SC - Re: Alcohol in food (RANT)

[Elysant at aol.com]

- -Poster: <Elysant at aol.com> 
 >More likely, the tiny bit of residual alcohol (and, yes, there always is
 >some, unless you're cooking your feast in an autoclave,) will trigger a
 >chemical reaction in the people who are on a particular drug to combat
 >alcoholism.  I don't remember the name of it, but it causes severe
 >nausea in people who are on it and try to consume even the tiniest bit
 >of alcohol.  The idea, of course, is to make them so sickened by the
 >idea of booze that they won't touch it.  Would you really want them to
 >be that sickened by your feast?  ;)
 
 The drug you are referring to is called "Antabuse" or Disulfiram.  It's 
action is that it blocks oxidation of alcohol at the acetaldehyde stage; 
accumulation of acetaldehyde preduces the disulphuram-alcohol reaction.  As 
well as extreme nausea, a person in this drug who ingests alcohol can get 
respiratory difficulty, palpitations, a heart attack or convulsions.  

The reaction to alcohol can occur within 15 minutes even with use of such 
things as shaving foams, lotion, cough preparatons, and skin products.

I may be wrong here, but I have never heard of this kind of severe reaction 
happening if a person not taking Antabuse eats or drinks something containing 
alcohol.  Antabuse is specifically designed to make ingesting alcohol as 
unpleasant and frightening an experience as possible so that the person on it 
will not drink anymore.   

BTW  There are a lot of other meds people can't eat certain food items with, 
and when you add in the allergy stuff tool!   Well we could drive ourselves 
nuts trying to work it all out!   I think posting a menu listing the 
ingredients of each dish, and providing a variety of dishes is the way to go. 
 People can then just avoid the stuff they can't eat.

Elysant