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...

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...

Gym Influencer Doubles Down and Should Have Regretted It

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose."  Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Stay in your car!

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.*  Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...