Experts pointed out that vegetables are less likely to contain formaldehyde

Recently, the saying that "merchants use formaldehyde to soak cabbage to achieve the purpose of freshness" has circulated on the Internet, and some videos of bloggers testing edible fungus formaldehyde have also appeared on major short video platforms, which has attracted widespread attention
.
In this regard, experts said that the possibility of artificial violations is very small, and it is mostly eye-catching "misleading news"
.

In wet markets and supermarkets, almost every stall sells cabbage, and the cabbage leaves on the stalls are white and bright, and the leaves are tender and green; Some cabbage leaves show signs of
dehydration and wilting.
A vendor said that his own vegetables were purchased locally that morning and would not be stacked the next day, and he had not heard of the method
of spraying formaldehyde for embalming.

In fact, the commonly used vegetable preservation method on the market is not the rumored "spraying or soaking formaldehyde"
.
The quality control department of Guangzhou Qian Da Ma Agricultural Products Co.
, Ltd.
said that the illegal use of preservatives
is prohibited by the state.
In the modern fruit and vegetable preservation process, it is generally ensured that the ingredients arrive at the point of sale through direct procurement from the base and cold chain distribution, and the "Nissin" promotion model is combined to avoid overnight deterioration of vegetables
.

It is worth mentioning that in the past few days, there has been a boom on the Internet of "using indoor formaldehyde detection kits to test the formaldehyde content of edible fungi"
.
Many consumers have a fear of edible fungi, afraid that eating these edible fungi containing formaldehyde will cause cancer, and have threatened to never eat edible fungi again
.

In this regard, Zhu Yi, associate professor of China Agricultural University, pointed out that formaldehyde as a compound with a special pungent odor, is not very secretive, easy to be found by ordinary consumers, now almost no merchants are willing to take risks to try the law, the possibility of artificially adding formaldehyde in violation of regulations is very small
.

"Measuring formaldehyde content in mushrooms with kits may not be accurate
.
" Zhu Yi said that in the video, many bloggers used indoor formaldehyde detection kits to detect the formaldehyde content of edible fungi, but this detection method has test loopholes
.
Because the above kits are specially used to detect the content of formaldehyde in specific spaces such as indoors, they are easily affected by many external factors such as temperature, humidity and air, and the experimental results may be inaccurate
.

For the formaldehyde detected from edible fungi in the video can basically be concluded that it is not exogenous formaldehyde, Zhu Yi explained that the current methods for detecting whether edible fungi contain formaldehyde mainly include acetylacetonate method and pre-column derivatization high performance liquid chromatography, these detection methods need to add specific detection reagents and cooperate with precision instruments to complete the detection, they are widely used in food testing
by major scientific research institutes and regulatory departments.

It should be noted that formaldehyde is a harmful substance to the human body
.
Jiang Zhuoqin, a professor at the Department of Nutrition at the School of Public Health of Sun Yat-sen University, pointed out that formaldehyde is listed as a class of carcinogens
by the World Health Organization.
"If you mistakenly eat a large amount of formaldehyde, it may corrode the human mucosa, lead to a decrease in immune function, and seriously increase the risk of
leukemia.
" Jiang Zhuoqin said
.

Jiang Zhuoqin said that because formaldehyde is volatile and soluble in water, citizens will remove most of the formaldehyde
when washing vegetables.
At the same time, when cooking, under the action of high temperature, the residual formaldehyde will continue to volatilize, and the formaldehyde in the stomach is very small
.

In daily life, how do citizens handle vegetables correctly? Jiang Zhuoqin said: "In the experiment, it was found that blanching vegetables in boiling water can effectively remove pesticide residues inside, so the public can refer to this operation
.
" ”

China Food News(Version 06, December 08, 2022)

(Responsible editor: Gao Na)