It was an era of hunger and food shortage. Arabs rely on this food to fill their stomachs:
"You only need to eat six capsules a day, which is enough to meet the energy needed by the human body for one day."
This food is the date palm. Small date palms are so powerful that they are called "desert bread" and "natural candy" in Arabia. Arabs believe that a small date palm tree saved their lives.
The indissoluble bond between jujube and China.
The younger generation may not know it now, but the older generation must remember it clearly. Dates' status in China at that time was comparable to that of online celebrity food today.
In 1950s and 1960s, China suffered from famine due to serious natural disasters, so some foreign fruits and vegetables, including date palms, were introduced.
There is also a saying that the purpose of introducing jujube is to support the Iraqi people against American imperialism.
At that time, we called date palms "Iraqi dates", which helped us through the famine years.
It was only in the mid-1960s that this jujube was still fresh in the memory of the older generation, because a message at that time disappeared from the Chinese people's field of vision: eating date palms would lead to hepatitis, with hepatitis virus on it.
Although this myth was not confirmed by the China government or the media at that time, people still dared not put dates in their mouths.
Is there hepatitis virus in the date palm?
In fact, concentrated sugar and concentrated salt are both very good fungicides.
Bacteria and viruses need water to survive, but thick sugar is a very powerful "water-absorbing ghost". Bacteria not only can't get living conditions in an environment with high sweetness, but also will be sucked away by a lot of water and die.
The sweetness of date palms is extremely high, and the sweetness can reach more than 60 degrees after natural air drying. Even if the mash is diluted with a small amount of water, the sweetness is as high as 50 degrees.
Because of its excessive sweetness, natural dates are often even considered as artificial preserves. Many very powerful bacteria and viruses can't survive in dates at all, and so can hepatitis viruses.
Not only that, date palms are also a very healthy food, which is of great benefit to the human liver.
The sweetness of date dates comes from natural fructose and glucose, which is very easy to digest. It is a "natural sweetener" and can even be used as a sugar substitute for diabetics.
In addition, date palms are low in fat and cholesterol and rich in vitamins and minerals, which can improve human functions.
Today's date palms have become snacks for European and American health experts and food for Israeli national athletes.
Therefore, the statement that dates carry hepatitis virus is completely a rumor.
The epidemic of hepatitis in that year was mainly caused by natural disasters that lasted for three years.
Under natural disasters, many people do not have enough to eat, or often eat indigestible foods such as wild vegetables, leaves and bean cakes, which leads to a general decline in physical fitness and low immunity. Coupled with poor sanitary conditions, naturally led to the prevalence of hepatitis virus.
On the other hand, dating is just a timely scapegoat.