The greatest paradox of these ecological times, where everything that has the word coloring or additive is under suspicion, is that the greatest risk of poisoning does not come from the industry, but from Nature itself . In fact, we regularly ingest an amount of natural toxic substances 10,000 times higher than the sum of all the artificial compounds incorporated in the food industry.
As strange as it may seem, 90% of the foods that appear on our table normally have toxic elements that can cause anything from mild indisposition to death. Luckily nothing happens because the amounts we eat are very small.
In many vegetables , these toxic substances are what the plant uses to defend itself from the attack of microorganisms and insects . Other compounds that we take every time we sit down at the table and that are carcinogenic or mutagenic, are essential compounds of many cereals, vegetables, fruits and also some animal products such as milk, fish or meat.
Only palm hearts are saved
For example: the green bean contains factors that dissolve red blood cells , antithyroid factors and blockers of an enzyme called trypsin, which our body uses in the digestion of proteins; coffee has chlorogenic acid that causes mutations in DNA. The potato is rich in solamine, a substance that produces malformations, the wine has the carcinogenic agent quercetin, the tomato has too much sodium, the licorice has too much glycinetic acid, which is a hypertensive , and roasted or grilled meats favor the synthesis of benzopyrene , a chemical also found in cigarettes that is responsible for mutations in a gene called RAS. Furthermore, benzopyrene became famous a few decades ago for being present in limited amounts in certain types of pomace oil.
But the most striking proof of this obsession with “safe food” is found in research conducted by Richard L. Hall in 1977 and published in the journal Nutrition Today . Hall examined the menu of a luxurious restaurant and analyzed the natural ingredients of each dish, using the safety criteria applied by the United States government for synthetic substances that are added to foods. In the end, Hall found that of all the ingredients used in the preparation of the dishes, only one was acceptable: hearts of palm. But Hall noted that the hearts of palm had survived study only because so little was known of their composition at the time. If the hearts of palm had been studied in the same depth as the other ingredients, it is very likely that some potentially toxic compound would also have been found.
Foods removed from the menu by Hall’s review included carrots, radishes, onions, olives, melons, shrimp, potatoes, butter, parsley, rolls, broccoli, hollandaise sauce, watercress, herb sauce and lemon for salads, four types of cheese, bananas, apples, oranges, coffee, tea, milk, wine, beer and water. This fact teaches us an important lesson: food is not harmless because it is natural . But we should not be alarmed, tomorrow’s green beans are not going to poison us because our body is used to living with a certain amount of toxins. Perhaps it is worth remembering one of the golden rules of toxicology: the poison is the dose.
Mithriditisation or how to survive poisons
This fact takes us to the year 100 a. C., when King Mithridates VI came to the throne of Pontus, a kingdom located on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea. To achieve this, he intrigued against his father, murdered his brother and imprisoned his mother. With such baggage, it is not surprising that Mithridates was convinced that sooner or later someone would not hesitate to kill him. He suspected that they wanted to poison him, so he had his doctors administer tiny doses of all the deadly concoctions known in his day. The doctors’ work was so good that Mithridates became immune to poisons that would have killed a horse.
Today we know that this immunity is due to the action of the liver . By repeatedly subjecting it to small doses of poison, the liver learns to defend the body from these toxic substances by filtering the blood without damaging its own cells. This process is called mithridatization , in honor of this king. By the way, what happened to him? The poor man had bad luck. He lived in fear that his subjects would poison him and in the end he was stabbed by a soldier. A more common though less elegant way to be killed.
References:
Emsley, J., Fell, P. (1999) Was it Something you Ate?, Oxford University Press
Hall, RL (1977) Safe at the Plate, Nutrition Today, 12:6 pp 6-9, 28-31
