Attention! These five types of food are most likely to cause poisoning, so be careful!

In fact, it is not uncommon for a family to fall ill because of a dish. In Shaoguan, Guangdong, the Pediatric Department of Yuebei People's Hospital affiliated to Shantou University Medical College admitted a family who was poisoned by eating "bitter gourd".

Because of a dish, a family of four was poisoned and hospitalized!

Shantou University Medical College affiliated Yuebei People's Hospital once admitted a family of a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old sister who had severe abdominal pain 2 hours after eating a plate of gourds on the lunch table. In addition to the two children, the grandmother and mother who also ate the plate of gourds at home also had obvious digestive symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea, but strangely, the family had no history of other unclean food or special medications, and the hospital diagnosed it as toxic enteritis.

The child's mother said, "I started to feel chest tightness half an hour after eating, and wanted to vomit but couldn't. Not long after, I wanted to sleep, felt weak all over, had diarrhea more than 20 times, and wanted to go to the toilet every few minutes the night before."

So they rushed to the hospital for treatment. The doctor diagnosed that all four of them had toxic enteritis caused by cucurbitacin poisoning. Fortunately, after gastric lavage and fluid infusion, they recovered and were discharged from the hospital. ①

Bottle gourd is also known as hù melon. The young fruit is tender and soft and slightly sweet. It can be eaten after peeling, or it can be fried or simmered in soup.

Cucurbitaceae fruits and vegetables are bitter, so don’t eat them!

Not all gourds contain bitter cucurbitacin. If the seeds carry bitter genes, or the female flowers of the seed plants receive pollen carrying bitter genes, bitter gourds will be produced. Because bitter gourds contain glycoside toxins - bitter cucurbitacin, it is not easy to be destroyed even after heating and cooking, and it is toxic and can cause poisoning after consumption.

Generally, symptoms may appear about 0.5 to 7 hours after eating bitter gourd. Dr. Jiang Zhen, attending physician of the emergency department of West China Hospital of Sichuan University, said in an interview with Sichuan Famous Doctors of Chengdu Business Daily in 2021 that the symptoms of bitter gourd poisoning mainly manifest as digestive tract symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, accompanied by fatigue, dry mouth, dizziness, and unsteady gait. ②

The most important thing is that unlike vegetables such as green beans, bitter melon does not contain toxic cucurbitacin which cannot be killed by high-temperature cooking. This is why some fruits and vegetables taste bitter even after being cooked.

These five types of food are most likely to cause "poisoning", especially the second one!

Chen Yunchao, director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at Guangzhou Chemical Poisoning Rescue Center and Guangzhou No. 12 People's Hospital, said in an interview with Guangzhou Daily that based on clinical treatment experience, food poisoning in daily life can be divided into five categories, namely: ③

1. Bacterial food poisoning - sour soup, black fungus

Bacterial food poisoning is common in white fungus, long-soaked black fungus, stinky braised pork, sour soup, bean curd, hanging rice cake, rice noodles, etc.

On October 5, 2020, a family in Jixi, Heilongjiang Province, had a dinner party and ate sour soup, which led to a food poisoning incident. It is reported that because the refrigerator could not hold it, the frozen sour soup was taken out of the refrigerator and placed in a cool and humid place for a few days. Therefore, the food poisoning caused by high concentration of fumonisin is a bacterial food poisoning.

In 2021, Luo Liyuan of Lanzhou University of Information Science and Technology published an article in Food Safety Guide, showing that Pseudomonas cocovenenans can produce heat-resistant fumonisin and fumonisin, which can remain toxic even when boiled at 120°C, seriously damaging human liver, kidney, heart, brain and other organs. There is no specific treatment for poisoning, and the mortality rate is extremely high.

There are also common cases of poisoning caused by soaking black fungus. According to a report by Wuhan Evening News in 2019, a mother and daughter in Wuhan began to have abdominal pain and vomiting after eating black fungus mixed with vegetables. The black fungus had been soaked for two days and two nights. The doctor who received the patient said that the long soaking process may breed Pseudomonas cocovenenans, which also produces fumonisin and cause poisoning. ⑤

2. Fungal food poisoning - aflatoxin

The most common fungal food poisoning is aflatoxin poisoning, moldy sugarcane, moldy sweet potato poisoning, etc.

Zhao Jianjun, deputy chief physician of abdominal surgery at the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said in an interview with Health Times in 2014 that aflatoxin was classified as a Class 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization's Institute for Research on Cancer in 1993. It is a highly toxic substance, and 1 mg is a carcinogenic dose. The harm of aflatoxin lies in its destructive effect on human and animal liver tissues. In severe cases, it can cause liver cancer or even death. ⑥

It is more common in foods with high starch content, such as peanuts and corn, because starch can breed aflatoxin in a high temperature and humid environment.

Once you eat bitter or rancid nuts, be sure to spit them out and rinse your mouth immediately. Replace wooden chopsticks every six months or a year.

3. Animal food poisoning - pufferfish, fish gallbladder, and snails, etc.

Puffer fish, fish gall, and cone snails are also common foods that cause food poisoning.

Fuzhou Evening News reported that a fisherman in Quanzhou caught several wild pufferfish when his fishing boat returned to the port. Half an hour after eating, the two experienced numbness in their limbs, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and soon had difficulty breathing and lost consciousness. There is currently no specific antidote for pufferfish poisoning, but fortunately, after "respiratory support" and "blood purification" treatments, both of them are out of danger.

Gu Chuanling, director of the Capital Health Nutrition and Gourmet Society and a national registered nutritionist, published an article in Health Times in 2019 explaining that eating pufferfish can be fatal because it contains pufferfish toxins, including tetrodotoxin, tetrodotoxin acid, pufferfish ovary toxin, and pufferfish liver toxin. Among them, pufferfish ovary toxin is the most toxic. It is 1,000 times more toxic than sodium cyanide, and about 0.5 mg can cause death. ⑦

Fish bile toxins can directly act on the gastrointestinal tract, causing nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea. After being absorbed, they act on important target organs such as the liver and kidneys, causing swelling and necrosis of liver cells, renal failure, and ultimately multiple organ failure or even death.⑧

4. Plant-based food poisoning: green beans, wild mushrooms, day lily

In June 2021, an article published in the China CDC Weekly (English) showed that between 2010 and 2020, a total of 10,036 foodborne mushroom poisoning incidents were reported nationwide, resulting in 38,676 illnesses, 21,967 hospitalizations, and 788 deaths. Among them, Yunnan reported the most poisoning incidents, illnesses, and deaths.

Green beans are one of the main vegetables in autumn and winter in many regions of my country. If they are not cooked thoroughly, the saponins, hemagglutinins and other substances they contain will not be destroyed, which will cause strong irritation to the digestive tract or damage red blood cells, which can cause poisoning.

Fresh daylily contains a toxin called colchicine, and consuming more than 50 grams at a time can cause poisoning symptoms. And Gelsemium elegans can easily be confused with honeysuckle, so don't pick honeysuckle in the wild.

5. Chemical poisoning (nitrite) - leftovers, pickled vegetables

Chemical poisoning generally involves leftovers, unpickled pickles, water contaminated by chemicals, etc. Nitrite poisoning is a relatively common chemical poisoning.

Jiang Fang, a nutritionist at the Clinical Nutrition Department of Subei People's Hospital, published an article in Health Times in 2016 reminding that the fluctuation of nitrite content in pickled vegetables is regular: the nitrite content is highest in the first one or two weeks, and it will be very low after 20 to 30 days, so you can eat it in moderation.

This article is compiled from:

①2020-07-24 Northern Guangdong People's Hospital "【Attention】This kind of melon that we often eat has caused poisoning in a family of four"

②2021-05-19 Chengdu Business Daily Sichuan Famous Doctor "Beware! Many people have been poisoned! Doctors at the West China Emergency Department: This bitter home-cooked dish cannot be eaten! Severe cases can be fatal"

③2021-04-08 Guangzhou Daily "A man suddenly suffered severe damage to multiple organs, just because he ate this part of the fish! Warning: It is more poisonous than arsenic, and there is no specific medicine yet"

④Luo Liyuan. On the prevention and control measures of bacterial food poisoning[J]. Food Safety Guide, 2021(27):51-52.DOI:10.16043/j.cnki.cfs.2021.27.033.

⑤2019-08-29 Wuhan Evening News "Mother and daughter were poisoned by eating black fungus soaked overnight. Reminder: Be careful about these foods too"

⑥2014-08-25 Health Times "Keep Aflatoxin Away"

⑦2019-03-08 Health Times "Eating puffer fish at the risk of death? Wait! "

⑧2017-03-10 Health Times "Attention: Fish gallbladder cannot be eaten"

⑨Vital Surveillances: Mushroom Poisoning Outbreaks — China, 2010–2020. China CDC Weekly .2021-06-11 / No. 24

⑩2016-12-27 Health Times: Don’t eat pickled vegetables for the first one or two weeks

Source: Health Times

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