Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Does anybody know if these can cause illness? It seems lately whenever I have something that is Grilled or Smoked, it makes me not feel so well.

I know that smoked foods can trigger miagraines in some people, like me, for instance. I have noticed that smoked foods seem to cause the nauseous and clumsy symptoms more than the pain.

I would think that grilling, in particular, should not cause undue issues over the same foods cooked other ways.

Self observation of such things is wildly and notoriously unreliable. For example, the type of food you have grilled or smoked is likely to be quite different then cooked otherwise; for example, how many people have pan fried steaks this time of year? You likely never eat grilled foods for breakfast (though smoked is certainly possible). Many people will consume very little meat that isn't grilled; in this case it could relate to the *meat* not the method of cooking. Many, many confounding factors.

In addition, we tend to have a strong positive confirmation bias, not to mention altering our feelings based on what we expect.

If you really want to analyse it, you will have to be extremely rigorous in recording your feelings (ideally with a questionnaire you or another made up before hand and you stick to) after *every* meal, what you ate, how it was prepared, and then try to correlate them.

Hey, Todd - Nancy Snyderman, (M.D.) was just on the Today Show, and was talking about stomach ailments. Didn't hear all of it, but something called H.Pylori causing ulcers, and she said that charred food will kick it up. Might want to see a dr. about it.

That is interesting, because I have Cholitis that my Allergist gave to me about 12 years ago by giving me too many antibiotics when he should have looked at my chart and cut my allergy shots back to once a month.

Todd,

It certainly seems possible that, if you have irritated intestines anyway, charred/smoky foods could irritate it further, although mostly what I hear about are spicy, caffinated and alkaline foods having this effect. I don't know, I'm not a gastrointerologist. Maybe you should see one?

Do keep in mind that for intestinal distress, the effects can kick in 6-24 hours after you eat the food, depending. So if you have issues at night, it could be lunch or even breakfast rather than dinner. That's the reason it took a friend of mine 10 years to find out she had gluten allergy, during which she thought she was allergic to onions or had an ulcer.