A gourmet plant
43 Tales of Delicious Plants from a Pre-Botanist
Author, SJUN
CHINA
Translated by Hong Min-Kyung
Publishing Modern Intelligence
Published on July 15, 2022.
Peppers are one of the ingredients that constantly nag. For instance, the doctor always warned people like me who have a sore throat to eat less spicy food. Otherwise, the inflammation would worsen. Capsaicin is being falsely accused. The word that eating peppers can damage your stomach is just a rumor, and the grandmother's nagging is unfounded. Of course, capsaicin can make your stomach ache, but this sensation, like massage, dramatically helps your stomach. Studies have shown that an appropriate amount of capsaicin suppresses gastric acid secretion. This may be a good excuse for people with excessive gastric acid secretion to enjoy the spicy taste. Capsaicin helps the movement of the stomach and facilitates blood flow. It also promotes the secretion of gastric juice or the recovery of damaged gastric mucosa and reduces alcoholic gastric damage to some extent. Therefore, it can be seen that peppers, which have been known as gastrointestinal killers, are instead a good medicine for the stomach. Overeating pepper makes it difficult for anyone to avoid feeling hot in their stomach. Even if you defecate, you will feel uncomfortable. Capsaicin does not decompose in the digestive system and is excreted from the body as it is. Therefore, when you look at your stool, you can't help but feel like you've applied red pepper powder to your anus. Capsaicin is soluble in oil, so it does not wash away in water, but because it is soluble in sesame oil, there is no better remedy than this to release the tinglingly paralyzed tongue.
Bitter cucumbers are not recommended. Cucurbitacin C makes them bitter. The process by which this substance is made is very complicated. For example, the light, soil, and temperature that affect the growth of cucumbers are all involved in producing these substances. As is often said, pesticides do not just affect them. Even if the toxicity of cucurbitacin C is not substantial, it cannot be said to be utterly harmless to the human body, so it is best not to eat cucurbitacin, which has turned bitter.
Brown is a far cry from the colors of vegetables we all know. So, someone began to use green pigments to give seaweed its natural color. The use of pigments increased as greed became excessive. Eventually, the tofu next to it was quickly colored green, as if some seaweed were painted with colored pencils. Since then, the pigments used in food have become the subject of criticism, and the dyed seaweed has also been removed from the table due to cold treatment.
He maintains his innocence regarding agar, saying that nothing has changed much. This is because this type of seaweed, which resembles coral and has a crisp texture, has been known to be white. Living agar is magenta. Regarding relatives, agar is closer to Laver, and both belong to red algae, but agar quickly loses color and becomes transparent after collection.
The phenomenon in which Laver turns green is harmless to the human body even if eaten because the chlorophyll revealed its actual appearance after the phycoerythrin contained in Laver was decomposed. The green Laver made from Laver is equally green.