Dietary taboos include

Taboos directly related to underlying diseases, clear taboos at special physiological stages, and food-drug/food-food combination taboos with evidence-based evidence. In addition, most of the "food-compatible" and "universal taboo lists" circulated online lack scientific basis. Many individualized discomfort reactions have been amplified into universal rules.

A while ago, a fan sent me a photo of "50 Foods You Can't Eat Together" printed by an old man at home. It even listed cucumbers and peanuts that can cause diarrhea if eaten together. I couldn't laugh or cry after reading it. If this were true, cucumbers mixed with peanuts, a popular dish with drinks across the country, would have disappeared long ago, right?

Let’s first talk about the taboos bound to diseases. These are the taboos that may cause problems if you step on them. My uncle had an acute attack of gout last year, and his feet were so swollen that he couldn't even put on slippers. The cause was traced back to the fact that he drank half a catty of white wine and two catties of spicy crayfish the night before. Later, I went to the nutrition department to set up a file. The list of taboos given by the doctor clearly listed thick broth, animal offal, shelled seafood, and alcohol. High-fructose milk tea was also included in the strictly restricted category. However, this is not without controversy: some doctors in the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology will advise gout patients to avoid soy products completely, but the current consensus in the nutrition community is that the purine content of processed tofu and soy milk is already very low, so as long as it is not eaten during an acute attack, it is perfectly fine and does not need to be killed. The same applies to whether people with diabetes can eat fruits. Traditional internal medicine may require complete taboos, but most clinical nutrition departments will recommend eating a small amount of fruits with a glycemic index lower than 55, such as blueberries and cherry tomatoes, based on their own blood sugar response, which can supplement dietary fiber and vitamins.

Many people's doubts about dietary taboos are actually concentrated in special physiological stages such as pregnancy and breastfeeding, where there are the most misunderstandings. When my best friend was pregnant, her mother-in-law was very strict about not letting her touch crabs, saying that eating them would cause miscarriages, so she secretly ate two steamed hairy crabs at home. During her prenatal check-up, she casually asked the doctor. The doctor said that as long as you are not allergic to eating crabs before and are fully cooked without the risk of parasites, it is fine to eat a few. What is really needed Strictly taboo are foods that may carry pathogenic bacteria, such as sashimi, soft-boiled eggs, and unpasteurized cheese, as well as anything containing alcohol, even fermented glutinous rice and drunken shrimp. Previously, she was criticized by the doctor for eating half a drunken crab because of her greed. The problem also came from the alcohol and had nothing to do with the half cent of crab. There are all kinds of taboos during lactation, such as not eating leeks, not eating ice, not drinking milk tea. A mother I met before had her baby excited all night long after drinking half a cup of milk tea. But there are also mothers who drink a cup of ice milk tea a day, and the baby still eats and sleeps normally. This kind of reaction with great individual differences is not a universal taboo. The only things that should be avoided are excessive caffeine and alcohol. If you eat other things, you will not feel uncomfortable, and your baby will not have any abnormal reactions, so there is no need for taboos at all.

As for the contraindications that everyone is most curious about, most of them that are truly evidence-based are actually related to drugs. My friend who is on duty in the emergency department said that every year, I encounter patients who come to rescue after taking cephalosporin and drinking alcohol. The disulfiram reaction is really no joke. Therefore, within a week of taking antibiotics such as cephalosporin and metronidazole, all alcoholic foods must be avoided, even alcohol-filled chocolate and alcohol-containing Huoxiang Zhengqi water. Also, patients who have been taking the anticoagulant warfarin for a long time should not eat too much dark green vegetables such as spinach and broccoli at once. The vitamin K in them is a synthetic raw material for coagulation factors. Taking too much at one time will offset the effect of the drug and increase the risk of blood clots. This is also a clear clinical contraindication. As for the rumors that have been circulated on the Internet for more than ten years that spinach and tofu should not be eaten together, and that seafood and vitamin C should not be eaten together, these rumors have been refuted countless times: blanching spinach for one minute can remove 80% of the oxalic acid, but eating it with tofu will combine the oxalic acid into calcium oxalate, which is not easily absorbed, and will not induce stones at all. ； The content of inorganic arsenic in seafood is so small that it would take dozens of pounds of seafood and dozens of vitamin C tablets to reach a toxic dose. It is impossible for normal people to eat that amount.

I have been doing nutrition consulting for five or six years, and my biggest feeling is that many people have turned "dietary taboos" into dogmas and dare not eat anything. In the end, they end up with unbalanced nutrition. In fact, except for the items mentioned above that have clear evidence and will really harm your health if you step on them, the rest are mostly "not suitable for you" and not "not for everyone": for example, if you eat bananas on an empty stomach, you will get acid reflux, so don't eat them on an empty stomach. There is no need to talk about this as a universal taboo. ； If you drink milk and you have diarrhea, then drink Shuhua milk or yogurt. You don’t have to force everyone to tell you that drinking milk is bad. If you are really unsure, it is much more reliable to ask a doctor or registered dietitian than to trust a list of taboos from unknown sources on the Internet.