Will Drinking Alcohol With Durian Kill You
Transcript
When durian season comes around, Singaporeans don’t play play. We’re talking durian parties all day every day to the point that even durian h8rs confirm FOMO.
But just when you’re about to take a bite of your Mao Shan Wang with a can of cold beer, your phone lights up with a message from your 30-person family group chat.
Drinking alcohol with durian can cause death?? Jialat.
In 1933, a seemingly healthy Chinese man in Singapore was found dead in his bed. Just the previous night, he was happily enjoying a meal of chicken boiled in strong rice liquor and some durian for dessert. Investigators ruled out foul play, so his death was a mystery.
This mystery was THE viral story of the 1930s. The autopsy report revealed that the man's stomach was congested and it gave off a strong smell of durian. That’s when the speculations first started. Confirm must be the durian and beer combi!
Close to 90 years later, Singaporeans are still paranoid. Is there a reason for worry? Or can you carry on and enjoy your durian in peace? Wiki.sg investigates.
Singaporeans are no strangers to the pungent smell of durians. It transfers to literally everything in your fridge. The sulfur compound in durians gives them this iconic smell. Coupled with alcohol, the sulfur in durians can be more dangerous than you think.
When a person drinks alcohol, toxic substances are formed in the liver. Usually, our mighty enzymes can remove the toxins by changing them into fatty acids or carbon dioxide.
But when you eat durians, the sulfur delays the process, giving the nasty toxins a free pass to enter our bloodstream.
Japanese researchers noted that victims of durian and beer showed severe cases of the Asian flush and complained about heart palpitations, nausea, and vomiting.
Durians are easy to binge-eat but difficult to digest. With the heavy concoction of durian and beer, our poor liver has to OT to break down the nasty fats and sugars.
However, there’s really NO medical evidence proving that eating durian and alcohol could KILL you. The most you’ll feel is discomfort from bloating and indigestion.
Some scientists from the NUS Faculty of Medicine were so done with the rumours that they decided to put it to rest once and for all.
In 1969, they conducted an experiment testing the theory on 200 mice. The only thing they confirmed was that mice could get drunk too. None of the mice died.
Not many people know about this 40-year-old experiment and so the rumours about durian and beer causing death still make its rounds every durian season.
Here’s our stamp of approval that durian and beer will not kill you, if you consume in moderation.
Believe it or not, the durian is a zero cholesterol fruit so eating it won’t clog up your arteries. It can even lower the amount of bad cholesterol in your body.
But this doesn't mean that you can devour these creamy little pillows to your heart’s content. A 1kg durian has a whopping 1,350 calories. So unless all you’re planning to eat for the day is durian, it’s better to take a chill pill.
Now that you know durian and beer won’t drive you to your grave, share the news with your durian kakis.