The phone call to our good friend, Mike, started off the usual way: “Hi. How have you been?” The response was not so usual: “Terrible! Last week my lips and then my whole face swelled up! It must be something I ate but I can’t figure out what.” When it’s hard to pinpoint a specific food culprit, chances are it’s an intolerance to salicylates, amines or MSG (monosodium glutamate).
Salicylates are natural chemicals found in a wide range of fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs & spices, jams, honey, tea, coffee, juice, beer and wine. Aspirin is also part of the salicylate family. Amines are formed by protein breakdown or fermentation. Like salicylates they are found in more tasty food such as avocados, tomatoes, bananas, cheese, chocolate, wine and beer. And MSG isn’t just confined to Chinese takeaways. It’s naturally found in tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, meat and yeast extracts, sauces and stock cubes.
On our most recent catch-up Mike told us he had cut out tomatoes (“I was eating heaps of them”)and thankfully suffered no more puffer fish face episodes! Tomatoes are high in all three natural chemicals so avoiding them would certainly drop the levels in your body – hopefully to under your natural threshold level.
The short answer is yes – you can eat mussels if you have high cholesterol. Mussels are low in kilojoules, cholesterol and fat. The little fat they do have is mostly healthy unsaturated fat with plenty of omega-3’s to help stabilise the heart muscle, reduce triglycerides (a type of fat in the blood), make arteries more elastic (which helps reduce blood pressure) and reduce blood clotting and inflammation.
Douse your mussels with butter, cream or other saturated fat and they will be more of a heart hazard than anything else. But if you eat them as we did at the Boat Shed Cafe in Nelson (northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island) – steamed with garlic, wine and parsley and served with a local pinot gris – your heart and your taste-buds will be very happy.
Last week we jumped on board the Pelorous Sound mail boat which chugs the length of Pelorous Sound three times a week delivering mail
We were on our way to Picton to catch the ferry to Wellington but I couldn’t leave without popping into the Blenheim farmers market. As we walked past fresh vegetables, apricots, cherries and nectarines a friendly lady offered me a plate of pikelets topped with chunky apricot and rhubarb & ginger jam. “Would you like to try one? It will go well with your bottle of Riesling.” I was momentarily flummoxed. How did she know I’d bought Riesling? Then I recognised her. It was Chris from the Vavasour winery. I’d staggered in there yesterday on my brief afternoon cycle around the local wineries. “This is my other job,” she explained. “I make my jam without water – just fruit and sugar, cooked slowly over a low heat. You get a much more intense flavour – no watering down.”
