Noxious seaweed farts, or, Costco's chemical warfare on America?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Lately, my partner and I have been buying roasted seaweed snacks from Costco and eating them through the day. They’re really quite delicious, but they’ve turned our cozy little home into a biohazard Superfund site.

It’s fine if we just eat a single pack. If we eat two packs, the house starts getting just a bit gassy, like “bean and cheese burrito that’s just a little expired” kinda bad. Nothing we can’t handle. As vegetarians, we’re used to roleplaying as ruminants, but sadly our stomachs aren’t. Sulfur is the third roommate.

By the time we eat three or more packs a day, the house starts to smell like how I imagine a teenaged Aquaman would: a mix of sweaty angst, sexual frustration, and fish carcass. And these miasmas… they linger in wait, just daring you to accidentally stumble back into their clouds of despair after having left the room minutes or hours ago. They never really go away, and seem to have developed tidal effects where they’re stronger at certain times of the night, particularly under a full moon. Our house is now permanently haunted by these little pockets of putrid regret.

What gives…? What sort of ancient evil have we awoken? On paper these are just algae cooked in sunflower & sesame oil and coated in a small ocean of salt. Granted, the Costco packs are huge, and each individual package has like 4-5x more than you’d find in a similarly-sized Trader Joe’s carton, but still… it’s just seaweed. Why do they wreak such horror on the digestive system?

Is it just us? The reviews don’t seem to mention this phenomenon, and this doesn’t happen to us with most other things we eat.

Are we cursed?

2

Never noticed anything like that in my household, and we go through them quickly. But we also tend to eat them with rice and kimchi, which keeps our gut cultures healthy.

3

I’m Japanese-American, and foods based on seaweed are a regular (and much favored) part of my life.

I’ve never noticed any real change to my flatus or other post-processing digestive byproducts. Maybe it’s just your particular digestive micro biome? (Odds are good your spouse shares that.)

4

Pooph?
Perhaps?

If I eat loads of Kale(which I do) I drink a glass of baking soda dissolved in water.
Seems to do the trick.

5

I don’t know the ethnicity or regional origin of the OP, but a recent study found that Japanese people have gut enzymes that help them digest seaweed, which North Americans typically lack. So maybe that explains the OP’s discomforting dilemma.

I too (North American born and raised) enjoy the Costco seaweed, but I haven’t noticed any similarly unpleasant effects from eating it. I seldom eat more than one package a day though-- those Costco individual packages are large! Much larger than the individual seaweed snack packaging I’ve gotten from Asian grocery stores. Careful eating too much-- those seaweed snacks pack a lot of iodine. Though I think you’d have to eat a ridiculous amount of seaweed to ingest a toxic amount of iodine.

6

It’s also high in fiber. So, if that’s relatively new to your diet, it can result in …um, a rather pungent domestic atmosphere.

7

If you go to church, you will sit in your own pew.

8

Stop supersizing?

9

O.P. specified being vegetarian, so I doubt that’s a problem.

10

That’s just odious.

11

Sounds like it came from The Necronomicon Cookbook

“A Batrachian snack that will thrill you with mephitic vapours for days.”

12

Hmm… how fascinating! Now I want to science the shit farts out of it.

I’m Asian and my partner is European, so I guess our genes are different enough. We both suffer about the same, and neither of us are Japanese. I did eat “normal-for-a-non-Japanese-Asian” amounts of seaweed growing up (with sushi, miso soup, wakame salad, etc.)… just not acres of it dried and fried by itself.

In adulthood, though we’re ostensibly vegetarian, we’re more specifically powder-arian… some 80%+ of our daily calories come from an extremely processed nutrient powder vaguely textured to pass as food (hey, it’s actually not too bad… quite yummy and easy for a lazy couple with low standards).

On the note of fiber, the powder we eat has about 4-6g per meal, along with the occasional raw leaf or frozen brassica that we toss in from time to time, so we should be getting enough. The roasted seaweed itself actually has almost no dietary fiber anyway (<1g per pack). It might not even be digestible unless you’re a manatee or Japanese, or both.

For the rest of us, I bet this powdered diet does a number on the gut bacteria. We’ve been eating like this for a few years, so it’s unlikely I’ve retained whatever trace of a seaweed-friendly microbiome I might’ve had in the past. Whatever’s left of our gut flora likely doesn’t even recognize real food anymore and probably tries to mate with it instead of eating it.

So, what to do?

The idea of a lateral gene transfer sounds promising, but that sounds more like sci-fi biohacking than an off-the-shelf supplement.

Should I go harvest and lick copious amounts of raw, unpasteurized seaweed next time I’m at the coast in the hopes of assimilating some Bacteroides plebeius? I don’t know how to incorporate it into my biome without outright digesting it.

Or you know how some patients get a poop pill after chemotherapy to replenish their gut biomes? It would be an awkward ask, but I suppose I could try the local teriyaki store… though with my luck, they’d probably end up being Korean.

Barring that… I don’t know. If we can’t address it at the source, maybe we can at least do something about the symptom? Do they make underwear with air filters? Should I slide some leftover N95 masks into my boxers?

I just want to be able to eat seaweed without fear…

Heh, indeed.

13

Pet dogs of any breed are famous for having very bad intestinal reactions to changes in their very monotonous pet food diets. I wonder how analagous that is to your baseline “powder-tarian” diet and you both suddenly adding vast amounts of this new seaweed stuff to it?

14

I’m afraid this just isn’t one where I’m going to be able to offer very much kelp.

15

IANAD, and if this were in FQ I wouldn’t answer. But … since we are in MPSIMS, I’ll venture an observation that your diet does not sound healthy. 80% of your calories from a powdered, food-like substance? Regardless of whether it technically contains the micronutrients you require, that lack of variety can’t be good for you, as you are possibly seeing demonstrated by the current fartistry you’re experiencing.

If you are “lazy” with “low standards,” that doesn’t mean you can’t eat some fresh grapes, an apple, natural peanut butter on whole grain bread sandwich, hummus and crudités (available pre-packaged so you don’t have to do anything expect rip off the plastic and eat), cottage cheese … there is a lot of food out there that lazy vegetarians can consume regularly. You don’t have to give up the protein powder entirely, but at least cut it back and eat more real food.

On the other hand, if your PCPs have given you the green light to eat as you do, what do I know? But if you haven’t confirmed with a medical professional that your eating habits are okay, if I were you I sure would try to do so.

16

Yeah, that’s probably a good idea :slight_smile: I’ll make a note of it next time I get a checkup. Bloodwork comes back fine every year but I should mention it just in case. Maybe bring some seaweed and be like “watch what happens when I eat three of these…”

For what it’s worth, the product is FSA/HSA eligible, and I was able to get a doctor’s note of medical necessity (for obesity and high blood pressure) from some company they’ve partnered with, which I think is just a medical note mill.

Anecdotally, I feel way better on the powder than on real foods, in terms of energy levels, mental clarity, sustained satiety, etc. I never had a particularly good diet, especially after I stopped eating meat, and a lot of the other stuff I eat now is also fake manufactured globs of reconstituted powder processed in hydrolyzed alien blood or something. At least this is mostly made of things I can pronounce and I don’t feel like crap afterward. It takes a lot of the stress and guesswork out of eating.

Nonetheless, I’ll try to find a registered dietician for a better evaluation of both counts, the powder and the farts.

17

It’s possible that you already have it, but the population balance in your gut isn’t currently sufficient for digestion of the seaweed - generally, if you keep eating a thing (with a bit of restraint on the amount) for a sustained period, your gut biome will adjust itself to deal with what you’re eating.

If you’re looking to try to inoculate yourself with bacteria from the sea, a nice serving of raw/live oysters could be the way.

18

It sounds like your current diet is a significant improvement over your previous eating, backed by evidence, so there’s that. My guess is that an abrupt change from what you’re doing now would probably mess up your system; but gradually adding in a few more healthy items would be even more of an improvement.

19

I have fallen off my own personal dietary orthodoxy, but to @CairoCarol’s points I say “Bravo!”

I never felt better than when I looked at the food, read the ingredient list, and if it had an ingredient list, left it at the store and instead bought & ate only things that had no ingredient list.

YDMV (You Digestion May Vary). :wink:

20

Perhaps see (sic) what happens when you eat less seaweed? I might eat one package (say, gimme brand) over two days (3.5 oz. total). How many ounces are you eating in a day?