Autumn is coming, and it's the season to warm your hands with a cup of milk tea. After drinking milk tea so many times, how much do you know about the ingredients in it?
Is "sago" rice?
The milk tea we often drink includes: poplar nectar, coconut milk sago, fruit ...... What are the common white round "millet grains" in these milk teas and desserts? Oh! It turned out to be sago.
Pictured is Similou
Sago is an edible starch made by processing the trunk and body (stem) of palm trees, soaking, precipitating, and drying through mechanical treatment. The most traditional sago is the starch extracted from the pith of the coconut palm in the West Valley and processed by hand. The West Valley coconut and the coconut belong to the same palm family, native to Southeast Asia, and look like both coconut and palm.
The picture shows the coconut tree of the West Valley
There is a lot of starch accumulated in the stem of the coconut in the West Valley, people "scrape" the starch down, wash it, put it away, dry it, and shake it like a Lantern Festival when it is not completely dry, and it becomes a grain of sago, which can be added to the dessert after cooking.
Sago is almost pure starch and contains 88% carbohydrates, 0.5% protein, a small amount of fat and a trace amount of B vitamins. However, most of the sago sold in the market is mixed with a lot of other starchy substances, such as tapioca flour.
Is coconut made from coconut?
In fact, coconut fruit is not directly produced from coconut, but is the product of bacterial fermentation of coconut water.
The picture shows the coconut fruit
Coconut is the fruit of the coconut tree. We see coconuts sold in supermarkets and other places, and many of them are not whole coconuts. Most of the coconuts sold in inland cities have their exocarp and some mesocarp removed.
The exocarp of the coconut is the outer layer of smooth green skin, the highly fibrous structure of the coconut palm is the mesocarp, and the innermost bony hard shell is the endocarp. The seed coat of the coconut is thin and clings to the endocarp.
The picture shows a coconut with an exocarp
So when we cut open a coconut, we cut open the skin and the seeds at the same time, revealing the endosperm in the seeds.
The endosperm of the coconut comes in two forms. The outer layer is a white solid endosperm, which is commonly referred to as coconut meat, such as shredded coconut, desiccated coconut, coconut milk, etc., which are all processed from this solid endosperm.
The inner cavity is filled with the liquid endosperm, commonly known as "coconut water", which is the part of the coconut that can be drunk directly through a straw. This is also the raw material used to make coconut.
Coconut fruit is made by allowing Acetobacterium glucose to ferment in coconut water. Using sugars and other substances, Acetobacterium glucose can produce a polysaccharide, bacterial cellulose. These bacterial cellulose float on the surface of the coconut water, and when it accumulates, it becomes a thick layer of white substance, which is fished out and processed to become the coconut fruit in the dessert shop.
Not only is coconut fruit delicious, but it's also a great weight loss food. The main component of coconut fruit itself is cellulose, which cannot be digested and absorbed by the human body, but it can enhance gastrointestinal peristalsis and promote digestion, which has many benefits for the body.
In this way, these small ingredients are quite natural, right? But for the sake of good health, it is better not to eat more.
Sago is not high in calories, but it is almost pure starch, contains no other nutrients, belongs to refined carbs, rises blood quickly and is not hungry tolerant.
Among all the small ingredients, coconut fruit is considered to have fewer calories. The main components of coconut fruit are konjac and gelatin, so it is lower in calories and rich in dietary fiber.
However, due to the increasing demand for coconut fruit, considering the cost, coconut water is rarely used as a culture medium, but a prepared nutrient solution is used. In this way, coconut fruit has little to do with coconut, but the name coconut fruit is still retained.
Therefore, although milk tea with small ingredients is delicious, it cannot be eaten as a meal~
Often drink milk tea from the inside to the outside to hurt the whole body
Although milk tea is tempting, it is dangerous! Drinking milk tea often will not only damage the heart, brain, stomach, bones and other internal organs, but also destroy the appearance and accelerate aging, which can be said to hurt the whole body from the inside out!
Wang Haidong, deputy chief physician of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the First People's Hospital of Huai'an City, Jiangsu Province, revealed the three truths of milk tea in the article "Gynecology Dr. Wang's Popular Science Notes" published in the People's Daily Health Account!
Truth 1: Milk tea is not necessarily real milk
In order to expand profits and control costs, some businesses rarely use real fresh milk to make milk tea, and most of them are brewed from creamer. Creamer mostly refers to non-dairy creamer, which is easy to produce a large amount of trans fatty acids during the production process, which affects health.
1. Affects cardiovascular health. Increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
2. Damage to cranial nerves. It affects normal memory, and it is easy to increase the possibility of Alzheimer's disease after aging.
3. Affects physical development. Especially for teenagers, the harm is greater.
Truth 2: The sugar content is really high
According to the 2020 Zhejiang Provincial Market Supervision Bureau's inspection and investigation of 16 batches of milk tea, the total sugar content of this batch of drinks is between 10-66 grams. Regular consumption of sugary beverages increases the risk of disease.
1. Diabetes. Too much sugar cannot be metabolized in the body, and the blood sugar in the body slowly rises, and if you drink a lot of sugary drinks for a long time, acute diabetes is also easy to find.
2. Accelerate aging. Too much sugar in the body depletes the collagen in the skin, causing the skin to be loose and inelastic.
3. Being overweight. Sugar accumulates in the body, and there is no way to metabolize it effectively, so it slowly accumulates and accelerates the pace of obesity. Once obesity occurs, diseases such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high blood lipids are easy to induce.
Truth 3: Caffeine is high
Excessive caffeine intake can also have health effects.
1. Insomnia. The caffeine in milk tea can cause nervous excitement and prone to insomnia, anxiety and other symptoms.
2. Induce stomach diseases. Milk tea enters the stomach and intestines for digestion, and a large amount of caffeine can stimulate the stomach and intestines, leading to stomach ulcers and other diseases.
3. Easy osteoporosis. When a large amount of caffeine enters the body, it may also cause bone loss and, in severe cases, osteoporosis.
For your own health
Try to stay away from milk tea
For the sake of health, of course, it is not recommended for everyone to drink milk tea. But I understand the truth, that is, I can't control myself, and I have no resistance to milk tea.
If you drink milk tea once in a while, how can you reduce the damage caused by milk tea? Xue Qingxin, the first batch of nutrition instructors and registered dietitians of the National Health Commission, gave several suggestions in the article published by Popular Science China.
1. Choose real milk
If it is freshly made milk tea, you can observe whether the store is made of fresh milk, and some will write "real fresh milk, no creamer, no vegetable cream", and the big brands are relatively more assured, it is best not to add milk caps; If it is instant milk tea or pre-packaged liquid milk tea, then look at the ingredient list, choose the first one is real milk, and try not to choose creamer or non-dairy creamer.
2. Choose the right ingredients
Don't choose processed foods such as boba and coconut fiber fruit, but choose fruit pieces, oats, turtle jelly, roasted fairy grass and other small ingredients.
3. Choose sugar-free or low-sugar options
Although there is also the possibility of sugar in commercially available sugar-free milk tea, it is still much lower than full-sugar milk tea.
4. Eat less after drinking milk tea
The carbohydrate and fat content of milk tea is not low, so you should eat less than two bites of staple food and reduce the amount of cooking oil on the day you drink milk tea.
5. Remember to exercise more after drinking
It is recommended to increase brisk walking, jogging, playing ball, swimming and other exercises to balance calories and prevent weight gain.
Source: Digital Beijing Science Center, Health Times, Popular Science China