The warm spring not only brings bright sunshine and gentle breezes but also brings mouth-watering delicacies. Toona sprouts are definitely synonymous with freshness and seasonality in vegetables. If you miss the season to eat them in early spring, you will never be able to taste the fragrant and delicious toona.
Toona is also known as toona sprouts, toona tips, etc. It is emerald green, fresh, tender, and crisp, with a unique fragrance, making it a highly favored spring vegetable.
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that toona has a bitter taste and a cold nature, and has effects such as clearing heat and detoxifying, strengthening the stomach and regulating qi, killing insects, and securing essence. In addition, toona is rich in vitamin C, high-quality protein, and minerals such as phosphorus and iron, making it a rare treasure among vegetables.
However, some data shows that the average content of nitrite in toona is more than 30 milligrams per kilogram, and in old leaves, it is as high as 53.9 milligrams per kilogram. Such a high content can easily lead to nitrite poisoning when eating toona, and even induce cancer. Experimental results found that the nitrite content in toona rinsed only with water was 34.1 milligrams per kilogram, while after being scalded with boiling water, it was only 4.4 milligrams per kilogram. Stir-fried eggs with unscalded toona had a nitrite content of 83.3 milligrams per kilogram, while stir-fried eggs with scalded toona had a content of 1.5 milligrams per kilogram.
Experiments have also shown that pickling toona with 15% and 30% salt water cannot reduce the nitrite content. Therefore, it is essential to eat toona that has been scalded with boiling water.