Diet taboos

The current consensus among the nutrition and medical circles is that more than 90% of the "diet combination taboos" posted on the Internet have no universal scientific basis. There are only three types of combination risks that ordinary people should pay attention to - dietary restrictions for people with special diseases, toxicity caused by unprocessed/deteriorated ingredients themselves, and the digestive burden of overeating. The rest are mostly coincidences in different scenarios that are misrepresented as universal rules.

Not long ago, my mother posted in the family group "Pairing shrimp with lemon is equivalent to eating arsenic." I just finished eating a pound of Thai lemon shrimp, and I was so scared that I squatted on the toilet for half an hour with my phone in hand. Nothing happened. Later, the calculation was told to her: To reach the toxic dose, she would have to eat 150 kilograms of arsenic-contaminated shrimp at one time, coupled with dozens of medical vitamin C tablets. Normal people would never be able to eat this amount in their lifetime. It was purely to scare people.

Some people may also ask, is the "food mutual restraint" that has been passed down by our ancestors for thousands of years not groundless? This cannot be beaten to death with a stick. Most of the "food opposites" mentioned in traditional Chinese medicine are aimed at people with specific physical constitutions. For example, it is often said that "crabs and persimmons are harmful to the body." Both of these are cold foods. People with weak spleen and stomach should eat them alone. Anyone can get a stomachache, and the combined stimulation of the cold and cold will make it easy to feel uncomfortable. However, if you are a person with a strong temper and a strong spleen and stomach, you will be fine if you eat two oily hairy crabs and a crispy and sweet frozen persimmon when the autumn wind blows. This is a difference in applicable scenarios. It’s not about who is right or wrong. Just don’t take the reminders for specific physiques and apply them to everyone as a general rule.

If we really want to mention the combinations that need to be avoided, in fact, they all have specific prerequisites. I met a young man who had an acute attack of gout a while ago. The day before, he had a skewer with a friend, grilled oysters and roasted lamb kidneys with cold beer for two hours. His uric acid was already stuck at the critical level. These three items were all high-purine foods. Together they directly raised his blood uric acid to over 600, and he was so painful that he couldn't get out of bed in the middle of the night. Ordinary people will be exhausted at most if they eat this way, and it will take two days to recover. However, gout patients must strictly avoid this "high-purine superposition combination". Similarly, diabetic patients should not eat high-glycemic foods such as porridge, moon cakes, and milk tea together. It is easy for blood sugar to spike. These are restrictions for specific diseases, and not everyone must abide by the red line.

There are also many so-called "mixing poisonings", which are essentially problems with the ingredients themselves and have nothing to do with the matching. It was previously reported on the Internet that "eating fungus and snails together will cause poisoning". Later, it was discovered that the family where the accident had soaked the fungus for three days had been contaminated by Pseudomonas cocotoxins and produced oryzoic acid. Not to mention eating it with snails, you would have to go to the hospital. There are also colchicine in fresh daylilies, solanine in sprouted potatoes, and saponin in uncooked green beans. They are themselves poisonous. You can also be poisoned if you eat them alone. Don’t let other ingredients take the blame.

Most of the rest are "uncomfortable to eat". To put it bluntly, they eat too much or eat too many kinds of food. In order to lose weight last time, my best friend ate half an iced watermelon at noon, drank two cups of iced Americano in the afternoon, and bought an iced glutinous rice ball on the way after get off work. She couldn't straighten her waist at night. Watermelon and coffee must be incompatible, so I rolled my eyes and told her: You can replace these three items with room temperature, and then eat half the amount, and you will be fine. No matter what kind of food, if you eat too much food at one time, it will be cold, indigestible, and irritating. No matter how strong your stomach is, it will not be able to handle it. It has nothing to do with "competition".

Speaking of which, there are historical reasons why these false taboos have spread so widely. In the past, sanitary conditions were poor, and ingredients could not be stored for long and were easily spoiled. Someone felt uncomfortable after eating A and then B, so they naturally blamed the "A + B conflict". In addition, people did not understand the concepts of allergies and intolerances in the past. Someone was allergic to mango. After eating mango and drinking milk, he said that mango and milk could not be eaten together. This was passed around and became a "taboo" that everyone must abide by.

During the four years I have been doing public nutrition consulting, the most frequently asked questions are "Can soy milk be paired with eggs?" and "Can spinach be paired with tofu?" The unified answer is: as long as the soy milk is cooked and the spinach is blanched, you can mix it with whatever you want. If the soy milk is not cooked well, it may cause diarrhea with anything. If the spinach is not blanched and soaked in too much oxalic acid, eating it alone will easily affect the absorption of calcium. Don’t always rely on the combination.

In fact, there are not so many rules when it comes to eating. As long as the ingredients are fresh, cooked thoroughly, and you don’t feel uncomfortable eating, you can mix sweet and salty, hot or cold as you like. If you really have underlying diseases, just follow the doctor’s advice. You don’t have to eat against the taboo list every day. Having fun while eating is more important than anything else.