Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Just had lunch, lentil soup, sweet potato, and broccoli with a noochy cheese sauce. As I finished up the last few bites of my food, i felt my face get tight and hot and realized I was breaking out into hives. The hives are all over my body. It doesn't seem too severe, I can breathe and it's not overly itchy.

This is a sad day for me. I'm hoping it is more to do with stress (exam tomorrow) than from food allergy. I've never had problems with nooch before, but I did use a lot today.

yikes! be careful! you also ate a lot of other food. did you make the soup yourself?

:( I can't have nooch either, I feel your pain.

No, it was trader joe's, but very innocuous ingredients - all veggies, legumes, water and spices.

Is is even possible to be allergic to vegetables? I would almost rather it be nooch.

Thanks for the sympathetic responses momo & IJDI. The hives are mostly subdued now. Someone warned me that our food tolerances change and usually there is the 1st warning, but the next one can be more severe. Maybe I can go get tested or something.

yeah, the way you react once to an allergen does not mean you'll react the same the next time, so you could have a worse reaction. it is possible to be allergic to vegetables although not super likely, but based on what you ate it would be pretty hard to tell exactly what you were allergic to. It could have just been a weird fluke, too. I'd honestly probably wait and see if anything happens again with any foods and just make sure you document it. Tests for allergies aren't 100% accurate, so they usually diagnose you based on the tests as well as your history with allergic reactions, so there might not be much they can tell from one incident.

Maybe I will do a marmite test with friends on hand for safety purposes.

Thanks for the advice IJDI! You are the best and smartest, nicest mod everrr!!

I doubt it's an allergy--it's very likely a response to niacin(vitamin B3):

Just cut down on the nooch for a few days and you should be able to eat it again. If you google "niacin flush" you'll find more about it.

yeah, niacin flush is a good idea, but you'd have to eat A LOT of nutritional yeast to get 1.5g. There's about 56mg in 2 tablespoons, but it does make more sense for it to be niacin flush than a sudden allergy.

ha. no prob. i have a test on food allergies tomorrow!

I know I got niacin flush from eating an entire recipe of Veganomicon's Cheezy Sauce, so I don't think it necessarily has to be 1.5 grams. I think there was a thread about it on the old forums where others said they'd experienced it.

i'm sure that's right, it's just weird because it's supposed to take at least a gram of niacin (which would be 3 cups!), but i guess maybe if you ate other niacin containing things that day it could all add up or maybe some people are just more sensitive to it than others or maybe not all batches of nutritional yeast are created equal.

Can it build up? I was going through a serious nooch obsession in those days. The Wikipedia entry also mentions that taking the supplement with food reduces its side effects, and I had an empty stomach when I ate the sauce with chips.

I understand your pain--my mother gets hives from eating nutritional yeast. Even a couple tings! I am so sorry for you.

It is so definitely 1000% niacin flush. According to Wikipedia everything on my (generously piled-up) plate had niacin:

I will put in red everything listed as a niacin source on Wiki:

Broccoli doused in cheezy nooch sauce, sweet potatoes, soup (tomato, carrots, legumes).


Also, the linked wikipedia article to Niacin flush is "K-Y Intense."

Ha.

Also, thanks for all the smarts!!!! I can huff nutritional yeast in peace.

I have never had that happen to me before but whenever I eat nooch I end up getting horrible cramps and really sharp shooting pains. I don't know why this happens but I stay away from nooch now. I hate it because it's in so many recipes and I love the taste but I can't eat it unless I want to be in severe pain.

So niacin flush gave you hives? I didn't realize that was something that happened alongside a niacin flush (the hives) scary!

No! I think mistook the Niacin flush to be hives.

My skin was red, blotchy, itchy tight and felt puffy (but wasn't raised). It went away in 30 minutes.

I have never had a reaction to nooch before, so I feel confident it was a flush given I consumed a huge quantity of niacin in a very small window of time.

Well, your doom sounds delicious.

This has happened to me before, when I decided to try the suggested "snack" on the side of the container - 3 tablespoons of nooch mixed with water. (Not so great by itself if you're wondering, haha.) It was kinda fun watching the splotches on my hands spread out once I figured out what was going on.

This happened to me last week when I made the Appetite for Reduction Mac and Trees and then ate way too much of the cheezy sauce!