What might cause this dining distress?

<p>Background: D is lactose intolerant, so she probably has a more sensitive gut than most kids.</p>

<p>But... she's having lots of trouble eating on campus. Usually within 30 minutes, she experiences GI distress -- sometimes it's just uncomfortable, other times it's quick-I-need-a-bathroom-NOW distress. She's fine if she eats off campus (even with a low-dairy meal at say, Cheesecake Factory.) And BTW, this is a school that she transferred into. She had no problem at her prior school (and gained the proverbial freshman 15 there, which she has now lost and then some.)</p>

<p>This morning she had trouble after eating a plain bagel with honey.</p>

<p>I've done some googling, and she's not the only person in the world to have this kind of experience, but I haven't found any good explanations. Some folks have conjectured that it's anxiety-related (this to a person who was fine eating at home and fast food joints(!), but not in restaurants.) Another wondered if excess soap remaining on the plates/utensils/glasses was having a laxative effect. And there seems to be a ubiquitous campus rumor at lots of schools that a food preservative is acting as a laxative.</p>

<p>She was wondering if she had become sensitive to gluten, but she eats lots of pasta with no ill effects. </p>

<p>She's going to meet with the campus nutritionist tomorrow, but I was just wondering if anybody on these boards had something similar happen with their kid(s).</p>

<p>I started experiencing these kinds of things right after I started college, and now five years later it never really went away. It was diagnosed IBS but I feel like they just went with that because they couldn’t figure anything else out… How long has this been going on? Could it just be a bug?</p>

<p>Soap/detergent residue could cause this. I know kids who have gotten sick from components of a building, like paint, carpeting, glues, etc. that give off fumes most people don’t react to. When our local high school did a large addition, a few students really reacted to something that seemed to be chemical.</p>

<p>Does this school have an all-you-care-to-eat dining plan, where you can eat as much as you want to during each of your scheduled meals but can’t take anything out of the dining hall with you?</p>

<p>This type of meal plan tends to encourage students to eat large meals so that they won’t have to waste their spending money on snacks. It’s OK for most people, but if your daughter has IBS, which I suspect she does, a large meal might trigger symptoms. Many people with IBS do better if they eat smaller amounts on a larger number of occasions during the day – something that most people can do fairly easily but that is extremely expensive for students on this type of meal plan.</p>

<p>[Full disclosure: I have IBS and so does one of my kids. We know about the too-large-meals phenomenon.]</p>

<p>It took me 6 months of severe stomach and intestinal pain before I figured out I was having problems because of eating at the same salad bar 4 days a week.</p>

<p>I figured it must be something they washed the vegetables in. Stopped eating there and voila…pain gone.</p>

<p>Have her track everything. It will help. What ,where , and when she eats and pain time ,location and severity.</p>

<p>Also there may be lactose hidden where she is not expecting it. Bagels typically are lactose-free but I have seen some frozen brands that were not (I think). Many bread products have milk in them or added lactose, you have to read the labels. I once got sick after eating french fries, it turns out the chain restaurant uses a coating on the fries to make them extra crispy and the coating had lactose in it. I always assumed french fries were potatoes, oil and salt!
The cafeteria should have labels on everything since they are dealing with kids with various allergies and intolerances.</p>

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<p>In my late 20’s I went to my GP complaining about the very same thing. He got concerned and sent me to a specialist who performed an upper and lower GI test. Not fun. Especially when the tests are done by a young nurse younger then me! When the specialist discussed the results with me he said everything looked fine. Then he asked me about my diet. I explained I had started a stick broth base soup and salad diet a few months before. Then he asked if I told the GP about this. I said yes. Then he laughed and said the tests were unnecessary and I should lay off the roughage. What a waste of embarrassment!</p>

<p>Son had this problem at his college. Whenever he ate the dining hall food, he ended up with a stomach ache and bathroom issues. When he ate food bought off campus, he was fine.
We ended up dropping the food plan his last year and gave him money to purchase food off campus. According to him, many people had the same problem with the dining hall food. Rumor going around the school was that they put laxatives in the food so the students would eliminate before any sort of food poisoning would set in----haha.</p>

<p>I would suggest that you first determine that it is definitely cafeteria related. Have your daughter eat elsewhere for 10 days. Could just be triggered by certain foods, so you need to first determine that the source is the cafeteria.</p>

<p>I started having digestion problems in my 20’s. They are less now, but I do watch what I eat to some degree. </p>

<p>There are a lot of possible factors. Stress can definitely cause trouble. Too much greasy food can cause problems - I never order many of the dishes I love, such as shrimp scampi. Food that is too rich or has certain spices (cajun is out). Some people I know can’t eat peppers of any kind without issues. Food with MSG is out, although that isn’t used much nowadays. </p>

<p>Agree with having D track everything. Is the salad bar ok? What about pre-packaged stuff such as cereal? Another possibility is that she has a vitamin deficiency. Does she take a daily vitamin? College kids burn a lot of energy and don’t necessarily eat a healthy diet that satisfies all their nutritional needs. </p>

<p>One thing to alert her to - these types of problems often pass (no pun intended) and later in life she may be fine with something that bothers her now. I’ve seen a lot of people say they can’t eat X or Y and never even try again, when they may very well have had only a temporary issue.</p>

<p>Bagels, and some other shiny crust type bread products, are often done with a milk/egg wash for appearance. Pasta is usually just flour and eggs, though I have had recipes that call for a small amount of milk. Typically, though, if she ate something within the past 3 days that triggers this response, then all food will behave like this until the culprit has totally made it through the system.</p>

<p>Processing wheat also requires very active gut bacteria. She may want to try BioGest or similar digestive enzymes before meals - works for some. Simplifying her diet to easily digestible foods, then adding others back one at a time is the way to find food allergies. My wife suffered with diagnosed IBS for years before finally isolating it as an inability to digest lettuce.</p>

<p>What did she drink with the bagel and honey? I would suggest she only drink bottled water for a week and see if it is the water on campus that is causing issues.</p>

<p>I find that with cafeterias, it can sometimes be really hard to find out what exactly is in things. Also, when I was in college, people always said that the cafeteria sprinkled some kind of preservative that had laxative effects over everything in the salad bar. No idea if that’s a myth or not, but I know people who had stomach issues.</p>

<p>I know of kids at two different schools who swear they put laxatives in the cafeteria food. They eat and have to quickly go to the bathroom. Both are LACs with pretty bad food.</p>

<p>A friend’s daughter had this problem at her college (an LAC in FL whose food service doesn’t get great reviews). There were enough other kids who had similar problems that there were rumors circulating that there were laxatives in the food (which seems ridiculous to us as adults, but the kids truly believed it). The school had a mandatory meal plan; this girl got a doctor’s note and was permitted not to buy the meal plan the following semester.</p>

<p>We were all quite convinced there were laxatives in BU’s coffee in the 1980s!</p>

<p>“This morning she had trouble after eating a plain bagel with honey.”
-She could have developed gluten intolerance, possibly? There are various digrees of it. I myself do not have severe reacitons, but I do not like the presence of wheat in my system, I just do not feel entirely comfortable with it, others have to jump into bathroom right away though. I would try to stay away from all food containing milk and gluten and see what happen. Stick to eggs, veggies, fruit, rice, meat, potatoes. I do not know what she likes. If some feel that it is hard to avoid milk / wheat, it is not that hard but it requires reading labels.</p>

<p>I have read recently that in people with mild celiac, Crohn’s, and the like, problems may not show up until their late teens or early 20s. The intestines finally have had enough and become irritated or inflamed. </p>

<p>The bagel/honey is suspicious. I would investigate gluten first.</p>

<p>Okay, here’s an update. Bear in mind that this is what I heard my daughter say (which may differ from what she actually intended to convey :-)</p>

<p>D has met with Health Services, the campus nutritionist, the Dining Service nutritionist, someone in finance and someone in housing. She will be moving into an on-campus suite with shared kitchen facilities and will not be charged extra for the remainder of this semester (though she will be charged the usual rate next semester.) The campus nutritionist referred her to the Dining Service nutritionist. The Dining Service nutritionist wants her to be tested for food allergies over winter break, and wants her to experiment to identify exactly which foods are causing a problem and suspects it’s her lactose intolerance. The finance person told her that as long as she is in on-campus housing, she’s required to have some kind of meal plan.</p>

<p>Give that:

  • she can eat light dairy meals at home
  • she can eat light dairy meals off campus
  • she survived 1.5 semesters on a meal plan at a different school with no issues
  • she can eat pasta at home and off campus with no issues
  • an on-campus meal of packaged cereal and soy milk caused intense GI distress
  • an on-campus meal of bagel, honey, coffee caused intense GI distress
  • other students have similar problems with the dining service food</p>

<p>I am not willing to pay for a meal plan. I am also unwilling to have her experiment at this point. Eating the wrong thing will cause her intense physical pain and missed classes.</p>

<p>I want to be reimbursed for the meal plan on a pro-rated basis, and I want the meal plan requirement waived for her.</p>

<p>Am I unreasonable?</p>

<p>Odds of getting the meal plan reimbursed (even pro-rated) are so low that I wouldn’t even try.</p>

<p>I think experimenting is the only thing that will help at this point. She really needs a food diary. It will help when meeting with nutritionists and may help with the allergist, too.</p>

<p>Is the soy milk in a carton? Or served from a dispenser? If it’s from a carton, could she bring her own dishes/utensils/glass (even disposable ones) to eat from/with and see if the same thing causes problems? If so, then it points to the food (and the ingredients should be listed on packaged foods). If not, then it points to something with the dishes – maybe the soap issue people were mentioning earlier.</p>