Hello Palefood list,

At 03:59 PM 8/2/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi all, I had a curious experience this morning and I'm wondering if
>anyone else has had anything similar happen.  I ate some wheat with
>dinner last night after quitting all grains a few months ago.  Then
>today I looked at my arms and the skin was flushed and splotchy red,
>which to me indicates evidence of an allergic reaction.  It certainly
>isn't normal for me.

I have had very similar experiences recently.  I am responding to this post
because the quoted text is very much what I was thinking and felt,
although, unlike the post, I am not sure of the cause(s) of my experiences
and my reactions were a bit more severe:

Before lurking on several of the SJU lists related to diet, I ate anything
I wanted when I wanted and how I wanted.  Anything except certain, most,
but not all, modern-type processed foods. Every food I have ever had a
reaction to I made sure I could eat if I wanted to (and no problem either).

Sooo, influenced by the people and the information and links from these
lists (positively), I decided on a whole list of exclusions.  Last year
probably late fall,  I started.  Went from Restaurant eatin' to home
cookin' (a good weight loss program in itself hehe, The Lux Home-Cooking
Diet, another story though).

Sooo, then I started eating in restaurants once in awhile.  As long as I
stayed with meat, vegetables, and fruit, okay. Then I had a salad with
croutons and a bleu cheese commercially prepared salad dressing, and some
faut-crab (prob. cod and prob. okay maybe excepting the food coloring).  A
flushing of the skin, discomfort of various kinds including gastric
bothers. Another time, a potato salad with a white type sauce, same
reactions. This kind of thing does not alarm me much as long as little pain
is involved, and no long term symptoms.

Buuut, several months ago, I ordered and ate a regular SAD meal. Lamb, but
I ate the dinner rolls, ate the potatoes, ate the sauce on the lamb, the
croutons and the "bleu cheese" salad dressing, and the vegetables had some
sort of sauce, and more.  "Always room for dessert," right?  And a piece of
chocolate cake.  Within minutes of leaving the restaurant, abdominal pain,
splotched reddening skin, and more, pain.  This is not good.  I went home
to be sick (no stopping this one) for a few hours, during which I had a
churning stomach, intestinal cramps, sweating, instant diarrhea, waves of
weakness, and more. For all I knew at the time, perhaps just the mix of it
all after a six month or so layoff from this kind of meal, was the problem.

Since this extraordinary and unpleasant event, I have reintroduced small
amounts of almost everything with varying results.

The above is very simplified.  The above experience is one of the worst
food experiences I have experienced, not counting a few food poisonings.
Again not sure of the causes yet, but there you have it.  Soon I will be in
a position to examine the variables in more structured way.

Since this a bit of a delurk, a comment> I very much enjoy the variety and
quality of the posts here, the people (the good, the bad, and the
beautiful), the pointers to links esp. paleolithic subjects, the occasional
controversy is sometimes brutal but far more often intelligent IMHO, all in
all a great and vital list.

Enjoy the millenium, this one and the next, good eatin',

Thomas