here, I remember reading news reports about fruit juices that supposedly claimed to be 100% fruit but actually had sugar added. Unfortunately, as best as I recall the news reports, they never seemed to say WHICH brands had been analyzed or studied for that.

Lately at home, I've been drinking Malee strawberry and rasberry juice 1L carton, given that strawberry and rasberry juice are supposed to be very good for you...actually...berry juices in general....and not as high in sugar as things like apple juice.

But I've always wondered, which brands were the ones that were actually adding sugar while claiming they weren't?

You can see the sugar levels on the nutritional labels of the juices, and some are higher and others lower per serving. But if a seller is lying about the 100% juice label on the front of the package, hard to know if they'd be telling the truth about sugars on the nutrition label.

even 100% fruit juice is high in sugar. raises insulin, lowers growth hormone, adds body fat.

Just for a goof try cutting out sweet fruits and sweet fruit drinks for low sugar fruits like lime, avocado, grapefruit(pomello)

You can always go back to high fruit sugar but you might be surprised how quickly the body composition improves and corresponding decrease in inflammation.

If your a guy and already under 10% body fat then disregard but that is pretty rare these days.

so we're always told to eat heaps of fruit and veg - but really, we shouldn't be eating heaps of the wrong types of fruit, like oranges and apples, cos they are high in sugar? you sure it isn't a good type of sugar? I ate fruit salads with apples and oranges all the time before I got here and all I ever was was healthy

and re avocados - I love 'em .. but they are not cheap here in Khon Kaen, around 50-60 baht each. I can get 1-2 meals for that (for instance, my local cafe has started taking the MSG out of my stir fried veggies, lowering the sugar and oil ... each meal = 40-45 baht

[laislica]

Doi Kham brand. Pure fruit juice and no added anything AFAIK.

Their lychee juice is spectacular.

The Doi Kham strawberry juice in 700 or so ml cartons is pretty good too... though the price went up about 5 to 7 baht per carton immediately after the floods.... not sure why.

In the past news items here, I remember reading news reports about fruit juices that supposedly claimed to be 100% fruit but actually had sugar added. Unfortunately, as best as I recall the news reports, they never seemed to say WHICH brands had been analyzed or studied for that.

Lately at home, I've been drinking Malee strawberry and rasberry juice 1L carton, given that strawberry and rasberry juice are supposed to be very good for you...actually...berry juices in general....and not as high in sugar as things like apple juice.

But I've always wondered, which brands were the ones that were actually adding sugar while claiming they weren't?

You can see the sugar levels on the nutritional labels of the juices, and some are higher and others lower per serving. But if a seller is lying about the 100% juice label on the front of the package, hard to know if they'd be telling the truth about sugars on the nutrition label.

even 100% fruit juice is high in sugar. raises insulin, lowers growth hormone, adds body fat.

Just for a goof try cutting out sweet fruits and sweet fruit drinks for low sugar fruits like lime, avocado, grapefruit(pomello)

You can always go back to high fruit sugar but you might be surprised how quickly the body composition improves and corresponding decrease in inflammation.

If your a guy and already under 10% body fat then disregard but that is pretty rare these days.

so we're always told to eat heaps of fruit and veg - but really, we shouldn't be eating heaps of the wrong types of fruit, like oranges and apples, cos they are high in sugar? you sure it isn't a good type of sugar? I ate fruit salads with apples and oranges all the time before I got here and all I ever was was healthy

and re avocados - I love 'em .. but they are not cheap here in Khon Kaen, around 50-60 baht each. I can get 1-2 meals for that (for instance, my local cafe has started taking the MSG out of my stir fried veggies, lowering the sugar and oil ... each meal = 40-45 baht

I love avo's but I haven't seen em near here (Samut Sakhon).

Sometimes juice manuf's add high fructose corn syrup HFCS (technically it's not sugar) it's worse than sugar cos it can only be processed in the same way as alcohol, by the liver we all know that booze piles the pounds on.

Forgetting the exact science and using a broad brush approach, the reason is that the liver is easy to overload and when it's overloaded, it turns carbs into fat and pumps it into the blood - high cholesterol - insulin etc.

Fruit juices are bad in general. The proper thing to do is to eat the whole fruit, it seems that the natural fibre slows the sugar absorption rate down and helps to avoid insulin spikes.

@Sherel, thanks for the juice tip, however, I have given up consuming ready made juices for the reasons above. I eat a whole fruit and rather less of them than I did before - too much of a good thing etc.

I agree so much with Cobra, since reducing my overall fruit intake I feel much better.

I have always tended to be on the fat side and have been a yoyo dieter most of my life after 33, when I gave up smoking.

I now eat at least 6 cloves of fresh, raw, crushed garlic every day - it sorted my cholesterol out and the other (old man's complaint ED). I now generally delay eating breakfast and try to stop eating bay about 9pm. Then some days I over eat and others hardly eat.It seems to be sorting food cravings out and I don't feel constantly hungry. Coconut oil is used in cooking.

Not having food cravings is a new experience for me and I like it!

Life is much more fun - Although it's about 40 years since I gave up smoking, life is how it was then - no food cravings, staying trim and not worrying about food all the time, and actually enjoying what I do eat.

I usually have a couple of beers in the evening.

I see a poster saying coconut oil is a fad and he is entitled to his opinion.

In an earlier post I gave the website for the coconutresearchcenter: http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/

what most people do not understand is that it's the molecular make up of the sat fat that matters,

not all sat fats are equal.

Coconut oil is a medium chain sat fat, most others are long chain and are metabolised in a totally different way.

In a similar way that alcohol/fructose, are metabolised in a totally different way to sugar (glucose).

i.e. only the liver can process alcohol and fructose

whereas

glucose is metabolised by every part of the body, even the brain can use it and covert it to energy.

Coconut is known as the Tree of Life in come cultures.

If you have time, peruse the link because there are links to just about every piece of research available.

I am interested that no one has mentioned Vitamin D3 or some of the B vits as a reason for elevated cholesterol problems.

Also, the addition of Cinnamon and Turmeric spices to help regulate insulin and contain inflammation.

[belidofan]

I am unclear as to why there is so much concern of the use of MSG in asian cooking. Japan, where MSG originated and is used very widely. Has the longest life expectancy of all countries. While some people are allergic to MSG and can not eat it, the vast majority of people can consume it with no proven ill effects. I am old enough to remember when the MSG hysteria started. From all the reading I have done in the past few years, MSG appears to be a harmless flavor enhancer.

eating food prepared with msg, depending on the doses used, gives me guaranteed, outbreacks of soares-like outbreacks mainly on the arms, sometimes on the chest.These pimperlike soares are sometimes rather big (-ger than the "normal pimper), scary red, looking like burns coming from within and they are visibale for 5-6 days the least......when i and my partner realize that we are eating food prepared with generous use of msg, we always know when the symtoms are to be expected....i live here for over a decade, and it happens again and again....what better proove?....of course not all people have the same "sensitivity".....i guess i'm lucky(????) to have my body reacting this way ; is it that i'm allergic to msg?....then i hope this is a blessing....just sharing my experience

[laislica]

I am unclear as to why there is so much concern of the use of MSG in asian cooking. Japan, where MSG originated and is used very widely. Has the longest life expectancy of all countries. While some people are allergic to MSG and can not eat it, the vast majority of people can consume it with no proven ill effects. I am old enough to remember when the MSG hysteria started. From all the reading I have done in the past few years, MSG appears to be a harmless flavor enhancer.

eating food prepared with msg, depending on the doses used, gives me guaranteed, outbreacks of soares-like outbreacks mainly on the arms, sometimes on the chest.These pimperlike soares are sometimes rather big (-ger than the "normal pimper), scary red, looking like burns coming from within and they are visibale for 5-6 days the least......when i and my partner realize that we are eating food prepared with generous use of msg, we always know when the symtoms are to be expected....i live here for over a decade, and it happens again and again....what better proove?....of course not all people have the same "sensitivity".....i guess i'm lucky(????) to have my body reacting this way ; is it that i'm allergic to msg?....then i hope this is a blessing....just sharing my experience

I read somewhere that MSG blocks some chemical interfaces that then effectively stops the production of the chemical to make Telemares. Telemares afe "caps" at the end of DNA and stops it unwinding. A bit like the plastic cap at the end of a shoelace.

As you get older and the telemares get shorter there is more DNA damage leading to illness of every sort.

I have been especially vague because I think it's best that anyone who is interested does his own research.

That way he can make his own judgements about what is true and what is not.

Google is very easy to use.

There are some on this forum who would say that you are wrong in expressing your experience and unless they see "Scientific evidence" such stories are worse than useless.

I love stories like yours and I accept them as being the truth of your experience. Thank you.

[JSixpack]

Fruit juices are bad in general. The proper thing to do is to eat the whole fruit, it seems that the natural fibre slows the sugar absorption rate down and helps to avoid insulin spikes.

Sad but true. But then you also have to aware of how sugary the fruits themselves are and stick to those w/ less, as a poster above noted. Good news: tomato is a fruit. Berries are good. Frozen strawberries aren't TOO expensive here in LOS. Wish blueberries weren't. Edited March 20, 2013 by JSixpack