I’ve been on a diet the last two weeks. I’ve never really had a sensitive stomach but I’m wondering if what I did last night made me feel kind of queasy all day today. I was starving last night and so I decided to cook up some sauerkraut (it’s very low cal) and I ate a pretty good sized mound (maybe about 1 & 1/2 cups) of it just before going to bed.
All day today my stomach a has been kind of wonky. Not queasy exactly but “off” somehow, and my appetite has been way off. Have I messed up the acid balance in my stomach? Could eating such a high acid food in quantity have knocked my stomach out of kilter? What are good foods to restore the balance?
The wikipedia sauerkraut entry makes this statement:
“However, the low pH and abundance of otherwise healthy lactobacilli (of sauerkraut) may upset the intestines of people who are not used to eating acidic foods.”
The problem with this claim is that stomach acidity is going to be considerably greater than that of sauerkraut, and by the time partially digested sauerkraut makes it into the intestines I doubt it’s going to present a problem based on acidity.
People have varying tolerances to particular foods and there may be something besides acidity that your system wasn’t used to.
Incidentally, when I started reading the thread title I thought this was going to be a spinoff from the Disastrous First Dates thread.
Did you rinse the kraut before cooking? I find that if I don’t, it usually doesn’t stay around long enough to be a problem – i.e. it takes the express route through the GI tract.
Anyway, I rarely eat sauerkraut these days, as I have high blood pressure and try to keep my salt intake down. Too bad, as sauerkraut is wonderful stuff.
Acidic foods, eating a lot, and eating right before bed are all known triggers of acid reflux. I can tell you from experience that acid reflux can give you a bad night’s sleep, and you might feel out of sorts all over after a mostly sleepless night.
Do you have a kind of acidic taste in your mouth, particularly in the back toward your throat?
I know that when my boyfriend eats it, the paint peels off the walls. If you really want a stench, though, you have to give him all of the standard Reuben ingredients. For some reason it’s a lethal combination.
Try one of those little cans of sauerkraut juice you see at the grocery store, next to the prune juice. That nobody besides the elderly buys (which they buy for its costive effects, not because back in the good old days nothing beat the heat like a tangy glass of sauerkraut juice).
Don’t worry, Dylan Thomas used to shit the bed, and he was a great poet, so you’ll be in good company.
