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Summer is here, and with it comes the season of mangoes, school vacations and... fake news?
CLAIM: A viral message is claiming that having cold drinks immediately after eating mangoes creates a deadly chemical reaction in your stomach.
The message claims that the citric acid from the mango and the carbonic acid from the aerated drinks mix together to become poisonous. To find out if this is true, FIT spoke to some experts
"I do not know how true this message is, I have never seen a problem arise from eating mangoes and having cold drinks,” said Dr Ashwani Setya, senior gastroenterologist at Max Hospital.
There is no scientific confirmation that mixing the two can cause any severe chemical reaction. The citric acid in mangoes is only of negligible amount, according to LiveStrong.
Dr Priyanka Rohatgi, chief clinical dietitian at Apollo Hospital, says that such messages have been circulating on social media for the last two-three years and there is no truth to them.
Dr Setya explains that these days mangoes are artificially ripened with powdered calcium carbide. The calcium carbide makes acetylene by reacting with the moisture present in the environment to ripen the mango.
The concentration of calcium carbide is just not high enough to cause any severe damage, at the most, it can cause an upset stomach, nothing more.
The hotter the weather gets, the more we reach for a cold drink. Doctors suggest homemade drinks like lassi or fruit juices instead, and to stay away from too many aerated drinks.
(This copy was originally published on FITHindi. It has been translated to English by Devina Buckshee.)
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Published: 01 May 2019,06:28 PM IST