Guys, guys, guys! The forum needs some life.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. Okay, I've got one; Carrageenan.

No, seriously.

I've spent many years eating on and off a quasi 'granola' type diet (granola meaning hippie, not the breakfast cereal) even to the point of being more or less vegan for a year or two, then only doing fish but still no dairy for a year or so after that.

I still don't do a lot of dairy, but I've always consumed decent amounts of things like soy milk or these bolthouse farm deals (shame, because they're pretty good)... and I've always had sort of a cast-iron constitution; meaning very little upsets my digestive equilibrium and whatnot.

But lately, like to the past few months, I've been feeling sort of fucked up and particularly digestively not-quite-right. Not to the point of jeezus get me to the doctor, but I take good care of myself and I consider myself fairly in tune with my body so I can really tell when something is hitting a discordant note. So I'm screwing around looking up recipes or something and I come across some stuff about carrageenan, which is in all these hippie-dippie-vegan things I like to mix in my coffee and whatnot. And I remembered someone saying something about it to me years ago, to which my response at the time was probably "I gave up bourbon, I think I can keep a little seaweed in my diet" or whatever.

But lo and behold, there seems to be a variety of information (like with so many things) and some assertions (some more heavily woo-sounding than others, to be sure) that this stuff is pretty well known as, at the very least, a GI irritant.

So I'm like "Fuck! This is in EVERYTHING I drink, just about". But like I said, something has seemed a bit off, so I'm all "why not, I'll cut it out and see what happens". Because I was drinking this stuff in one form or another- a lot of it- every day.

This was a few days ago. I'll be damned if I don't feel a helluva lot better.