An experiment with three Moscow watermelons showed the content of nitrates in them
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City melon bazaars scattered throughout the capital officially began to operate in Moscow, but much earlier, watermelons and melons began to be sold in shops and markets. The range of prices is impressive – from 20 to 100 rubles per kilogram. We bought three pieces and measured the level of nitrates in watermelons.
This year, watermelons from the Krasnodar Territory, Astrakhan and Dagestan are on the shelves in Moscow. True, sellers are increasingly assuring that they sell entirely Astrakhan – they have the best reputation.
We bought three pieces – to try, evaluate and compare.
The first sample is a watermelon from a small convenience store selling fruits and vegetables. It’s not cheap here: watermelons are sold at 60 rubles per kilo, and ours pulled 648 rubles.
The next one is from an economy-class chain supermarket: we paid 220 rubles for a watermelon weighing 7.8 kg.
The third watermelon is from an expensive health food store. Here, a watermelon weighing 3.7 kg (albeit a seedless variety!) Cost us 395 rubles.
In most supermarkets today you can buy pre-diced watermelon in a glass. This is convenient in many cases: for those who live alone – why buy a whole watermelon, you still won’t eat it? – and those who want to eat it, for example, while walking. True, you can’t run away from the markup. There is only one important rule here – you need to carefully study the label and find out the time of packing the watermelon pieces. Suitable for food only those that were cut no more than 2-3 hours ago. In the heat, fruits deteriorate rapidly.
Craftsmen who sell watermelons from a truck or simply in small shops are often willing to cut a watermelon in half or quarters if the customer asks for it. From the point of view of customer focus, this may be a great step, but for keeping food fresh, it is a failure.
When it comes to watermelons, they always remember about nitrates. Why are they dangerous? The fact is that some melon growers, in order to accelerate the growth and ripening of watermelon, actively feed them with fertilizers – nitric acid salts: sodium, potassium, ammonium, calcium nitrates. From the soil, nitrates enter the pulp of watermelons.
Nitrates become dangerous after a person eats a watermelon: they are absorbed into the blood, interact with hemoglobin and prevent the blood from being saturated with oxygen. The result is oxygen starvation. In addition, nitrates can provoke the formation of malignant tumors in the intestines. Therefore, every year the question arises: how much nitrate is in a watermelon?
MK correspondents picked up a special device – a nitrate meter – and took measurements. The permissible norm for the content of nitrates in watermelon is 60 mg per 1 kg of berry weight, in melon – 90 mg / kg. What happened to us?
The health food store justifies its reputation – on the watermelon bought here, the nitrate showed only 12-15 mg. This is a small number, almost zero.
Unexpectedly, the result of a watermelon from a shop near the house turned out to be good – there are 20 mg of harmful substances.
But the watermelon from the supermarket upset: on the crust, the device showed 65 mg of nitrates! True, if you stick the device deeper, the situation improves – there will be 35-37 mg. This is easy to explain: harmful substances accumulate precisely in the rind of watermelons and melons, so you should not try to “nibble” the crusts. Outwardly, characteristic yellow streaks can hint at a high nitrate content.
Of course, the ideal option is to use the ecotester before buying, and not after it. But here there is a nuance: it is unlikely that a sane seller will allow piercing watermelons with a nitrate meter, because after breaking the integrity of the peel, they will begin to deteriorate very quickly.
Is watermelon healthy? Quite. The combination of watermelon and melon can be used for fasting days: melon perfectly cleans the intestines, and watermelon removes excess fluid from the body. The main thing is not to abuse it, because these fruits contain a lot of sugar.
Newspaper headline:
striped test
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