Be careful if you are trying to lose weight or keep fit! This kind of food can easily cause poisoning if eaten raw, so be careful!

Konjac (Amorphophallus konjac) is a perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Amorphophallus in the family Araceae, native to China and Southeast Asia. Konjac is also known as konjac (jǔ ruò) in Taiwan, China and Japan. Konjac originally referred to two different plants. According to the research of "Selected Works of Literature Volume 4: Fu of Shudu", "konjac" refers to Piper betle, a plant of the genus Piper in the family Piperaceae, while "konjac" refers to konjac. When konjac was introduced to Japan, it was called "konjac head", and later it was changed to konjac.

The part we eat daily is actually its tuber. The tuber of konjac is very large and rich in a nutrient called "glucomannan". It is a water-soluble dietary fiber with strong water absorption. It can absorb 40 times its own weight in water and has a strong sense of fullness. This substance is not absorbed by the human body and can also promote intestinal peristalsis, so it has become a choice for people who want to lose weight and exercise to reduce calorie intake.

How to eat konjac

The whole konjac plant is poisonous and cannot be eaten raw. Unprocessed konjac contains toxic substances such as calcium oxalate, alkaloids, and ceramides, which can easily cause poisoning if eaten raw. At the same time, because konjac contains calcium oxalate needles, it is irritating to the skin and mucous membranes. If you handle it with your bare hands, you will feel a stinging pain and unbearable itching.

Most konjac foods on the market are made from konjac flour, such as konjac silk, konjac noodles, konjac tofu... There are also many ways to cook konjac: in addition to the oden mentioned above, hot pot, imitation shark fin, and cold salad are all good choices. Konjac jelly and konjac cake are also very popular snacks to relieve cravings during the fat loss period.

It should be noted that pure konjac food is mainly composed of dietary fiber and lacks other nutrients needed by the body. Therefore, it is not recommended to replace regular meals and consume it in large quantities for a long time.

Some people also think that konjac "smells bad, tastes bad, and has a strange taste." This is because konjac itself has a unique taste, and it inevitably "contains" some impurities during the refining process, which causes the odor. When choosing konjac products, you can choose those that use konjac refined flour instead of konjac flour in the ingredient list, and the odor may be relatively smaller.

After the konjac blooms, it turns into this

Although the konjac tubers we eat have no taste, the smell of konjac after it blooms is actually quite amazing. Remember the plant with a huge "stinky flower" in the National Botanical Garden? That is the giant konjac, which belongs to the same genus as Amorphophallus, and is also the prototype of the "corpse-scented konjac" in literary works. Compared with the aroma that can create hallucinations in novels, in fact, the smell of giant konjac is no different from the smell of rotten meat in order to attract carrion beetles and flies. The main components of the smell produced by the konjac inflorescence are dimethyl disulfide and dimethyl trisulfide, which are similar to the smell components of meat protein after decomposition.

Not only the taste, but also the appearance of the konjac inflorescence is similar to that of rotten meat. The huge dark red bracts even have a metallic luster similar to fresh meat in the sun. This also makes flies "bald". Studies have shown that flies cannot distinguish the color of meat from the meat color simulated by the konjac bracts. Such a delicious food will indeed deceive some flies into being willing to pollinate it. Of course, the flies in this scam think they are laying eggs in the food, but the hatched larvae will eventually die because they cannot get food.

Author: Hydra Science Creator

Reviewer: Yang Laisheng, Researcher, Lanzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences