Complete list of dietary taboos

90% of the "universal dietary taboos" posted on the Internet are rumors. There are no dietary red lines that everyone must abide by. All taboos must be judged based on the four dimensions of one's own physical constitution, underlying diseases, consumption, and cooking methods. You can count the taboos worth remembering on one hand, and they are far less complicated than the colorful "food conflict list" you have saved.

Let me tell you a true story first. Last year, my aunt was watching a short video at home and saw the popular science that "persimmon + crab = highly poisonous". She turned around and gave my brother half a bottle of soapy water to induce vomiting after eating hairy crabs and half a crispy persimmon. As a result, there was no poisoning reaction. Instead, my brother was burned by the soapy water and his throat hurt for three days. Later, when I went to the hospital and asked the doctor, they made it clear: to really reach the arsenic poisoning dose reported on the Internet, you have to eat more than 150 kilograms of shrimps and crabs that are seriously contaminated with heavy metals at one time, plus dozens of medicinal vitamin C tablets. Even a big eater can't make this amount. Ordinary people will not have any problems if they eat that amount every day.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all dietary taboos are nonsense. There are some strict rules that cannot be touched, and they are all aimed at specific groups of people. For example, for patients with acute gout attacks, it is best not to touch thick broth, shelled seafood, cold beer, milk tea and fruit cuts that contain high fructose, otherwise the blood uric acid will soar and the pain will be so painful that they can't get out of bed. It's really not a lie. But don’t be too extreme. I used to know an old uncle who had suffered from gout for more than ten years. During the stable period, he was really hungry. He ate two or three boiled prawns and drank two more glasses of water to promote metabolism, but nothing happened. What I was most afraid of was that he was lucky enough to eat gout even during the attack period. Oh, by the way, there is another common sense that many people get wrong: Can you eat eggs when you have a cold? As long as you are not allergic to eggs, you can get better quickly by eating light steamed eggs or egg drop soup to supplement protein. Saying you cannot eat it is just an old concept with no evidence-based basis.

Speaking of which, I have to mention the "fawu" controversy that has been quarreling for many years. Now there are two factions on the Internet arguing. One faction says it is all feudal dross, and the other faction says that the experience passed down by our ancestors for thousands of years cannot be wrong. In fact, objectively speaking, there is no clear concept of "hair growth" in modern Western medicine, but similar situations are often encountered in clinical practice: a girl who had just had her double eyelids removed was greedy and ate half a catty of mangoes, and the next day she was swollen as if she had just been stung by a bee. ； A child with recurring eczema ate a meal of spicy fried clams and was so itchy that he tossed and turned and couldn't sleep that night. Nutritionists generally classify this type of situation as "food intolerance" or "histamine-induced reaction." The essence is individual differences, and there is no unified standard - if you yourself feel uncomfortable after eating something, then for you, this is a "fat thing" to avoid. What others eat does not matter, and it has nothing to do with you.

Let’s talk about those false taboos that have deceived people for generations, such as “You can’t eat tofu and spinach together, you will get kidney stones.” Chun Chun just didn’t figure it out: the oxalic acid in spinach will indeed combine with the calcium in tofu to form calcium oxalate, which is difficult to absorb. , but as long as you blanch spinach in boiling water for 1 minute, more than 80% of the oxalic acid can be removed. On the contrary, it can prevent the oxalic acid from combining with free calcium in the body. Eating the two together can also supplement dietary fiber and calcium at the same time, which is better than eating tofu alone. There is also the well-known "don't drink alcohol after taking cephalosporins". This is a hard taboo that can really kill people. However, not all cephalosporins will cause a disulfiram reaction. What is more important to note is that after taking cephalosporins, it is best not to touch anything containing alcohol for a week, including glutinous rice, wine-filled chocolate, and even Huoxiang Zhengqi water with high alcohol content. Don't make fun of your own life.

In the past two years, I helped some elderly people in my family compile a list of taboos. At first, I copied two pages of taboos that I searched online. Later, when I accompanied them for their annual physical examination, I asked the director of the nutrition department. They just glanced at it and laughed, saying that 8 of the 9 items above are useless. What should be memorized is everyone's own "private intolerance list": For example, if my dad has diarrhea after drinking cold milk, then he should not touch ice milk and replace it with Shuhua milk or room temperature yogurt.； Aunt Li next door has high blood pressure and rarely eats pickled vegetables. It is more useful than memorizing ten pages of food that are incompatible with each other.

In fact, most of the time when you have stomach upset and discomfort after eating, it is not because of any conflicting food at all. It is either because you have eaten too much, or because you have eaten too much, too mixed, too cold, or because the ingredients are not clean, or because your stomach is weak. If you really want to remember dietary taboos, you don’t need to save dozens of pictures on your phone. Just three are enough: First, if you eat something that makes you feel uncomfortable, just don’t touch it next time. ； Second, if you have underlying diseases, follow the doctor’s instructions honestly and don’t believe in the nonsense about “prescriptions to cure serious illnesses.” ； Third, don’t overeat any good food. Even if it’s ginseng and bird’s nest, you’ll get a nosebleed if you eat two kilograms of it at a time.

Oh, by the way, if you are really not sure whether two things can be eaten together, just try a few bites at a time. If you don't feel any discomfort, feel free to eat it. You won't dare to eat this or touch that all day long. Even when eating hot pot, you have to cook the vegetables in front of the taboo list. Then the fun of eating will be gone. What's the point of living for so long, right?