Sometimes, the foods we assume are healthy turn out not to be as beneficial as we thought
Recently, a food scientist posted a video online where she explained why she doesn’t eat raw sprouts or rare cooked meat
With healthy eating, you have to eat foods that will provide you with the most needed nutrients: protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and water.
Each nutrient can be obtained from specific foods. For instance, eggs, certain meats, and nuts contain a lot of protein. Vitamin C can be gained from citrus fruits, potatoes, broccoli, strawberries, Brussels sprouts, and many others. And those are just a few examples; more can be found with a quick Google search.
At the same time, some foods provide only so-called “empty calories.” This includes foods with a lot of added sugars, like cakes, cookies, and candy; you get the gist. Food items with a lot of fats and oil, for example, mayonnaise, and chips, aren’t good either.
You would think that eating any veggies, certain meats, and other beneficial foods is good enough to maintain a healthy diet. Well, TikTok user and food scientist @hydroxide is here to break this misconception.
At the end of 2024, she posted a video about foods she, as a food scientist, never eats. In less than a week, the video got over 6 million views and plenty of reactions (both serious and joking about snacks) from the netizens.
Apparently, these foods carry bacteria, so when they aren’t cooked, there is a high risk of getting sick
So, what are these foods? The first one she mentioned was raw sprouts. These greens are packed with vitamins and minerals, plus they can be a perfect crunchy or flavor addition to salads, wraps, or sandwiches. But apparently, they can be pretty dangerous too.
As @hydroxide explained, sprouts grow in the warmest, moistest, and wettest environment you can imagine. These conditions are the perfect kind for foodborne bacteria that can cause illnesses like E. coli and salmonella. Since people usually like eating sprouts uncooked, getting ill is a serious risk.
Plus, there’s a risk that it can infect your kitchen supplies, like counters, sinks, cutlery, and many more. So, maybe you should opt for something else to give your salad a crunch or flavor, as food poisoning isn’t that tasty, is it?
The second food mentioned in the video was raw meat. To be more specific, any kind of burger that isn’t well done. As she explained, if even a small part of the meat is infected, when it gets mechanically tenderized, that bacteria gets distributed everywhere. So, when it is barely cooked, the risk of getting sick is also high.
