Healthy eating taboos

To be honest, there are no absolute taboos on healthy eating that are universal across the internet - all the "don't touch one bite" rules must be comprehensively judged based on your physical constitution, underlying diseases, consumption, and cooking methods. There is no "food poison" that can harm your health if you touch it. This is the most practical conclusion I have come to after five years of doing community nutrition science, going through countless pitfalls, and talking to more than 10 nutritionists and Chinese medicine practitioners from different schools.

You must have seen a similar "food conflict chart", right? I went to give a lecture in the community last month, and an aunt held up a neatly printed watch and asked me if I must not touch tofu after eating spinach. Eating shrimp and oranges together will produce arsenic. Speaking of which, my cousin really believed this when she was preparing for pregnancy two years ago. She bought two kilograms of prawns and just got home. When she turned around and saw freshly cut oranges on the coffee table, she threw away half a bag of shrimps.

There are actually two schools of thought on this matter. In traditional Chinese medicine, there is indeed a saying of "food opposites", which means that if a large amount of food with a large deviation in nature and flavor is eaten together in a short period of time, it may increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. For example, if a person with a weak spleen and stomach stuffs a stomach full of spicy hot pot just after eating ice watermelon, there is a high probability that he will have diarrhea. This is not "poisoning", but that your gastrointestinal tract cannot withstand the stimulation of both ice and fire. The world of modern nutrition is even more direct. The Chinese Nutrition Society conducted a food-combining experiment two years ago, and asked volunteers to eat a "combining food combination" posted online for a week. All indicators were normal. If you really relied on shrimp and oranges to get a toxic dose of arsenic, you would have to stuff more than 20 kilograms of shrimp first, and you would have been hospitalized long ago.

Really, I feel sorry for her for the shrimps and oranges she threw away because of this rumor.

Of course, this does not mean that there are no taboos that need to be paid attention to, but these taboos have always been "directional sniping" and are not applicable to everyone. Last week, I met an old friend with diabetes. He heard from the Internet that pumpkin can lower blood sugar. He steamed a large bowl of it and ate it as a staple food. As a result, his blood sugar level soared to 8.7 in half a month. He came to me to ask if there was something wrong with the pumpkin. What's the problem with pumpkin? Ordinary people can eat a few pieces of steamed pumpkin, which has a moderate glycemic index and can supplement dietary fiber. It's no problem, but if you have poor blood sugar regulation ability, it would be strange if you eat a bowl of rice and then stuff more than half a bowl of pumpkin with it. It would be strange if your blood sugar doesn't spike.

There has also been controversy over whether gout patients can eat tofu for many years. The old version of the Dietary Guidelines did recommend that gout patients limit their consumption of soy products. However, the new version of the guideline has long been updated: the purine content of dried soybeans is indeed high, but after being ground into tofu, soaked in blisters, and squeezed, most of the purines have been lost. As long as it is not an acute attack, eating one or two pieces is absolutely fine, and it can supplement high-quality protein.

There are also "food taboos" that many people think of as "taboos on eating methods" that have nothing to do with the food itself. My mother was good at everything in the first half of her life, but she couldn't bear to throw away leftovers. She would eat green leafy vegetables three or four times after they were hot. Two years ago, she suddenly had abdominal pain and vomiting and went to the hospital. It was found that the nitrite content was slightly excessive, and she finally changed this habit.

The debate about whether overnight vegetables can be eaten has never stopped, and I won’t say that you can’t eat them at all: if you finish cooking, seal them in a box while they are still hot, put them in the refrigerator for no more than 12 hours, and fully reheat them the next day, there will basically be no problem with the meat and vegetables. However, green leafy vegetables themselves have high nitrate content. The longer they are kept, the higher the probability of converting them into nitrites. There is no need to save this. Oh, and there are soaked fungus. Regardless of whether it’s hot or cold, just throw them away after soaking for more than 24 hours. Don’t feel bad. Last year, there was an aunt downstairs in my house who ate soaked fungus for two days. She suffered acute liver damage and was hospitalized for half a month. There is no need to take chances with something like this that has clear risks.

In the past two years, I also encountered extreme taboos when I was working out. I believed the saying on the Internet that "you must not touch refined sugar." I didn't touch milk tea and cakes. I even dared to only eat small tomatoes and cucumbers as fruits. After three months of hard work, my aunt postponed it for two months. The nutritionist I found later was an intuitive diet practitioner. He told me that running five kilometers a day consumes so much. Drinking a glass of iced Coke and eating a piece of cream cake occasionally would not affect anything at all, but it would be much better than forcing myself to overeat until the end.

There are indeed two factions in the diet circle nowadays. One faction insists on "pure diet" and believes that additives and refined sugar are all scourges and should not be touched at all. The other faction advocates "intuitive eating". As long as the overall diet structure is balanced, there is no need to deliberately prohibit certain types of food. The most important thing is to enjoy eating. In fact, both sides are right. If you are pursuing a hypoallergenic diet and feel uncomfortable eating additives, then it is okay to be strict. If you are busy with work and occasionally eat takeout and drink milk tea, there is no need to feel guilty.

When I do popular science for people now, I never make a list of 1, 2 or 3 taboos. I only give a few reminders: those with underlying diseases should follow the doctor’s advice first, and don’t follow the folk remedies on the Internet and eat blindly. Ordinary people should not eat a certain thing too much. No matter how healthy a person is after stuffing three kilograms of crabs at one time, he or she will have diarrhea. If you eat something that makes you uncomfortable, don’t touch it next time. It’s more reliable than memorizing a hundred internet celebrity taboos.

Harmful, to put it bluntly, eating is a happy thing in itself. If you can't touch this or eat that every day, it will make you anxious, which is not good for your health. Isn't this putting the cart before the horse?