Skip to main content

Food Revulsion

After four years eating mostly real food, I'm having the opposite of junk food cravings. For awhile now, a lot of foods have no longer looked like food to me--noodles, pastry, cake, most snack foods that come in plastic bags. (Cookies and brownies still do.) Later, most fruit didn't smell good. I recently made the mistake of getting some shea butter liquid soap, not noticing "honey-citrus" on the label. It smells bad, but I'm too cheap to throw it out.

Pizza has long smelled like a wet dog, which is unpleasant but tolerable, but today the pizza in the break room smelled disgusting. So did the burnt toast. Has anyone else had this experience? I never imagined I'd prefer steak tartar to pizza, but steak tartar looks, smells and tastes great to me. A bonus: I've never eaten anything that sat so easily on my stomach. I get full, but it's like there's nothing in my stomach.

Steak tartar and salad with Doreen's dressing. Recipes from 500 Paleo Recipes and 500 Low-Carb Recipes, respectively, by Dana Carpender.

Comments

Galina L. said…
I got unused to several foods to the point that I stopped perceiving it as eatable items. Tosts, cookies, candies and cakes are in that category, but pizza in a lunch room smells nice. I even not tempted to eat cripes I make for my husband from time to time. My polefitness studio is the next door to a Subway, and I got sick and tired to smell their very particular stink even though it should be the same smell as of pizza.
Lori Miller said…
The only smell I've noticed from Subway is baking bread. I can see how that wouldn't smell like food.
tess said…
the smell of frying you get outside certain businesses has a peculiar reaction in me -- i want to go WASH MY FACE! :-)
Lori Miller said…
Not a bad idea if you sense greasy ash.
Galina L. said…
The smell comes from cheese covered sandwiches being quickly baked at high temperature in an oven. Inside our studio it turns into the wet dog smell.
Lori Miller said…
Wet dog and fresh sweat? I hope they have good ventilation at the studio.
Well, I still like the smell of pizza cooked with an almond flour low carb base.

I agree there are lots of smells 'out there' that when walking past I try not to breath in ...always fail...and then have a coughing fit! Oh well!

I currently have a wonderful smell coming from our kitchen coffee perculating ...any one for a cup?

Take Care

All the best Jan
Lori Miller said…
At higher end Italian restaurants I've been to where they must have made some bread/tomato sauce/cheese combination for other customers, I don't remember anything smelling off.

I like the smell of coffee, though. I never liked coffee until I started LC, then I craved it.
Galina L. said…
Coffee smells great. I feel tempted when I smell pizza, but not to the point to bother myself with making my own. LCarbing had a negative effect on my cooking enthusiasm - I mostly opt for no fuss options nowadays.
Rick Gladney said…
I'm very interested in this steak tar tar. I never thought about that before. With a raw egg on top? I might need someone to talk me into that. I'll try to look up the recipe. Pizza Hut has always smelled like wet dog to me. I still ate it, usually when someone else was buying. Pizza in general does not have that same smell though. I call the food aversion thing that we all apparently experience, carbaphobia. I experienced it much more acutely while previously on the Adkins Diet. Paleo seems to be much more refined and effective and I have not had quite the same stomach turning revulsion to the smell of French fries and fresh baked bread. I still have a mild aversion, and willpower to completely avoid the foods not good for me but I think it comes from a much healthier place mentally. Ten years ago when I was on Adkins, I coined the phrase carbaphobia. As far as I'm concerned it is a real phobia. I experienced an aversion to all starchy and sweet carbs so powerful it would effect my mental and physical state to such a degree I became worried that I might be suffering from an eating disorder simular to anorexia. I'm glad the more balanced approach of paleo has allowed me to avoid those same pitfalls. I would give the advice that if you do experience overwhelming panic at the site of bread like I sometimes did, you should try to find more of a balanced approach. Part of my problem, I know now was trying to lose weight as fast a possible. Obsessing over every carb. You shouldn't do that. It's definitely not healthy. Thanks for the menu tips. How does raw steak taste and what are your favorite cuts? I'm interested but a little chicken, ha ha.
Lori Miller said…
That's interesting about carbophobia. It sounds like you were pushing yourself to be perfect on Atkins, and I agree it's not good to put so much pressure on yourself. Hence, my defense of fast food in another post.

I don't think I have carbophobia, though. Even though wheat gives me acid reflux, allergy symptoms and an upset stomach, I don't panic at the sight of it; too much broccoli upsets my stomach, but I still eat a little of it now and then. As for french fries, they don't taste good to me anymore and don't sit well on my stomach. I'm not tempted to eat them.

I used about six ounces of chuck roast or rump roast with plenty of marbling to make the steak tartar. I get my beef from a ranch that raises its livestock traditionally (they feed the cattle corn and grass, but not antibiotics) and uses a mobile slaughtering unit. The cattle live and die in a relatively clean environment. I wouldn't eat raw CAFO meat and wouldn't eat raw hamburger from anywhere unless I ground it myself. Same with the egg yolk--I buy free range eggs and wouldn't eat a raw egg from a CAFO because chicken CAFOs are crowded and filthy.

Once you dice the meat (using a big, sharp knife), you add some spices to it, knead it like meatloaf, make a depression in the center and add the egg yolk. The meat tastes like it smells; the egg yolk tastes like the yolk of a lightly fried egg.
Rick Gladney said…
Question. The only store around here that sells organic meat is Publix. It's marked antibiotic free and grass feed. Do you think that would be ok? It's very expensive and I cook the ribeye I buy from my IGA so rare it might as well be tar tar and never had any problems. I'm tempted not to buy the organic and just use regular. I'm not that worried because I also buy regular ground beef and basically cook it the same way. Over the grill for a couple of minutes with a very large partially uncooked center and never had a problem. Been doing it all my life. I know it's a bad habit and down right dangerous, but it's just so damn good, I can't help it. In some regards I'm kind of, shall we say, nonchalant about government standards. Thank you for your input, I definitely appreciate it.
Lori Miller said…
As long as you don't have a compromised immune system and you're basically eating the meat raw anyway, why not?
Rick Gladney said…
Thanks. I'll report back my findings.

Popular posts from this blog

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

YouTube invites creators back; says Biden pushed censorship on COVID and politics

Google, which owns YouTube, is inviting back creators it kicked off the platform for content about politics, elections, and COVID. Google says the Biden administration pressured them to censor this content, and now Europe is trying to force them to censor lawful content. Jim Jordan, Representative from Ohio, explains on X. Thread here .  Created with AI on ImageFX.  YouTube creators banned or suspended for COVID content (source: Grok). Click to enlarge. Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan 2h • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X 🚨BREAKING: Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. Thread: YouTube also: -Admits the Biden Admin censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong” -Confirms that the Biden Admin wanted Americans censored for speech that did not violate YouTube’s policies -Details when YouTube began rolling back its censorship policies on p...

Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it.  I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,  My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...