Taking pictures before meals may save lives. Recently, a netizen took a photo of a special looking octopus while dining at a hot pot restaurant, asking the popular science blogger if he could get off the pot, but he didn't expect that the octopus in the picture turned out to be one of the world's ten most poisonous animals - the blue-ring octopus!
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Although the Spring Festival dinner is happy, you need to be vigilant about the food you eat. What "food" to hide, I hope this guide can help you.
The most beautiful and dangerous - pufferfish
The puffer fish is small and cute, and the meat is also tender. But don't be fooled by this appearance, puffer fish is a highly toxic fish, and the tetrodotoxin contained in it is a highly toxic marine bioactive substance. Under normal circumstances, poisoned people will first appear lip and tongue paralysis, followed by motor nerve paralysis, then peripheral blood vessels dilation, blood pressure drop, dyspnea, and finally as consciousness slowly disappears, the respiratory center is completely paralyzed until death.
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At present, there is no specific drug for puffer fish poisoning. The State Administration for Market Regulation prohibits food operators from dealing in and selling live puffer fish, whole puffer fish and unqualified puffer fish products. It should be noted that tetrodotoxin can not only be found in puffer fish, but also in newworms, salamanders, textured snails, octopuses, etc.
However, although it has some toxins, puffer fish can be safely eaten after professional treatment. Puffer fish contains protein, amino acids and other nutrients, and must be handled correctly before eating.
Blue-ringed octopus
The protagonist of recent hot events, the blue-ringed octopus, contains the tetrodotoxin mentioned above. It is a collective name for several octopuses of the "leopard moth genus", and the whole body is densely covered with blue circles, spots or stripes, similar to leopard print. The blue-ringed octopus is a highly venomous creature listed as one of the ten most poisonous animals in the world and is known as the "invisible killer in the sea".
According to Shenzhen Special Zone News, the blue-ringed octopus in different environments, will become a protective color similar to the environment, once it feels threatened, the skin color will become bright, when the blue ring flashes, it is also the most dangerous time, it is in a state of alert.
The toxins secreted by the blue-ringed octopus contain tetrodotoxin, hyaluronidase, histamine, tryptophan, parabenethanolamine, taurine, acetylcholine and dopamine, among which tetrodotoxin is the main neurotoxicity. This toxin blocks the sodium channels of muscles, paralyzing muscles and causing breathing arrest or cardiac arrest. The blue-ringed octopus is 50 times more toxic than the cobra, and the little 1 can only poison 26 people, and the most frightening thing is that there is no antidote yet.
Crabs with strange patterns
The possibility of encountering poisonous crabs is small, but once encountered, it is difficult to detect. Fishermen inevitably encounter poisonous fish and crabs when they go out to sea, so they have summed up a set of experience in identifying whether crabs are poisonous: at a glance at the color, toxic crabs are generally more brightly colored; Looking at the shell, poisonous crabs generally have uneven shells and grainy feelings; Looking at the chelicera, the cheliceratophalangeal knuckles of poisonous crabs are generally darker in color, and fishermen often have the saying that "the darker the color of the crab's feet, the stronger the toxicity".
For example, the embroidered ridged ripe crab, Raynaud's scaly crab, and the honest love crab, these crabs look similar in appearance to edible crabs. However, the first two crabs, as their name suggests, have characteristic spots or patterns on the back, while the latter have a brighter red color and a grainy shell.
Although we can't teach everyone to identify all the poisonous crabs, it is still safe for us to be cautious and eat some familiar crabs.
Wild mushrooms: the "hardest hit area" for food poisoning
In addition to seafood, wild mushrooms are also the "hardest hit area" of food poisoning, and food poisoning caused by accidental ingestion of toxic wild mushrooms is common.
There are many toxic varieties in wild mushrooms, and the morphology is different, the toxic components are complex, and some folk methods for identifying wild mushrooms have proved unreliable. In June 2021, an article published in the Weekly Journal of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention 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 largest number of poisoning incidents, diseases and deaths.
After eating wild mushrooms at home poisoning, you should immediately use simple methods to induce vomiting: you can drink a large amount of warm water or dilute salt water, and then use soup spoon handles, chopsticks and other items to stimulate the throat for vomiting, as soon as possible to discharge the residual bacteria that have not been absorbed in the body as soon as possible, reduce the absorption of toxic substances, and prevent the aggravation of the disease.
At the same time, you should go to a medical institution for treatment as soon as possible. The poisoned person can be allowed to drink a small amount of sugar saline to prevent shock caused by dehydration. However, do not forcibly pour water into the mouth of the unconscious poisoned person to prevent suffocation.
Don't forget to keep samples of wild mushrooms consumed before poisoning as much as possible, and give them to professional institutions for medical treatment after examination.
These "poisonous foods" are easy to ignore
According to China Newsweek, Liu Shaowei, a doctor of food safety and a member of the expert group of the Shanghai Food Safety Research Association, said in an interview that bacterial food poisoning caused by improper cooking or storage in life is more common than accidental ingestion of poisonous seafood and toxic wild mushrooms.
Improper fermented food: On October 5, 2020, a family in Jixi, Heilongjiang Province, had dinner to eat sour soup, a coarse noodle-like staple made by milling corn and fermented, which caused food poisoning and eventually killed nine people. It is reported that because the refrigerator could not be put down, the frozen sour soup was taken out of the refrigerator and left in a cool and humid place for a few days, and finally produced rice fermentation acid. At present, there is no specific drug for rice fermented acid, and the mortality rate after poisoning is 40%-100%. Black fungus soaked for a long time also produces rice fermentation acid.
Due to the lack of rigorous fermentation tools, fermentation environment and processes at home, for the sake of safety, you should trust professional food processors and carefully ferment food by yourself.
Moldy and spoiled food: Aflatoxin is also one of the more common toxins. As early as 1993, aflatoxin was classified as a class of carcinogens by the World Health Organization's Cancer Research Agency, which is a highly toxic substance, and 1 mg is a carcinogenic dose. Aflatoxin most likes to hide in moldy foods, especially peanuts, corn, beans and other foods with high starch content. If there is a single peanut mold, the whole package of peanuts must be thrown away, because Aspergillus flavus is transmitted in the form of spores, and food is very easy to implicate mildew.
In fact, not only the breeding of aflatoxin, when you find that the appearance of food is obviously different, you should be vigilant, such as red heart sugar cane, a large number of budding potatoes, after eating there is a risk of poisoning.
Due to the problems that ordinary people are prone to problems in controlling the safety of ingredients and production methods, families have become a high incidence of food poisoning. According to media statistics, the probability of food poisoning occurring in households from 2008 to 2015 was as high as 46.5%.
"Now that the New Year is approaching, it is the node for buying and making vegetables and meat in large quantities, and food safety should be more careful." Liu Shaowei suggested that in the process of food processing, raw and cooked food should be processed separately, using different cutting boards and different knives, and never mixing raw and cooked food; In the process of food cooking, it is necessary to correctly handle the temperature and time, and the lack of sufficient cooking temperature and time may lead to the inability to kill the germs in the food and cause food poisoning; Expired food and some leftovers should not be discarded because of savings and fear of waste. (Source: China News Agency)