How to buy fruits and vegetables without nitrates to improve your health, not to get poisoned - Om Activ

1. Table of standards for the content of nitrates in vegetables and fruits
2. Standards of nitrate content in vegetables and fruits
3. How to recognize the amount of nitrates when buying:

If you began to lead a healthy lifestyle, you probably began to consume more vegetables and fruits! So you inevitably come across reliable information and rumors about nitrates. Let's get together to understand what it is, how to determine their presence and how to get them out of food and the body.

What are nitrates, what are they eaten with and why do they appear in fruits and vegetables?

Nitrates are salts of nitric acid that plants need for development. But plants take more nitrate from the soil than they need. The nitrates unclaimed during the formation of vegetable proteins still remain in vegetables and fruits and, accordingly, they enter the body in pure form.

Some nitrates are excreted from the body, but the other part, when interacting with intestinal microflora, forms harmful chemical compounds - nitrites.

What is the danger of nitrates and nitrites?

• 1 The saturation of the body's cells with oxygen is deteriorating, as nitrites prevent hemoglobin from carrying oxygen.
• 2 Serious disruptions in metabolism occur.
• 3 Weakened immune system.
• 4 An imbalance occurs in the nervous system.
• 5 Reduced absorption of vitamins.
• 6 There are problems with the gastrointestinal tract, with the cardiovascular and respiratory system.
• 7 Formed nitrosamines, the strongest carcinogens.

Of course, you will not feel the negative effect of one strawberry with nitrates, but with regular intake of small doses, the harm is no less than with one-time high intoxication.

• According to the WHO, the maximum permissible daily intake of nitrates is 3.7 mg (5 mg in the spring) per 1 kg of body weight, and nitrite is 0.2 mg.

Table of standards for the content of nitrates in vegetables and fruits

The lowest amount (up to 150 mg / kg) : in tomatoes and sweet pepper, potatoes, late carrots and peas, garlic and onions.

Medium (up to 700 mg / kg) : cucumbers, zucchini and pumpkin, early carrots, autumn cauliflower and squash, late white cabbage and sorrel, open-ground green onions, leek and parsley roots.

High (up to 1500 mg / kg) : in red beet and broccoli, early white / cauliflower, kohlrabi and root celery, horseradish, turnip and radish (open ground), rutabaga and green onions, rhubarb.

Maximum (up to 4000 mg / kg) : in beetroot and spinach, radish and dill, lettuce and celery, Chinese cabbage, parsley leaves.

Standards of nitrate content in vegetables and fruits

● Greens - 2000 mg / kg
● Watermelon, apricot, grapes - 60 mg / kg
● Banana - 200 mg / kg
● Pear - 60 mg / kg
● Melon - 90 mg / kg
● Eggplant - 300 mg / kg
● Late cabbage - 500 mg / kg, early - 900 mg / kg
● Zucchini - 400 mg / kg
● Mango and nectarine, peach - 60 mg / kg
● Potatoes - 250 mg / kg
● Onions - 80 mg / kg, green - 600 mg / kg
● Strawberry - 100 mg / kg
● Early carrots - 400 mg / kg, late - 250 mg / kg
● Ground Cucumbers - 300 mg / kg
● Sweet pepper - 200 mg / kg
● Tomato - 250 mg / kg
● Radish - 1500 mg / kg
● Persimmon - 60 mg / kg
● Beet - 1400 mg / kg
● Green salad - 1200 mg / kg
● Radish - 1000 mg / kg

• The amount of nitrates depends not only on the type of vegetable, but also on the time of ripening (early / late), the soil (open, greenhouse) and other parameters. For example, early radish, sucking nitrates from soil along with moisture is the leader in their quantity (up to 80%).

How to recognize the amount of nitrates when buying:

Portable Nitrate Testers
The device is not cheap, but it helps to determine the harm of vegetables directly on the market, without departing from the counter. You just need to stick it in a vegetable or fruit, and the content of nitrates will be displayed on the electronic display. Data on the rate of nitrates will not have to remember - they already exist in the base of the device.

Test strips
With their help, you can check the vegetables only at home. You should cut the vegetable, attach a strip to it and wait for the result. If there is a lot of nitrates, the strip will confirm this with an intense indicator color.

Focused on appearance
Not a 100% reliable method, but it can help. Most likely, plenty of nitrates in vegetables and fruits with the following symptoms:

• 1 Too even size (for example, when all the tomatoes as on selection - even, bright red, smooth, the same size).
• 2 Lack of sweet taste (unexpressed taste) in melons (melons, watermelons), as well as immature seeds in them.
• 3 White and hard streaks inside the tomatoes. Lighter compared to the skinned flesh.
• 4 Looseness of cucumbers, their rapid yellowing during storage, yellow spots on the skin.
• 5 Too large carrots (shells) and their very light color, whitish hearts.
• 6 Too dark or too juicy green coloring of greens, its fast decay at storage and unnaturally long stalks.
• 7 The fragility of lettuce leaves, the presence of brown tips on them.
• 8 Dark color of the upper leaves of cabbage, too large, cracking heads. Black spots and dark spots on the leaves (a sign of the fungus nitrate cabbage).
• 9 Fresh taste of pears and apples.
• 10 The absence of sweetness in the taste of apricots, peaches and the tendency of fruit to crack.
• 11 Grapes are too large.
• 12 Potato friability.
• In the absence of nitrates in the tubers, a crunch comes from pressing with a fingernail.
• 13 Twisted tails of beets.

And in the next article we will tell you what to do if you have already purchased vegetables and fruits with nitrates, but it is a pity to throw them out.

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