For animal offal, people who like them think they are delicious dishes, popcorns, fat intestines, husband and wife lung tablets... All mouth-watering. And some friends do not eat animal offal, think that animal offal has a lot of toxins, can not eat.
So, is the animal offal worth eating?
It is safe to say here that animal offal is indeed rich in nutrients. Animal offal is rich in protein, vitamin A and trace element iron. Liver, in particular, is extremely nutritious and difficult to replace with other foods.
Animal livers are rich in protein, with 21.3 grams of protein per 100 grams of pig liver, twice as much as pork. And animal liver can be called the "king of vitamin A" in food, and the content of vitamin A is particularly high.
Not only that, as a good blood tonic, the iron content in animal liver is extremely high. The Chinese Nutrition Association recommends a suitable daily intake of iron at 12 mg for men and 14 mg for women.
Calculated per 100 grams of edible part, duck liver has a high iron content of 23.1 mg, pig liver is 22.6 mg, chicken liver is 12 mg, and sheep liver contains 7.5 mg of iron.
Not only is the content high, but the iron absorption rate in animal liver is also much higher than that of most vegetables. For example, the absorption efficiency of plant iron in spinach is about 1% to 2%, while the absorption efficiency of heme iron in pig liver can reach 20% to 30%.
Of course, animal offal is also nutritionally deficient. The offal of animals contains a lot of fat and cholesterol. For example, the fat and cholesterol in the pig brain reach 9.8 g/100 g and 2571 mg/100 g, respectively, if you eat a large amount for a long time, the incidence of hyperlipidemia is very high.
In addition, animal internal organs are also the main detoxification organs in the animal's body. Most of the toxic and harmful substances in food are metabolized and transformed by the liver and then excreted from the body.
Therefore, the internal organs of animals should not be excessive. Dietary guidelines recommend that adults generally consume animal offal 2-3 times a month for 25 grams.
The cooking method of animal offal is very exquisite, which involves an important principle, that is, animal offal should be cooked and not fried.
It is not safe to cook animal offal by the method of stir-frying, because the heating in the process of frying is very insufficient, taking pig liver as an example, if it is stir-fried, it may not be high enough temperature and time to kill the parasites in the liver, so it is not recommended to use the method of stir-frying.
So how do you cook? Boil, and cook for as long as possible, cook some rotten, not only safe but also conducive to digestion and absorption.
At the same time, it should also be noted that when eating animal offal, you should eat less other foods with high saturated fatty acids, such as animal oil, fat meat, cream, butter, etc., to avoid saturated fatty acids in these foods to promote the absorption of cholesterol in animal offal.
On the contrary, you can eat some soybeans and soy products while eating animal offal, because the soy sterol structure contained in it is similar to cholesterol, which can reduce the body's absorption of cholesterol.
Department of Clinical Nutrition, Peking Union Medical College Hospital
Professor Yu Kang