“Never eat tomatoes and crabs together, because they will react in the stomach to produce a substance called arsenic.” This statement is circulated on the Internet. , which makes people shudder at first sight. This statement also uses a scientific method to prove its statement: "Tomatoes are rich in vitamin C. This vitamin C can convert non-toxic organic arsenic in crabs into inorganic toxic arsenic, which is arsenic." This statement is really true. Is there any basis for this? Can crabs and tomatoes really produce arsenic?

Lin Li, director of the Beijing Food Safety, Monitoring and Risk Research Center, said that arsenic poisoning will not occur if crabs and tomatoes are eaten together. Director Lin said that the research center has used experiments many times to prove that these two foods can be eaten together, so everyone does not need to worry. She said, take 2 grams of crab roe and tomatoes, as well as artificial gastric juice configured according to the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, "After mixing through mediation, put it in the incubator for two hours, adjust the pH value and add artificial intestinal juice, vortex and mix, and then put it in the incubator for two hours." "This basically simulates the digestion process of the human body." Director Lin said that after that, the extract was added to the sample to extract the arsenic in the crab, and the extract was introduced into the instrument to measure the production volume. "The results of multiple tests have proven that the organic arsenic in the extract has not been converted into toxic inorganic arsenic. In other words, it is not credible that eating crabs and tomatoes together will cause arsenic poisoning."

So, how did the rumor come about? In fact, this is purely a conjecture based on chemical assumptions. In some aquatic products, arsenic exceeds the standard and actually exists in the form of oxides, which in principle may be reduced, thereby causing danger. But now aquatic products are strictly tested for all kinds of substances that exceed the standard. Crabs with serious arsenic exceeding the standard are impossible to be put on the market. More importantly, in reality, the human body is not a chemical reaction vessel at all. There is no effective environment for such chemical reactions, even if the water The organic arsenic in the product exceeds the standard by hundreds of times, and it is impossible to convert it into arsenic through so-called vitamins and digestive juices. "Eating crabs and tomatoes together will produce arsenic," a reporter from the Beijing News Village Channel noted that this rumor has been around for at least ten years. In the past ten years, no one at home or abroad has monitored the occurrence of crabs and tomatoes being eaten together. Cases of "arsenic poisoning" caused by eating.

Director Lin reminded that according to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, crab meat is cold in nature, and people with weak spleen and stomach should pay special attention to avoid abdominal pain and diarrhea. In fact, this is for dead crabs, because it is not suitable for stale crabs. For crabs, bacteria will quickly spread into the crab meat, and diarrhea and abdominal pain will easily occur immediately. In addition, because crab roe contains high cholesterol, people with chronic gastritis, duodenal ulcer, cholecystitis, gallstones, coronary heart disease, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, and hyperlipidemia should eat less or try not to eat it.