What vegetables nitrates?

This year is not so calm. People are still massively sick with the flu (colds). With regard to measles, it is written that morbidity and mortality from this infectious disease is steadily increasing all over the world, and new dangers are already lurking around us.

Finally, we waited for spring. On all the supermarket shelves and market stalls are early vegetables, fruits and greens, alluring with their brightness and freshness ... The hand itself stretches and it seems they contain all imaginable and unimaginable usefulness and goodies, vitamins, enzymes and trace elements. Not like those last year's apples ... I just want to offer the child a radish, a cucumber, a strawberry. It seems to eat and the body is filled with energy and health.

But just do not rush, you remember the fairy tale about the filling apple ... Tale is a fairy tale, but there is a hint in it ... Everyone already knows that it is in early vegetables and greens (grown in greenhouses and greenhouses without enough sunlight and generously flavored with fertilizers) of nitrates. And they are very dangerous, especially for a child’s body. These nitrates in the body in the process of digestion are converted to nitrites - very toxic substances that cause oxygen starvation of cells, leading to poisoning and diseases, damage to the central nervous system, heart and provoking malignant tumors.

According to the WHO recommendations,

a person can consume without harm to health no more than 300 - 325 mg of nitrates per day. 600 mg - already definitely cause poisoning.
It should be understood that not all vegetables equally adsorb and accumulate nitrates. All of them can be divided into three groups.
The first group includes vegetables that accumulate nitrates slightly up to 10-80 mg / kg - these are potatoes, tomatoes, onions, Brussels sprouts, beans, peas.
Vegetables from the second group may contain nitrates up to 300 - 600 mg / kg - these are zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, radish, pumpkin, cauliflower and white cabbage.

And the largest amount of nitrates (more than 2000 mg / kg) is found in leafy vegetables: dill, parsley, spinach, lettuce, sorrel, as well as radishes and beets. Exactly what comes first on the plate in the spring.

How to reduce the amount of nitrates

1. Greens should be soaked for 30 minutes in a saline solution (1-2 tsp of salt per glass of water), this will remove some of the nitrates.
2. Antioxidants reduce the risks of chemical poisoning. The largest amount of them is found in lemon, cranberry, lingonberry, apple cider vinegar. Make them dressing for salads.
3. Buy only perfectly ripe vegetables. And if possible, remove from the vegetables (especially early ones), the upper leaves, the peel, the points of growth, the stalk and the stems.
4. If you are not sure about the eco-friendly purchase, try not to eat vegetables raw. Of course, heat treatment reduces the amount of vitamins in vegetables. but proportionally decreases the risk of making a poisoning.

Although today there are many different portable devices on the market that allow you to instantly determine the amount of nitrates, you can still determine their actual amount in fruits and vegetables only in laboratory conditions.
Take care of your health and your loved ones. Do not become another victim of advertising and try to avoid the earliest (greenhouse) fruits and vegetables.