Be Careful With These 4 Delicious Foods, They Can Harm Or Even Kill You If Not Properly Prepared

Food is the most basic and essential need of man, it is basically what gives us strength and the energy we require to do work and stay alive, it also provides with the necessary nutrients we need to stay healthy.

The importance of food cannot be overemphasized in the life of any living thing. But just as the intake of food is important so also is the preparation of the food we consume.

If we consume food wrongly, it becomes a poison to our body system, so instead of adding life it will bring about harm or even death for us.

Most of the food we eat are either plant based or animal based, that is they were gotten from plants or from animals. Of course with few exceptions like the common water and salt.

So this means that they are prone to the infestation of bacterias and fungi, and we sure know the damages bacterias or fungi can cause.

The PREPARATION of food is more important than the actual consumption of the food itself, because if the food is not properly prepared, it becomes toxic to our body.

Here in this article I will discourse 4 native and delicious foods we should be very careful with while preparing because of their high toxicity

1. CASSAVA

Cassava root, with scientific nomenclature as Yuca. They are root tubers that grow in the tropics.

It is the most basic and staple food for us here in this part of the world (West Africa), and in some other tropical regions. Cassava is very rich in carbohydrates and since it has high resistance to pests and even drought it is usually cultivated.

Here in Nigeria we usually process cassava into different foods like Garri and fufu (both eaten with soups), abacha (used for African salad), sliced Tapioca (eaten with groundnut or coconut) and Cassava akara.

Cassava should not for whatever reason be eaten raw. It contains cyanogenic glycosides which releases naturally occurring cyanide, a gas that is less dense than air; which when ingested prevents the cells of the human body from using oxygen.

Oxygen is an essential component of what our body needs to survive, therefore when our body cells can’t use or access oxygen, what happens is that our cells begin to die.

And it is dangerous for some of our organs like our heart, our respiratory organs and our nervous system because these aforementioned organs use a lot of oxygen than some other organs.

Consumption of cyanide in large quantities is presumed to cause goiter, impair functions of our body’s thyroid and nerves. It is also presumed to damage some organs and cause paralysis, in extreme cases it can cause death.

It is seriously advised to soak the cassava for at least 24 hours so as to reduce the concentration of that dangerous cyanide present in it.

Also it is very advisable that you accompany your meal of any cassava product with a very rich proteinous food, because protein helps in getting rid of cyanide from the body.

This species of yam is common in West Africa, it’s botanic nomenclature is dioscorea dumetorum, it is also called Cluster yam or three-leaved yam.

The Igbos call it Onu or Ona, Yoruba calls it Esuru, and in Hausa language it is called Kosangoro.

Few months ago I made a post about how my entire family and I almost lost our lives after eating a delicious Bitter yam meal.

This proper care should be taken while preparing this native delicacy, because this food can be very tricky most times.

It has a wild species that looks exactly like the normal one and this wild one can be very toxic and if proper care is not taken it can be lethal.

The wild bitter yam is called kukunduku or gudungudu in Yoruba and Iwu/Ighu in some Igbo dialects.

Wild dioscorea dumetorum contains a toxin known as dihydrodioscorine which can be very poisonous when consumed in sufficient quantity.

It is advised to steep bitter yam in water for a day or two before consumption.

Little is known about the effects of three-leaved yam on pregnant women and nursing mothers but it is safe to avoid consumption of the yam while you are pregnant or nursing a baby.

Note: Bitter yam is believed to be medicinal across many cultures BUT I advise you heed your doctor’s advice only seeing that this root tuber is highly toxic.

3. RAW HONEY

Raw honey is the honey that is still in the state as it was extracted from the hive, it has not undergone any of the commercial processing methods like pasteurisation and filtration.

Most of the honey we buy from local apicultural farmers are raw honey.

Eating Raw Honey comes with some few risks seeing that it can contain spores of the bacteria clostridium botulinum which may be harmful and even causes paralysis for infants and babies.

Although adults and grown children seldomly get affected by clostridium botulinum spores because their body how has the ability to stop those spores from growing.

However if you experience nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after consuming raw honey, see your doctor immediately.

4. PORK MEAT

Pork is the meat gotten from pigs.

Up until recently the production and handling of pork have been an unhealthy one, but these days with government regulations and efforts of farmers pig farming has improved and health risk reduced.

Pork can contain parasites and bacteria that be very dangerous to humans and harm us.

Pork usually contains eggs or cysts of roundworms, tapeworms and other parasitic nematodes such as the Trichinella which causes trichinosis the most common health danger of pork.

Trichinosis can cause nausea, fatigue, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, cardiac problems, muscle pain and at worst can even lead to death.

For your own safety, ensure you handle raw pork meat with all carefulness with entails washing your hands and all areas that the raw pork touched, so as to terminate some of the bacterias that lives in the outermost layer of the meat.

Wash the meat with salt and water then cook the meat thoroughly till it boils at the appropriate temperature degree. Cooking the meat properly is the best way to avoid food borne diseases from pork.

Mind you cooking the meat thoroughly does not guarantee that all the bacterias will be killed off by the heat, infact some bacterias are heat resistant. Cooking the meat only reduces your risk of contacting bacterias.

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