dietary taboos

Eating foods that are clearly moldy/spoiled, eating foods that you are known to be allergic to, consuming alcohol beyond your tolerance, or processed foods containing toxic and harmful ingredients.

Don’t believe it, I have been doing public nutrition consulting for almost 5 years, and I have met too many people who mess around with unfounded taboos. Last week, a little girl came to me crying and said that she had a red rash on her face after eating mangoes and drinking a glass of milk. The Internet said that these two things were "incompatible" and she urgently needed a gastric lavage. Finally, after checking the source of the allergy, we found out that she was mildly allergic to mango. In the past, she only had one or two bites each time without any reaction. This time, she showed off two big Taiwanese farmers, and it had nothing to do with the half-cent milk price.

As for the saying that "eating crabs and persimmons together will cause poisoning" that has been passed down for almost a hundred years, it has deceived many food lovers. Last autumn, my aunt steamed crabs and couldn't help but eat a frozen persimmon. After having diarrhea twice, she went around saying that the two were sworn enemies. Later, after checking the surveillance, she found out that the crabs she bought were leftovers from a vendor who had put them out all afternoon. When she steamed them, she only steamed them for 10 minutes. The parasites in the crabs were not completely killed. The diarrhea was purely due to unclean ingredients. As early as the end of the last century, the Chinese Nutrition Society conducted a special experiment and found more than 100 volunteers to eat crabs and persimmons at the same time for three days in a row. No one had a poisoning reaction. Those so-called "dead by mutual conflict" cases were either because the ingredients were spoiled or undercooked, or they had underlying diseases and didn't pay attention to them, so they just happened to eat two kinds of food together.

Speaking of which, there is no need to kill all "taboos" with a stick. For example, "foods to avoid after surgery" are often mentioned in traditional Chinese medicine, which has been controversial for many years. I met a girl who had double eyelid surgery before. Her body is prone to swelling. I heard people say that hair extensions are pseudoscience. She showed off three pounds of spicy crayfish on the second day after the operation. As a result, her eyes were so swollen that she could hardly open them. Most of the swelling was reduced by a full week later than the doctor ordered. According to traditional Chinese medicine, crayfish is a hairy substance and can easily aggravate inflammation and edema. ； According to the explanation of modern nutrition, stale crayfish has a high histamine content, and eating it will increase blood vessel permeability if you are prone to allergies. Both sets of logic can actually be explained. It is just a matter of the group of people it is suitable for - if you usually eat ten pounds of crayfish and there is no reaction, and there is no inflammation after surgery, you can eat it if you want. There is no need to be strict about it.

There are also those that magnify extreme scenes into daily taboos. The most typical one is "Eating vitamin C and shrimp together is equivalent to eating arsenic." I'm too lazy to calculate the specific dose. To really reach the standard of arsenic poisoning, you have to eat more than 150 kilograms of uncontaminated freshwater shrimp, and then drink dozens of 1000mg vitamin C tablets. A normal person would have to groan after eating 1.5 kilograms of shrimp, let alone 150 kilograms of shrimp. Where is the chance of poisoning? Last time I took my sister to the beach. After eating a pound of shrimps and showing off three pounds of sugar oranges, she went back to the hotel and lay down for half an hour before getting up and playing games. Nothing happened.

It’s interesting to say that many people’s obsession with dietary taboos is essentially because they want to find a health formula that doesn’t use their brains. They think that if they follow it, they won’t get sick. Instead, they ignore how their bodies feel. My grandma used to have a food balance chart posted on the refrigerator, and she would open the refrigerator for a long time to look at it before cooking. Once I went home and was so hungry that I put spinach and tofu together and made soup. When she saw it, I had drank two big bowls. She was so scared that she moved a small stool to watch over me all night. As a result, I got up early the next morning and ran three kilometers. Since then, she took off the chart and used it as a garbage bag liner.

Of course, this does not mean that all targeted taboos are false. For example, pregnant women should avoid raw meat, eggs, and unsterilized dairy products for fear that listeria infection will affect the fetus.； Gout patients should avoid ultra-high purine foods such as thick broth and animal offal, otherwise they may easily induce acute gout. ； People who are lactose intolerant should not drink iced pure milk on an empty stomach, as it is easy to cause diarrhea - these are precautions for specific groups of people, and are not considered universal "taboos" and do not need to apply to everyone.

To be honest, eating is a very personal matter. If you feel comfortable after eating and have no adverse reactions after eating, it doesn't matter even if others say that these two are "rivals."