Ladies and gentlemen; after a thoroughly embarrassing evening of nibbling on sweet potato while the rest of the Family inhaled this delicious smelling Italian sausage spaghetti that Charlie's mom made, I officially hate this disease.
It is one thing to have to insult your immediate family by not partaking in scrumptious meals - in fact, mine has always been particularly patient- and quite another when the family is your boyfriend's. This is the second time they have met me. During our first trip down here in March, I was also ill. I was eating solid food, but very carefully. Charlie's papa made some amazing beef stew our first night here and I was mortified to have to refuse it. Mortified. Last night, this feeling was revisited.
This agitation never occurs among my friends, my immediate family, but the plaguing fear of Charlie's family resenting me for weighing on his life and requiring special treatment destroys me. These are particularly kind people, bear in mind, and my abashment is probably quite unfounded. Nevertheless, I am a guest in their house making demands for accommodation, unable to enjoy their food and likely being less than thrilling company in the meantime (I was so distracted by embarrassment last night that I hardly spoke during supper).
In honor of this profound motivation to begin adding to my dietary melange (potatoes, rice noodles, rice cakes, refried beans), our Food of the Day is the EGG.
In 1939, Tiselius and Eriksson-Quensel published an in vitro digestion of egg albumin in crystalline pepsin. Their results suggested that egg whites digest in an "all or none" fashion, unlike the usual graduate process of digesting most foods. If a Crohn's gut were anything like a petri dish, this would successfully dissuade me from attempting to ingest it tomorrow. I also learned that this anti-digestive factor in raw egg white is destroyed during heating. Score!
Eggs stimulate less secretion of gastric juice than meats, and also leave the body sooner; doubly enticing for a Crohnie. Soft-boiled, poached eggs and shirred eggs are the easiest forms of digestion, while scrambling slows down the process [Anthony Basser, Diseases of the stomach and upper alimentary tract]. Basically, the longer the eggs are cooked, the harder the albumin (anti-digestive factor in whites) protein becomes and the more tedious is digestion. It follows that adding butter or oil to the preparation process also markedly slows digestion.
In 1939, Tiselius and Eriksson-Quensel published an in vitro digestion of egg albumin in crystalline pepsin. Their results suggested that egg whites digest in an "all or none" fashion, unlike the usual graduate process of digesting most foods. If a Crohn's gut were anything like a petri dish, this would successfully dissuade me from attempting to ingest it tomorrow. I also learned that this anti-digestive factor in raw egg white is destroyed during heating. Score!
Eggs stimulate less secretion of gastric juice than meats, and also leave the body sooner; doubly enticing for a Crohnie. Soft-boiled, poached eggs and shirred eggs are the easiest forms of digestion, while scrambling slows down the process [Anthony Basser, Diseases of the stomach and upper alimentary tract]. Basically, the longer the eggs are cooked, the harder the albumin (anti-digestive factor in whites) protein becomes and the more tedious is digestion. It follows that adding butter or oil to the preparation process also markedly slows digestion.
Tomorrow, I will be ingesting a poached egg.
Report: one poached egg went down heavily, but not painfully!
ReplyDelete