I have a feeling that the most annoying part of thyroid cancer won't be
the surgeries or the doctor visits (as annoying as those are), but the
Radioactive Iodine (RAI) treatments and the attendant Low Iodine Diet
(LID). I have to do the LID for 2-4 weeks, depending, with no
exceptions, not even one. Also, I'll be off my meds for that two weeks,
so I won't have much energy for cooking, so I have to make and buy lots
of stuff ahead of time.

So basically, there are lots of rules about what can and can't be in the
food, and my personal preference would be stuff that's easily frozen and
reheated in the oven (I don't have a microwave, and I don't think I'll
be radioactive enough to cook the stuff with my own personal radiation. :-)

Here are the rules:

1) Salt is fine, but NOT iodized salt, so no packaged foods with salt,
and no foods that anyone else has cooked.

2) Nothing from the sea. (Fish, shellfish, seaweed, seaweed tablets,
kelp, sea salt, carrageenan, agar-agar, algin, alginate.)

3) No dairy products or nondairy creamers.

4) No egg yolks or whole eggs.

5) No commercial baked goods.

6) No red dye #3 (#40 is fine).

7) No sulfured molasses.

8) No soy, except soy oil and soy lecithin.

9) No red kidney beans, lima beans, navy beans, pinto beans, or cowpeas.

10) No rhubarb. No potato skins.

11) No meat (they say up to 5 ounces a day, but I don't want to have to
bother counting anything or worrying about salt injections in my meat,
so I'm just gonna skip it. I don't care about meat anyway.)

12) Up to 4 servings per day of grains, cereals, pasta, and breads
without iodine-containing ingredients. No rice.


The following are fine:

* Fresh fruits and fruit juices, except rhubarb, maraschino
cherries (if they contain Red Dye #3), and fruit cocktail with
maraschino cherries.
* Vegetables, preferably raw and fresh-cooked or frozen without
salt. (But not skins of potatoes, soybeans, and some other beans like
pinto, lima, navy, red kidney, cowpeas).
* Unsalted nuts and unsalted nut butters.
* Grain/cereal products in moderate amounts (see above).
* Sugar, jelly, honey, maple syrup, and unsulfured molasses.
* Black pepper and fresh or dried herbs.
* All vegetable oils. Salad dressings provided they contain only
allowed ingredients.
* Homemade foods (see the free Low-Iodine Cookbook from the ThyCa
web site, thyca.org.
* Cola, diet cola, lemonade, sodas (except those with Red Dye #3),
non-instant coffee and tea, beer, wine, other alcohol.



Ideas?

Serene