What are the dietary taboos?

In fact, there are no universal dietary taboos that are suitable for everyone. Most of the "taboos" spread online are either individualized requirements that specific groups of people need to comply with, or rumors that are out of touch with dosage and confuse cause and effect.

In the two years I have been working as a community nutrition guide, I have met too many people who regard individualized taboos as general requirements. For example, last week there was an uncle whose gout had just stabilized. He heard from relatives that "all seafood should not be touched in one bite." Oh, by the way, there are also taboos during medication that you really need to keep in mind. For example, drinking alcohol a week before and after taking cephalosporins and metronidazole drugs can really trigger a disulfiram reaction. My friend in the emergency department said that every month I encounter several patients who don’t know this taboo and are sent to the hospital after taking cephalosporins, drinking beer, chest tightness and shortness of breath. In serious cases, their lives are really in danger.

As for the most widely circulated taboo of "food conflict", in fact, most of them are controversial. Take spinach and tofu, for example. In the past few years, it was said that eating the two together will produce calcium oxalate and induce stones. Now more and more studies have confirmed that as long as the spinach is blanched for 1 minute in advance to remove more than 80% of the oxalic acid, the combination of the two can actually make the oxalic acid combine with calcium in the intestines, reduce the amount of oxalic acid entering the blood, and actually reduce the risk of kidney stones. It is not a taboo that cannot be touched at all.

There is also a rumor that has been circulating for almost 20 years: "Eating vitamin C and shrimp together is equivalent to eating arsenic." I don't know how many times I have refuted this rumor to the aunts in the community. To reach the toxic dose of arsenic, you have to eat hundreds of kilograms of shrimp that are seriously contaminated with heavy metals in one meal, and then drink a few more Ten high-dose vitamin C tablets, which are not enough to meet the poisoning standard during a normal meal. During the last company team building, a table of us ate boiled shrimps and drank freshly squeezed orange juice. Nothing happened. It was just a little girl who drank too much iced orange juice and had acid reflux.

Many people often talk about such statements as "hot and cold cannot be eaten together" and "eggs and potatoes cannot be eaten together". In fact, most of them blame individual intolerance or the deterioration of the food itself on "taboos". For example, sprouted potatoes themselves have excessive solanine, which can be poisonous if eaten alone, and it has nothing to do with eggs.； People with sensitive stomachs are prone to diarrhea if they drink iced milk tea immediately after eating hot pot, but young men with sensitive stomachs will not feel uncomfortable if they eat like this in summer. It is not a rule that everyone must abide by.

If we really want to talk about the dietary red lines that are common to all people, there are actually only two: don't eat moldy and spoiled food, and don't overeat for a long time. For the remaining so-called "taboos", it is better to judge based on your own physical condition and basic diseases, which is much more reliable than listening to rumors flying all over the Internet.