How to eat pickled onions safely during Tet?

Choose quality pickled onions

If you buy outside, you should choose to buy pickled onions from reputable manufacturers, ensuring food hygiene and safety. It is best to pickle onions at home so that you can adjust the amount of salt added and ensure a clean food source, no additives, no preservatives. When pickling, make sure to sterilize with boiling water or dry the pickling tools in the sun (glass jars, ceramic jars, specialized stainless steel jars)... to protect the safety of the products.

Illustration photo. (Photo source: Internet)

Limit your intake

Pickled onions contain a large amount of salt, so they can contain a large amount of nitrite. In particular, when we eat pickled onions with dishes containing a lot of protein, the nitrite in the onions will react with secondary amines in the food and form carcinogenic nitrosamine compounds.

In addition, if you eat a lot of pickled onions and drink alcohol at the same time, it will cause heartburn, making this stomach pain worse.

Consuming too much of a food that is high in salt, such as pickled onions, can be harmful to the heart and circulation. In addition, excess salt in the blood vessels makes the walls of the vessels stiffer, causing high blood pressure.

If you want to enjoy this dish, eat it in moderation, just a few slices a day. Experts recommend that although pickled onions are good, you should not eat too much and not eat pickled onions excessively to prevent unfortunate risks.

Combine with other foods

When eating, you should combine pickled onions with other dishes to balance the flavor and minimize harmful effects.

Wash before eating

You should wash the pickled onions with filtered water before eating to remove some of the salt. To reduce the amount of salt, you can peel off a few layers of the outer skin and soak the white part of the onion in water before eating.

According to MSc. Dr. Le Thi Hai - President of the Pediatric Nutrition Association, washing the pickled onions several times before eating will help reduce the saltiness and acidity of the pickled onions. Do not put leftover pickled onions back into the jar because it will easily spoil the existing pickles in the jar. Use a clean spoon and chopsticks to pick up the pickled onions, cover the jar tightly and store in the refrigerator.

Do not eat pickled onions, the pickles are smelly.

Pickled onions with mold or smelly scum should not be eaten because they contain a lot of nitrosamines that can cause cancer. Do not eat pickled onions with mold or black mold because mold is a type of fungus that contains toxins that can cause liver cancer, damage the nervous system, heart, lungs, etc.

Who should not eat pickled onions?

According to Oriental medicine, onions are spicy and hot, and have the effect of causing sweating, ventilating, activating blood circulation, diuretic, aiding digestion, and disinfecting. However, according to medical experts, pickled onions are fermented foods with a lot of salt, so some people should avoid eating too much.

If you belong to the following 4 groups of people, you should not eat pickled onions on Tet holiday:

People with digestive diseases

People with chronic colitis or people with frequent digestive disorders should not eat pickled onions.

In essence, pickled onions are rich in probiotics which can be very good for the digestive system. However, pickled onions, especially pickled onions that are quickly pickled or soaked in vinegar, may not completely eliminate all pathogenic microorganisms present in the food, thus causing more problems for your digestive system.

Pregnant women

During pregnancy, the mother's digestive system becomes more sensitive, especially during morning sickness, while pickled onions can become a stimulant, increasing the feeling of fullness and nausea.

Furthermore, you will not be sure about the safety of the foods and additives that may be added to the pickles and how they may affect you and your unborn baby.

Especially in the last months of pregnancy, you need to eat a bland diet to avoid edema and pregnancy poisoning, so pregnant women should not eat pickled onions.

People with high blood pressure, heart disease

Pickled onions contain high sodium content which is one of the causes of high blood pressure, so people with high blood pressure should not eat pickled onions.

Kidney disease

The amount of salt in pickles and onions is too high, while people with these diseases need to eat less salt than usual. Eating too much pickled pickles and onions will cause your body to absorb a large amount of sodium, increasing the risk of high blood pressure, kidney disease or making the condition worse.

In particular, in patients with kidney failure, the ability to excrete sodium is poor, eating pickles can cause salt retention in the body, leading to edema and high blood pressure.

Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/nen-an-dua-hanh-muoi-nhu-the-nao-de-an-toan-trong-ngay-tet.html