Can sprouted ginger, garlic, taro, sweet potato, and peanuts still be eaten?

Many people have surely encountered this: ginger, garlic, potatoes, and the like bought and brought home will sprout after being left for a long time. We know sprouted potatoes cannot be eaten, so can sprouted ginger, garlic, taro, sweet potato, and peanuts still be eaten?

Garlic

As long as the garlic clove itself has not grown mold or changed color, sprouted garlic can be eaten. Sprouted garlic is even better for heart health. After garlic cloves are harvested, the dormant period is generally 2—3 months. After the dormant period, at a suitable temperature (5—18°C), the garlic cloves will quickly sprout and grow leaves, consuming the nutrients in the stem. Whether it is green garlic or garlic scapes and cloves, no toxic substances are produced during the transition through the various growth stages.

Moreover, recent research has found that sprouted garlic contains more heart-healthy antioxidants than fresh garlic. The antioxidant activity of garlic sprouted for five days is stronger than that of fresh garlic. In addition, sprouted garlic also contains different metabolites, which indicates that it has produced different substances.

Ginger

Sprouted ginger can be eaten. If we cut the ginger open, we can find that the flesh inside is dry and hollow and the fibers have become coarser, which means the nutritional components of the ginger have begun to decrease and its nutritional value has dropped, but its main components have not been destroyed. In fact, most ginger on the market has sprouts, just not obviously so. However, if sprouted ginger is not stored properly, it will enter growth dormancy, begin to rot, and breed bacteria; eating it at this point will cause diarrhea. There is a folk saying that “rotten ginger is not rotten in taste,” meaning that rotten ginger can still be eaten, but this is actually wrong. Rotten ginger contains safrole, which may cause degeneration and necrosis of liver cells, thereby inducing liver cancer, so it absolutely must not be eaten.

What are the little tricks to keep ginger from sprouting?

1. The plastic wrap or tin foil wrapping method

Wrap the ginger well using the plastic wrap or tin foil wrapping method, then wrap it with another layer of plastic bag, and put it in the refrigerator to chill. The advantage of doing this is that ginger sprouting requires temperature, humidity, and oxygen; wrapping it with plastic wrap or tin foil isolates it from moist air and oxygen, while also retaining the ginger's own moisture so it does not evaporate, thus achieving the purpose of storing it for a longer time.

2. The sand storage method

Find a flowerpot and bury the ginger in sand. This can preserve the ginger's moisture, prevent the ginger from sprouting, and allow long-term storage, so you can take it out and eat it whenever you want, which is very convenient.

Taro

Sprouted taro can be eaten. When taro is pulled out of the field, it has long since sprouted; farmers generally separate the taro stems and leaves from the taro to sell, and you should also be able to see on the taro the places where leaves originally grew. So you do not need to worry.

When eating taro, it is best to pay attention to these three points:

1. Taro contains hard-to-digest starch and calcium oxalate crystals; however, calcium oxalate has a bitter taste and can cause skin allergies, but it disappears after cooking. During cooking, the flesh will turn gray or light purple. Taro is cooked in a way similar to potatoes. After stewing, taro makes the soup thicker, and taro easily absorbs the broth of other ingredients. Potatoes and taro are both delicious after being deep-fried or pan-fried into thin slices and then drizzled with sauce; they can also be sliced and cooked with syrup to make a dessert. Taro leaves can also be cooked; they cook up like spinach and can be used to wrap other foods for baking. However, the calcium oxalate in the leaves is destroyed after cooking.

2. A clever way to peel taro: put the unpeeled taro into a small bag (fill it only half full), grab the opening of the bag with your hand, bang the bag on the cement ground a few times, then pour out the taro, and you will find that the taro skin has all come off. Taro contains a relatively large amount of starch, and eating too much at one time can cause bloating;

3. Raw taro is slightly toxic, so it must be thoroughly cooked when eaten; raw taro juice easily causes local skin allergies, which can be relieved by wiping with ginger juice.

Peanuts

Peanut sprouts can be eaten. What we usually say cannot be eaten is moldy peanuts, because moldy peanuts produce aflatoxin, which is extremely toxic and can cause cancer. Peanut sprouting and peanut molding are different, and sprouting does not produce toxic substances. The south has no habit of eating sprouted peanuts, but in the north, people in some places like to eat peanut sprouts, just like eating soybean sprouts and mung bean sprouts.

However, experts remind us that when eating sprouted peanuts, we must carefully observe whether they have become moldy. Sprouting and mold growth both occur under conditions of relatively high moisture content in peanuts. Although there is no cause-and-effect relationship between them, sprouted peanut kernels still have a chance of being infected with aflatoxin. Therefore, if the peanuts were sprouted artificially, there is no problem; if they sprouted due to mold caused by being left too long and becoming damp, then they absolutely must not be eaten.

These foods cannot be eaten once they sprout

Potatoes

After potatoes are harvested, they enter a dormant period, during which metabolism slows down, and even under suitable environmental conditions they will lie quietly for 2-3 months. After the dormant period ends, as long as they encounter suitable temperature and humidity, they will grow rapidly and send out new sprouts.

This causes the trace amounts of toxic nitrogen-containing steroidal alkaloids already present in potatoes——solamine——to increase greatly. The role of solamine is actually to prevent other animals and mold from damaging the potato sprouts!

Sweet potato

Although sprouted sweet potatoes can be eaten, if the skin shows brown or black spots, they also cannot be eaten, because that is caused by contamination with black spot fungus. The toxin excreted by black spot fungus contains ipomeamarone and ipomeamaronol, which make the sweet potato hard and bitter, and is highly toxic to the human liver. Although this toxin is boiled in water or roasted over fire, its biological activity will not be destroyed. After eating it, symptoms usually appear within twenty-four hours, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal symptoms. In severe cases, there may also be high fever, headache, wheezing, unclear consciousness, convulsions, vomiting blood, coma. Even death.