Eating Enoki mushrooms in a cycle will ensure you have "blood in your urine" from dragon fruit - what's wrong with these foods!

There is a type of food that is jokingly called "see you tomorrow", which means that if you eat it today, you will find it in your poop tomorrow. Enoki mushrooms are undoubtedly the most typical example of this. After all, what you eat is what you poop out the next day...

Enoki mushrooms | Original source: Tuchong Creative

In addition to the champion enoki mushroom, there are some other foods that have this quality. They seem to pass through the gastrointestinal tract intact, and then you look down while squatting: Oh, isn’t this the corn/wood ear/dragon fruit you ate yesterday? What conditions must be met for a food to be “seen tomorrow”? This is not simple.

Basic conditions:

Rich in dietary fiber, which helps preserve the shape of food

In order to successfully achieve "see you tomorrow", the food not only needs to remain basically intact after digestion, but also needs to come out at the right time, which makes it necessary to talk about dietary fiber.

Dietary fiber is actually a general term for a class of substances, and there is no precise definition. However, nutritionists believe that dietary fiber should at least have the following characteristics:

It is an edible substance that exists in nature;

It is a macromolecule of the carbohydrate class;

Cannot be or is difficult to be digested and absorbed by the body;

It has certain physiological functions and is beneficial to the human body when used in reasonable dosage.

The bran of cereals, the peel of fruits, and the outer skin of some legumes (such as soybeans and mung beans) are all good sources of dietary fiber. Dietary fiber can be divided into soluble and insoluble types based on whether it can dissolve in water. The physiological effects of the two are somewhat different. For example, the feeling of fullness is mainly due to the effect of soluble dietary fiber, because after dissolving in water, it can form a gel-like substance that delays the emptying of the digestive tract; while the insoluble dietary fiber, which is what we call crude fiber in our daily lives, promotes intestinal peristalsis.

In natural foods rich in cellulose, both types of dietary fiber exist, but in different proportions. There is a synergistic effect between the two: soluble dietary fiber can enhance the effect of insoluble dietary fiber in promoting intestinal peristalsis.

Insoluble dietary fiber can increase the hardness of food to a certain extent, so that the mechanical digestion of the gastrointestinal tract is not enough to fully grind the food; in addition, it will not change the appearance characteristics due to dissolving in water, so it can maintain the original shape of the food to a large extent. For example, Flammulina velutipes contains more chitin (an insoluble dietary fiber, animal-derived is more common); corn kernels have a hard peel and seed coat that are rich in insoluble dietary fiber.

At the same time, the two types of dietary fiber work together to promote intestinal peristalsis, which shortens the contact time between food and the digestive tract and digestive juices. In this way, even the part of food that can be digested and absorbed will move to the end of the intestine faster because it "has no time to react", which further ensures the integrity of the food.

Therefore, having rich dietary fiber is the first step to becoming “see you tomorrow”.

Advanced conditions:

Shape and color make them recognizable

There are many foods with high dietary fiber content, but not all of them can be "seen tomorrow". For example, konjac, 74.4 grams out of 100 grams are dietary fiber; some potatoes and stem and leaf vegetables are also rich in cellulose. But none of them can enter this group, which shows that dietary fiber alone is not enough. Because they not only have to come out, but also be recognized.

To get closer to "see you tomorrow", food or a part of food must first have a certain hardness. The previously mentioned rich in insoluble dietary fiber is a way to increase hardness, which is the characteristic of food itself.

In addition, it also has the function of chewing. For example, when eating Enoki mushrooms, people usually do not bite them off, and when eating corn, they usually do not chew the corn kernels into pieces like corn dregs, so its original shape is better preserved and the size is moderate and visible to the naked eye.

That is why nutritionists say that the "see you tomorrow" phenomenon of these foods can be avoided by cutting, crushing, etc. Because this not only destroys the hardness of the food to a certain extent, but also increases their contact area with the digestive tract and its contents, so that the digestible part of this type of food can be digested more thoroughly.

In addition to hardness, the color of food also plays a role. For example, black fungus and black seeds in dragon fruit are very recognizable compared to normal stool color.

Another factor is their distribution in the feces. Corn and pitaya seeds are scattered in the feces like flowers. When you eat a lot, it will give you a feeling of being dotted all over the place. This distribution also makes it easier to identify the "see you tomorrow" food. Therefore, even though pitaya is mostly soluble dietary fiber, it has also entered the "see you tomorrow" food army.

Color and distribution make pitaya also "see you tomorrow" | Pixabay

Final condition:

Delicious, promoting quantitative change to qualitative change

In fact, the so-called "see you tomorrow" still represents a leap from quantitative change to qualitative change. After all, eating an enoki mushroom, a corn kernel, or a spoonful of dragon fruit does not necessarily mean you will see me tomorrow, so deliciousness is still the king.

Look at you, you eat enoki mushrooms in hotpot, in malatang, and even in barbecue... It turns out that only when it tastes good will you keep eating it and you can't stop at all!

China's consumption of Flammulina velutipes from 2007 to 2014 (10,000 tons/year) | "Estimation of demand scale of China's edible fungi industry segments and analysis of industry investment prospects in 2016"

Therefore, I refuse to allow unpalatable food to join the see you tomorrow army!

Of course, the final and decisive step to complete "see you tomorrow" is still your stunning glimpse.

Author: Li Xiaoqiu

Editor: odette

References

[1]Kohn JB. Is Dietary Fiber Considered an Essential Nutrient?. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2016 Feb, 116(2):360.

[2]Fuller S, Beck E, Salman H, Tapsell L. New Horizons for the Study of Dietary Fiber and Health: A Review. Plant Foods Hum Nutr. 2016 Mar; 71(1):1-12.

[3] Chinese Food Composition Table. Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ed.)