Food News 14

Start: 95.4 Last week: 87.0 This week: 87.1

Tuesday 9 October: A bit of a dreadful end to the week. We’re talking about diets here, and that means talking about intestinal goings on, so if you’re the teeniest bit squeamish, look away now. Time to discuss constipation. I know that previously I said that, on the basis of “excessive solidity and pain” I was not constipated. And I wasn’t, then. I am, now. Or rather, I was, grievously, last Saturday. I have to come clean and say that I have never before, as far as I can remember, had any sort of problem, issue or situation with regard to bowel movements. This was different. Without going into any more detail than that, lets just say that, like the mathematician of old, I eventually worked it out. But at considerable cost to my general sense of well-being and satisfaction.

It is not, of course, the Shangri La diet’s fault. There are, as I see it, two things to consider. First, it could be that reduced throughput in general affects the stool and its expulsion. That’s the favoured explanation over on the Shangri La forum. Secondly, perhaps the oil (rice bran oil, in my case) has a specific effect on colonic motility, water reabsorption or something similar. Googling, with limited time, did not turn up anything I could quickly make sense of, but I wasn’t prepared to go through all that again so I decided to tackle both possibilities at once. I stopped taking the oil and invested in a packet of All Bran. Three days on, I feel it is safe to restart the oil, and did so last night. And despite feeling no hunger whatsoever this morning I shall once again force myself to down about 50 gm of All Bran.

Actually, I’m not all that sure how to disentangle the two potential effects, and indeed both could be operational. I suppose I could keep taking the oil and eat nothing but roughage for a week or so to see whether bulk counts. I like All Bran, so having a small bowlful every day isn’t going to be hard. But this could be the first minor drawback to the bliss that is the SLD.