Ten Restaurant Items that are Secretly Bloating You
Who doesn?t love the opportunity to show up at a table somewhere, be served food that you did not have to prepare or cook, have each need attended to and simply get up and leave after you are done? Many relish this chance and look upon it as a pleasure and indulgence.
Until, however, they can?t wait to get home and unbutton their pants. I?m talking about feeling so bloated and water logged that you can feel your clothing getting tighter and tighter. We?ve all been there, and there are plenty of reasons for the water-ballon-style feeling, but let?s take a nitty-gritty look at ten very common foods you?d find – and consume – at a restaurant that may be bloating you up.
1. Fake sugars: Chances are, item number one is already set out on the table by the time you sit down. Splenda, Sweet and Low and the variety of rainbow-hued packets all pull water into the intestine and are highly fermentable to your bacteria there.
2. Ketchup: this all-American condiment, commercially made, is often packed with high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is a sugar that has to be cleaved to be digested and absorbed. Problem is, many are walking around with something called ?fructose malabsorption?, unbeknownst to them. This means that they cannot break down or absorb fructose. Instead, it stays in the intestine, pulling water towards itself and enticing your gut bacteria to ferment, ferment, ferment.
3. Salted foods: Let?s face the cold hard truth…restaurant food tends to taste good because it?s super salty, sweet or rich. There is nothing that will make your body soak up water just like a sponge than salt. A cute endearing tidbit about my sister in law, Jill Coleman of JillFit Physiques, is that every time she eats salt her eyes will get so puffy it looks like someone smacked her in the face. I know she?s hit a salted-up item at a restaurant when she sends me a pic of her squinty-looking eyes. She is adorable.
4. Boozy, sugary drinks: There is a very simple formula that you can commit to memory. Sugar plus alcohol equals water retention and hangovers. If you are going to imbibe at a restaurant, stick with something simple like wine or a vodka soda with lime and skip additional starches like potatoes, fries, chips and the bread basket. Speaking of the bread basket…
5. The bread basket: Ah, the heart of much digestive distress lays nestled within cloth napkins in the bread basket. Bread creates bloating a variety of ways. Gluten is the protein that is found in wheat and um, bread made from wheat. It is inherently difficult to break down, making it more fermentable and giving it that water-pulling power that can leave you wishing you wore the pants with the elastic waist band. Gluten also is inflammatory, which pulls even more water its way. Water that you can then retain in your body for up to 72 hours.
6. Carbonated beverages: This should be a no-brainer, but is still worth bearing in mind here. Bubbly beverages – containing bubbles bring with them lots of extra gas that you are willingly taking into your digestive tract. Unless you are doing seltzer water, you are also taking in a bunch of sugar or fake sugar, both of which will give you the sensation that your abdomen is rapidly expanding.
7. That last french fry: Overeating is a major cause of gut upset. When we munch down those last bits of food, well beyond the point of satiation and into the point of self-stuffing, we are putting enormous strain on our body?s ability to process and break down the meal. When you are not adequately breaking down your food, and all of those large, partially digested items hit the small intestine, guess what? Gas, bloating, distension, indigestion. The Four Horsemen of the Digestive Apocalypse.
8. Sweet tea: I currently reside in the South, where they take their sweet tea very seriously. Southern sweet tea is even sweeter than ?regular? sweet tea, whatever that means. To put it in context, consider that 16 ounces of sweet tea – the size of a typical restaurant glass (never mind if you go to Bojangles or wherever and opt for the 22-ounce plus size) you are getting about 50-60 grams of sugar. Have you heard the term ?empty calories?? I can think of no better example than this one right here. Additionally, you are infusing your gut bacteria with a huge load of sugar, which it will go to work on, creating gas in the process, giving you that extra-puffy feeling. Go team unsweet!
9. Your side item: If you get a side of baked beans or a bean salad, you probably know that little jingle about the magical fruit. There are a few other side items that may find their way onto your plate that you can take a look at. Make sure you chew them extra well. Coleslaw, that quintessential BBQ accompaniment, has a base of cabbage. Cabbage, being a cruciferous vegetable, requires some digestive power to break down and thus can create digestive disruption. If the coleslaw is commercially made, you have a double whammy of high fructose corn syrup likely on board. Speaking of cruciferous veggies, broccoli also is in this category, and this favorite side veg should be chewed up carefully to minimize its bloating ability.
10. The music: Not technically a food item, some may say that music is a feast for the soul. And it?s not all music that potentially could introduce more gas and bloating to your life, but make sure you pay extra attention when you are eating in the presence of fast music. Music with a fast tempo can actually make you over eat, and of course increasing the volume of food you ingest combined with the fact that when you eat quickly you swallow more air, you are ratcheting up the chances that you will be feeling the bloat later on.
We know that there is a right way to eat and a wrong way to eat – unique to us – to promote optimal digestive health. There is also a HOW to the way we eat – are we stressed? Are we wolfing down great hunks of food? Are we eating on the run? – that promotes or detracts from digestive bliss.
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