The New Complete Book of Food
generally begin to appear within a half-hour after you eat the contaminated shellfish. Other
plankton ingested by shellfish may contain a diarrheic poison that causes gastric symptoms
once thought to be caused by bacterial or viral food poisoning.
Worms or parasites. Raw shellfish, like raw meat, may be host to worms, parasites, or
their eggs and cysts. These organisms are killed by cooking the shellfish until the flesh is
completely opaque.
Production of uric acid. Purines are the natural metabolic by-products of protein metabolism
in the body. They eventually break down into uric acid, which may form sharp crystals
that may cause gout if they collect in your joints or kidney stones if they collect in urine.
Shrimp are a source of purines; eating them raises the concentration of purines in your body.
Although controlling the amount of purine-producing foods in the diet may not significantly
affect the course of gout (which is treated with medication such as allopurinol, which inhib-
its the formation of uric acid), limiting these foods is still part of many gout regimens.Food/Drug Interactions
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