Not soy now too!!!
Tonight my man took me out to sushi. I brought along my wheat-free tamari.
We tried two new items; king oyster mushrooms, and the waiter’s special tea that he’d gotten from a friend touring in Taiwan. He wasn’t sure what kind of tea it was, but said the loose translation of the Chinese meant ‘mountain tea’, and that it was a famous brand in Taiwan. I peeked inside the cup as the tea was brewing, and saw that the leaves were tiny rolled up balls. As the tea steeped, the balls opened up to lovely green leaves and stems, and tinted the water a greenish-yellow
When I got home, I researched the tea - I think it was an oolong tea, because it had a lovely perfumey scent/flavour and matched the physical description of what I saw in my cup. I highly doubt either of the mushrooms or the tea caused the GI reaction that I had about an hour after eating. I only had one episode of diarrhea, and barely any cramping leading up to it, so it was a mild reaction by my body’s standards.
That leads me to believe that either the rice was glutinous or that the gluten-free tamari somehow had some gluten in it. I researched the tamari on the web and found out that other people had complained about getting sick after using the wheat-free tamari.
Person #1 (although the people on the forum were of no help whatsoever to her).
Person #2 (2nd reply in the thread)
Within that second link, I saw the term ‘histamine toxicity’, so I looked it up and found this educational article.
Also in that second link, people talked about the possibility of mold being in the soy sauce.
So the possibilities I have are:
- Soy allergy
- Gluten was in the rice
- Mouldy soy
- Yeast contamination somehow
Then again, one of the dishes I had contained a sauce on top of the sushi roll. I wonder if there was any gluten in the mayonnaise-based sauce? It’s difficult to find these things out when the people at the sushi joints we frequent do not speak much English.
This is why I gave up eating Chinese food. First they told me “oh yes - vegetarian” when I would ask if a meal was veggie only, no meat, come to find out that it had pork in it (back when I was vegetarian) … and then they told me “no, no wheat, no gluten” when I’d ask, only to have a fried batter dish served to me. This happened at too many Chinese restaurants to mention over the years. I just got to the breaking point and fired Chinese food from my diet rather than continue risking getting sick.
I really really don’t want to have to give up Japanese food, too.
My next steps:
- Go back to the same restaurant
- …with a new bottle of wheat-free tamari
- Ask for the dish I got again, sans the sauce
- Try the mushroom dish again
And Wait For It.
November 5, 2008 edit: Sorry it took so long to update. The culprit was the sauce they put on top of the roll.