Senior Cantonese people must have experienced a despair called eat bitter gourd, which is almost the most frequent dish on the table in summer.
You must feel familiar with these mother quotes:
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So, brewing bitter gourd, stir-frying bitter gourd, cold bitter gourd, bitter gourd making soup… On one hundred ways of bitter gourd, anyway, mom always has a way to let you eat this bitterness until your face is deformed or forgive your color Only children care about whether it is bitter or not, adults only care about nutrition!
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If someone tells you how nutritious bitter foods are, I’ll teach you how to go back gracefully.
Have you ever wondered why most people enjoy sweets rather than bitters?
This is actually a self-protection mechanism of the human body.
Many plants make themselves poisonous and issue a bitter warning in order to prevent them from being eaten by animals or humans when they are not yet ripe – Don’t eat me, or else Poison you foodie.
You must know that humans thousands of years ago did not have as many food choices as modern people, and could only find edible things in the way of “Shen Nong tastes a hundred herbs”. Thus formed an excellent conditioned reflex – “say no to bitter food”.
That’s why when you eat bitter gourd, even if someone tells you it’s not bitter, your body still sends a signal: “Bitter food is poisonous, don’t eat it”!
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The tongue is the most sensitive to bitter taste, which is related to the human bitter taste receptor gene No. 38 “TAS2R38”. [1] To what extent are humans sensitive to bitter substances? Toxic substances (such as quinine) can be tasted at 0.005%, and usually the sweetness concentration is only a few percent before the tongue can feel it.
If the gene ‘TAS2R38’ changes, so does its sensitivity to bitter taste.
Therefore, some people don’t like bitter food because your tongue has sensitive and excellent genes.
To a certain extent, many bitter substances belonging to glycosides, alkaloids, terpenes and other plants have brought certain benefits to our health, such as antioxidant, Anti-virus, anti-tumor, reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and so on.
But as the saying goes, talking about effects without the dose is a hooligan.
As far as the nature of bitter gourd is concerned, there is not much particularity. Bitter gourd is rich in potassium, vitamin C, and vitamin A, and these nutrients can also be obtained from other foods (such as green leafy greens and carrots).
Folk people often say that “good medicine is bitter” and “drugs are three parts of poison”, also because the therapeutic ingredients in medicines can treat diseases at lower effective doses. But at the same time, these ingredients also have certain side effects; if the dose is too high, it will become “poison” if it exceeds the tolerance of the human body!
As a reminder, when some foods warn of bitterness, we need to be careful! For example, the following foods:
1.Bitter almonds
This should be familiar to everyone, “Zhen Zhi Distinguishes Evils and Evils the Elders Fading Owes the Morning Noises, You Know bucks Copy”
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Bitter almond can be used as a medicinal material, but its toxicity cannot be ignored. The toxicity of bitter almonds mainly comes from the release of highly toxic hydrocyanic acid after the hydrolysis of amygdalin. If eaten in large quantities, serious poisoning may lead to death.
A child who eats more than 10 bitter almonds at one time may be at risk of death from poisoning. But don’t worry too much, cooking bitter almonds with water can eliminate 90% of the toxins.
How should we distinguish between bitter almonds and sweet almonds?
Sweet almonds are larger in size than bitter almonds, have a thicker seed coat, and are more heart-shaped than sweet almonds in shape.
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In addition, when we eat melon seeds and nuts, we occasionally taste some bitter and black nuts, and we can’t wait to spit them out and rinse our mouths immediately-many people will say that after eating one A “bad” nut. In fact, the bitterness of the nuts means mildew, which may have produced the carcinogenic aflatoxin!
Although the amount of aflatoxin in one or two nuts may not reach the carcinogenic dose, it is recommended to avoid it as much as possible. When you eat bitter nuts, just throw them away!
2. Bitter Melons
In summer, you can often see news reports of poisoning due to eating bitter gourd and bitter gourd, which is really not alarmist.
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Our common loofah, gourd, gourd, and melon belong to the Cucurbitaceae family, and there is no problem as food under normal circumstances.
But under some special growing conditions, they will grow into bitter melons. Although they look similar to normal melons, bitter melons will produce a toxic substance— ―Cucurbitacin.
Cucurbitacin is a highly toxic substance, and it is not easily decomposed even when heated, so don’t think that “cooking it will not cause poisoning”!
Some people say that cucurbitacin is more poisonous than arsenic, and it is not without reason. Let’s take a look at a data comparison:
In a mouse experiment, the LD50 of cucurbitacin I mice was as low as 5 mg/kg, and the LD50 of arsenic was 15 mg. [2]
In other words, to make the same mouse at risk of death, the dosage of cucurbitacin is only about one-third of that of arsenic.
Eating melons containing bitter gourd by mistake can cause dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and drowsiness in mild cases, vomiting and diarrhea in severe cases, gastrointestinal bleeding, severe dehydration, and even death from poisoning.
If you eat a bitter melon (such as bitter gourd), don’t feel like it’s a waste, just say to it: Bye bye!
In addition, sprouted potatoes should not be eaten because they contain solanine, which tastes numb and bitter, which can lead to food poisoning; lotus seed cores , The green germ of Ginkgo biloba contains a small amount of cyanogenic glycosides, and it will taste bitter. It is easy to be poisoned if you eat more. It is recommended to remove it before eating.
Some people always like to pick some roadside wild vegetables to go home, thinking they are “pure natural”, but such bitter wild vegetables (such as fake bloodskin) It is not uncommon for news cases of food poisoning caused by vegetables, hooking kisses, etc.!
When I got here, I seemed to see a whole bunch of people shivering: Is that bitter gourd still edible?
Although bitter gourd also belongs to the cucurbit family, don’t worry, the content of cucurbitacin in bitter gourd is very low. The reason why it is bitter is that in addition to cucurbitacin, it also contains cucurbitacin, and there is no need to worry about poisoning when eating it normally.
But this does not mean that you can rest assured to eat a lot of bitter melon every day. Bitter substances are not good for digestion and absorption. Some people eat bitter melon every day, which may cause chronic diarrhea, just like some people are concerned about lactose intolerance the same.
In addition, I also want to shake up those friends who want to rely on bitter gourd to lower blood sugar – wake up, lowering blood sugar is a comprehensive process, and it is impossible to achieve the effect with only one ingredient. !
But bitter gourd has a lot of water. Each 100g of bitter gourd contains 93.4g of water, 3.5g of carbohydrates, and 1.4g of dietary fiber. Moreover, bitter melon is a “low GI food”, with a GI value (glycemic survival index) of only 24. Foods such as pumpkin (GI of 75) and carrots (GI of 71) have far lower GI values. Diabetic friends are good as one of the ingredients.
But if you really don’t like bitter gourd, that’s fine. Since ancient times, human beings have always been unable to escape the law of “true fragrance”, after all—
Compared to life, bitter gourd is not bitter at all!
Source: Tencent Medical Illustrator
References
[1] Dai Weimin. Molecular simulation of human bitter taste receptors [D]. Nanjing University, 2011.
[2] Zhang Xing[1, 2], Tao Meihua[1], et al. Five cucurbitacin compounds and their cytotoxic activity in the pericarp of Baimuxiang [J]. Natural Product Research and Development, 2014, 26(3):354-357.
*The content of this article is for the popularization of health knowledge and cannot be used as a specific diagnosis and treatment suggestion, nor can it replace the face-to-face consultation of a licensed physician, and is for reference only.
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