Ahhh..there are so many things I will miss when we leave Arizona once again. Free citrus fruit right outside my door is one of the biggest.
There sometimes seems to be a price to pay for the grapefruits, though. In case you were NOT one of the two people who read my recent post on Give It To Me Raw, now is your chance to redeem yourself and tell me if you have any issues with grapefruit or other weird food reactions.
Here is (some of) what I wrote on GI2MR:
I have never eaten too many grapefruits--partly because they were not a favorite and partly because several years ago I had one or two and got a weird reaction. The skin around my lips and chin turned flaming red and this condition lasted for several days.
Fast forward to 2008: I now have a grapefruit tree just outside and have decided to tempt fate. I have enjoyed several lucious pink grapefruits over the last weeks and months (usually juiced) with no problem.
THEN: One day I am peeling one to plop in the blender. I haven't yet put one drop in my mouth. All of the sudden, I get this really intense, skin reaction: a wicked red scratch mark that runs from my wrist to my bicep. The six-inch spread of it below and above the inner-elbow area is REALLY red, very raised and painful--almost throbbing. This freaked me out--and, well, I didn't drink the juice. (Except for a sip or two.) Most of the "scratch" was gone by the next morning, but that six-inch part was still faintly visible after a few days.
I have had a few skin reactions to other things: pineapple--usually when I am peeling it--and fresh basil. (I get a zingy feeling that runs down the top of my right hand.) (BTW, the pineapple and basil are always organic, and the people who run the condo place where my grapefruit tree is say the trees aren't sprayed.)
I have had grapefruit juice since with no problem. I even rubbed some g-f juice on the mark the next day to see if it would flare up, but it didn't react at all. Don't know quite what to make of it. It's the intermittent nature of the issue that puzzles me most.
I am curious to know if anyone has had similar skin reactions and if anyone knows what my be the cause, etc.
If that happened to you, would you take it as a sign never to eat grapefruit again??
4 comments:
hey ~ that photo is great! You have me laughing - love the watrmelon hat! Been totally into watermelon ice lately.....
Bummr about the grapefruit incident - my food mishaps have been with dairy, cashews + peanuts. Other than that I'm good to go, I'll even do well on brussel sprouts!
My twitter's been weird and won't let me tweet...
Have a nice weekend!
Just dropping by to say hi :)
I've had the same issues with grapefruits, oranges, pineapples and GARLIC. On the citrus and pineapple, I have to use nitrile gloves when I peel them. I think it is something in the inside of the peel, which has different levels of bioflavinoids. It's the only common factor that I can think of. So I don't touch them with my hands. (It could be that it was on your hands when you then put it into your mouth?)
I rub the pineapple with sea salt and let it sit for a few minutes. When it bubbles a little I rinse it off. This takes any acidic reaction out of the pineapple.
On the garlic, I used to grow about 1/2 acre of garlic every year. I'd have my teens and their friends come over and peel all of it (price of a pizza party) and put in Mason jars with olive oil. There was definitely something in the garlic that dried out my lips and turned them red and chapped.
The key to all of this is physiognomy (sp?) that says this: every place on your face corresponds to another place on your body. If your lips are getting chapped, then what you have eaten is irritating your colon; specifically the 'tail end' of your large intestine.
Hope that helps. And no, it hasn't stopped me from eating grapefruits, oranges, pineapple; but it has slowed me down on the garlic.
p.s. I love your blog site. The kettle work-out rocks! *Muah*
As you saw me post on Twitter, if I eat too much fresh pineapple (doesn't happen with canned), parts of my tongue will start going numb as if I had eaten horseradish. If I'm foolish and keep eating, my whole tongue will go like that and I'll get blisters around my lips. I think it's the acid.
I can't really speak for other kinds of citrus because they are generally too acidic for me to enjoy eating with any regularity. I have so much stomach acid myself that throwing citrus in there really wants to make a fire.
I can drink copious amounts of lemon water to no ill effect but I think that's because the acid in the lemons is diluted by so much water (like 4 lemons to a gallon of water).
On other things, I get esophageal spasms from basmati rice as well as chinese pea pods. I love the pea pods, but I don't bother with them anymore because esophageal spasms are horrible. If I stop eating as soon as they start, which is within a bite or two, I'll still feel like I'm dying for 30 minutes. That's 30 minutes too long!
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