"Many nutrition guides claim that I'm doing something good for my body. In most cases, this may well be true. But in some fermenting foods, a bacterium thrives that produces an extremely strong toxin called bongkrekic acid. Unnoticed, this accumulates in the food and gives anyone who eats it a dangerous case of food poisoning, as shown by an outbreak of illness that occurred in October 2020 in a town in eastern China."
"Twelve people had breakfast together at home. Nine of them were dead within the next two weeks. They all had one thing in common: they had eaten sour soup. The dish contained noodles that the hosts had made from fermented corn (stored too long and too carelessly). It only took a few hours for the poisoning victims to develop the first symptoms. At first they noticed abdominal pain, they felt nauseous and vomited. Some developed diarrhea and all of them quickly became very unwell."
"Overall, around half of such encounters with bongkrekic acid end fatally. Even the smallest amounts of the substanceone to one and a half milligramscan cost an adult their life. In the tragedy described, the Chinese authorities found a concentration of 330 milligrams per kilogram in the homemade noodles that the victims had eaten. Assuming a consumption of around 100 grams per person, this is around 20 to 30 times the lethal dose of the poison."
Fermented foods like yoghurt, kimchi, miso and sauerkraut are commonly consumed for health benefits. Some fermentation environments allow bacteria that produce bongkrekic acid, a highly potent toxin. Bongkrekic acid accumulates in food unnoticed and causes severe, rapidly progressing food poisoning. In October 2020 in eastern China, sour soup with homemade noodles from over-stored fermented corn caused an outbreak. Twelve people ate the meal; symptoms began within hours—abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea—and nine people died within days to two weeks. Even 1–1.5 mg can be lethal; authorities measured 330 mg/kg in the noodles, about 20–30 times a lethal dose. Food preparation did not eliminate the toxin.
Read at www.spektrum.de
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