The previously mentioned chocolate also contains oxalic acid. It's a harmful chemical that can be lethal but usually isn't. Many foods harbor this chemical but only a few contain a lot of it. Green leaf vegetables have the most oxalic acid in them, the most being 700mg per 100g in Swiss chard. Rhubarb (aka- pieplant) was thought to contain a lot of it since this food is reponsible for quite a few deaths, yet only has 500mg per 100g. People consume about 150mg a day of oxalic acid. It is deadly when you eat about 1500mg of it.
Rhubarb used to be internationally eaten in a stew with sugar. It can be classified as a laxative because our bodies automatically dispose of the toxin, oxalic acid. Eating the rhubarb stew could be deadly, while chocolate doesn't contain nearly enough of the toxin to poison you. Unfortunately, rhubarb took its toll on soldiers during World War I- many men were killed!
The Greek physician and botanist Dioscorides recommended it to treat some health conditions. Most of the rhubarb came from China! More than 4,000 years ago, rhubarb root was used medicinally by the Chinese. Carl Wilhelm Scheele found oxalic acid in its roots in 1784 and noted that there was too much present in the leaves for them to be edible. But later it was in every kitchen and when you stewed it, it also cleaned the aluminum pans nicely because the acid dissolved a very thin layer of the metal but was not a health risk. The dissolving oxalic acid performs on metals explains why it interferes with iron, magnesium, and mostly calcium in our body. When oxalic acid and calcium form, it produces calcium oxalate, which causes bladder and kidney stones.
If you drink antifreeze then you are in trouble! Antifreeze contains ethylene glycol which our body converts to oxalic acid!
Sugar can be made into oxalic acid by treating it with nitric acid and cellulose can become the acid by treating it with sodium hydroxide. This acid is water soluble. Expectedly, it's found in stain-removers for iron-based stains because of its interactions with metals.
So what if you eat a lot of chocolate and green leafed veggies? Would that be harmful ?
ReplyDeleteIt could be harmful. Cocoa has 500mg of oxalic acid per 100g and some vegetables contain a lot of it. Usually your body disposes of it naturally. But if your body fails to do so, you must NOT reach 1500mg of oxalic acid in a day!! It is not very common to consume that much in one day for a regular person either. While it may not always cause death, you could get stones: people who are prone to getting those stones are put on a low oxalic acid diet by their doctors and are told to stay away from foods such as rhubarb and Swiss chard, but it is not possible to not consume oxalic acid AT ALL.
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