The public should avoid eating undercooked seafood or meat and keep in mind healthy barbecue tips to prevent gastroenterological illness during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Taipei Medical University Hospital said yesterday.
While a custom of barbecuing at home during the Mid-Autumn Festival has formed in recent years, every year at this time the number of patients visiting the hospital’s Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology increases by 20 to 30 percent, the hospital said.
The majority of patients suffer from acute gastroenteritis and indigestion, with symptoms such as abdominal distention, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, said Chen Hung-wei (陳鴻瑋), a physician at the department.
He said gastroenterological illnesses often occur because of misconceptions about barbecuing.
“One of biggest misconceptions is to apply barbecue sauce to the food as soon as it is put on the barbecue rack,” Chen said, adding that many sauces become carcinogenic when heated, so it is better to apply a small amount of sauce after the food has been well cooked.
He said that although many people think raw fish and half-cooked beef is edible, there are still risks of becoming infected by intestinal parasites and bacteria from eating undercooked seafood or meat, leading to diarrhea.
Another common misconception is that eating pomeloes after barbecuing serves as a fiber supplement to aid better digestion, but eating too much can also cause abdominal distention and diarrhea, Chen said.
Pomelo is a potassium-rich food, so people who suffer from diabetes or kidney disease should avoid eating too much, he added.
Lin Yu-ju (林郁茹), a nutritionist at the hospital’s Department of Dietetics, said equipment such as cutting boards, utensils and containers for handling seafood, meat and vegetables should be separated to prevent cross-contamination.
She said barbecue tongs or chopsticks used for handling raw food should be disinfected in boiling water for more than two minutes before using them to eat cooked food, she said.
Keeping food in sealed containers and refrigerated to less than 7?C also helps prevent pathogens from growing, she said.
Other healthy barbecue tips include eating relatively low-fat meat, such as chicken breast, fish or pork fillet, avoiding salted and cured meat products, adding fruit and vegetables, and making barbecue sauce with fresh ingredients — such as black pepper, garlic, shallots and soy sauce, she said.
Chen said most patients with acute gastroenterological problems show mild symptoms and can recover in a couple of days, but if the symptoms get worse, such as continuous vomiting and diarrhea causing dehydration, the patients should seek medical attention immediately.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on the first full moon of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, with falls on Sunday this year.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods