Fuckers add it on the boats before freezing the catch. Sodium Tripolyphosphate = STP. A preservative that makes seafood look more appetizing and increases water retention (more weight = more $$). Up to 2% STP content for the USA, I read somewhere. I’m sure in China it goes higher.
I’m allergic as fuck to it, as I already knew. But what I didn’t realize is, it’s in damn near all seafood, and rarely ever labeled. 90% of supermarket shrimp in the US contaminated, according to a random internet commenter. I downloaded a helpful government pdf giving guidelines to shrimp boats on how to use it, so I can believe the saturation is that high.
Thanks. Let’s throw an artificial salt-like chemical in ALL OUR FOOD. Thank you for that.
I’m betting that’s why I react strongly to some brands of shrimp and not (or less so) others, why I had to stop eating scallops, etc etc. In fact, I bet it explains a lot of people’s seafood allergies.
At lower STP levels, it’s a milder reaction. For a while I missed it completely, and thought I just had to control circadian rhythm, portion size and meal timing better. Nope, overeating, sleep disruption, and willpower reduction were all upstream symptoms of low-grade STP poisoning. I was uselessly chopping heads off a hydra.
Not eating seafood isn’t an option. Without the minerals, hellooo malnutrition.
The question is, how to get non-STP seafood? I could grind out slow, annoying, strength-sapping tests until I found a brand with relatively less. Sounds fun.
Or, I could try live seafood, the only kind that doesn’t have STP. About my only option is the live shellfish they have in wet markets. If it ain’t crawling around, swimming or breathing, it’s been frozen, and it’s been soaked in STP before freezing. (Or something worse.)
I’m limited to low fat as well, which means most fish are out. So it’s just the shellfish. Hafta buy them in shell, still squirming.
Could this be it? Could I finally be done? The data says shrimp is my last trouble spot…
My psychological suffering at the trough of this biological cycle is much less than before, thanks to completed koans. But I’m still, shall we say, cut off from God. And at the low point, I still struggle to do any work beyond the absolutely required.
Once more into the breach.