How to enjoy Thai food and stick to your diet

Everywhere you look, you’re reminded of why Thailand is a street food mecca. The abundance of fresh, delicious food is one of the things that draws millions to the kingdom each year.

After all, we’re talking about a country that's home to some of the best dishes in the world. 

To most people, being surrounded by delicious-looking foods makes them feel like a kid in a candy store. To anyone with severe food allergies or strict dietary restrictions, the candy store looks more like a minefield.

Make one misstep, and –- boom -- you break out in hives, or inadvertently undermine a set of ethical or religious rules by which you abide. 

In general, it is best to stick with food that looks and is as close to its natural state as possible. The more fussed-over the food, the more likely it contains something you can’t or don’t want to eat. So choose plain steamed rice over fried rice, and fresh fruit over fruit-based desserts.

The rule of thumb applies in all cases: when in doubt, ask.  These are the commonsensical things with which people who live with special dietary needs –- for ethical, religious, or physical reasons –- are already familiar. 

But sometimes things aren’t what they appear. And this is where the minefield analogy becomes more poignant. In fact, many may have unwittingly consumed dishes which they would never touch with a barge pole. 

While prepared food products often clearly list ingredients on the package, street and restaurant dishes present a dicier situation. These tips will help you uncover some hidden dangers. 

Vegetarians and vegans

One thing that vegetarians and vegans need to understand is that seafood and fresh-water fish permeate Thai cuisine. They’re not always visible, but make no mistake about it: they’re practically everywhere.

And just because you order your vegetable stir-fry with tofu instead of meat, in many cases, you’re still eating meat products. 

Fish sauce and shrimp paste, for example, have been the essential ingredients in Thai cooking for ages. Fermented fish sauce (nam pla ra) is also a prominent source of salinity in northeastern cuisine.

Oyster sauce is also heavily used in most Chinese-influenced Thai dishes. Nam prik pao (Thai chili jam), often used as an accent ingredient in tom yam and tom kha as well as some salads and stir-fries, is another example of something that contains seafood products, yet does not look like it does. 

While these things are negligible to some vegetarians, those who are very strict need to be especially vigilant.

Your best bet is to stick with vegetarian restaurants, where you can be assured that salt is used in lieu of the ubiquitous fish sauce, and no meat products ever show their deceptively innocent faces on your plate.  

Avoiding certain types of meat

As mentioned earlier, dried shrimp, shrimp paste, and fish-based products are often added to Thai dishes in the manner which is not always obvious to the eye. Anyone with a severe seafood allergy should take care. 

If you avoid pork, you also need to be aware that beef noodles served at a food stall or shop-house restaurant often contain pork in the form of the crispy pork bits (kak mu) that come with the garlic oil (kratiam jiao) routinely used to lubricate the blanched noodles.

Boat noodle joints, especially ones that serve both beef and pork varieties, are notorious for pork and beef cross-contamination: the pork noodles could be thickened with cow blood and the beef noodles could come doused with pork-garlic oil. 

Avoiding dairy 

The fact that traditional Thai cuisine is not dairy-based should give the lactose-intolerant a reason to rejoice.

But not so fast with the joyous whoops. These days dairy has crept into many dishes that either used to be made or look like they’re made with coconut milk.

Tom yam nam khon (creamy style tom yam) is an example of such dishes. Sometimes, it’s made with coconut milk; more often it’s made with canned evaporated milk.

Sweet coconut bread dip (sangkhaya) is now routinely made with cow’s milk as well.  

Sidestepping gluten

Just like dairy, wheat has become more and more prominent in modern Thai cuisine. If you avoid gluten you would be wise not to assume that the wheat-derived protein composite is absent in cuisine that is rice-based for the most part.

Many pastries contain wheat; street fried bananas (kluay thot) routinely contain wheat in the batter; even the famous little Thai coconut pudding cakes (khanom krok) or tuile-like crispy rolls (khanom thong muan), that used to be made with rice flour, are often made with wheat flour these days. 

If you are outright intolerant of gluten, you should avoid all stir-fries for they most likely contain oyster sauce which is almost always thickened with modified wheat starch.

When ordering noodles, stick with white-colored rice noodles and steer clear of yellow egg noodles (ba mi). 

The peril of peanuts

As you may have guessed, this one is a toughie. No matter where you stand in Thailand -- especially Bangkok -- peanuts are never more than a few meters away.

But anyone with mild to moderate peanut allergies can still enjoy many street and restaurant dishes with enough planning and self-education.

Steer clear of the obvious dangers in the forms of pad Thai, som tam Thai or tom yam- style noodles as well as the hidden danger in the forms of food like steamed tapioca dumplings (saku sai mu) and filled rice-flour crêpes (khao kriap pak mo). 

But if your peanut allergy is so severe that you can’t even travel on a plane where peanut snacks are served without getting sick, eating out in Thailand would be –- how do we put this conservatively? -- a challenge.

Even if you’ve successfully asked the food vendor to leave the peanuts out of your food, cross-contamination is almost a certainty. In this case, as much as we hate being a killjoy, eating at home would be the most prudent choice.