This was a question submitted to me by a dear friend.
Who never cried when chopping onions? Unless you're 20 and never cooked/helped your mum and you've only been eating them (find out why it's good for your health), everyone has had a good cry over damn onions!!
Well I'm happy to report it's all about chemicals and chemical reactions.
1. The onion point of view
You see, the poor onion only wants to protect itself from bacterial or other attacks when rooted in the soil. In order to do this, its cells (=building blocks, from latin meaning "small room") contain amino acid sulfoxides that we'll call Sulfur Boxes.
When you're cutting an onion, you're breaking those cells = small rooms, releasing Warriors (enzymes) whose roles is to break those Sulfur Boxes to transform the amino acid sulfoxides into sulphenic acids.
Another Warrior then comes into action helping this sulphenic acid to reach more easily its victim by making it volatile. Sulphenic acid becomes then a gas, with a very uncool complicated name.
When this gas, that we call lachrymatoric factor LF (litterally something that makes you cry), reaches the water from your eyes, it transforms itself again into sulfuric acid, a more known irritant, burning your eyes.
(I think you'll never look at an onion the same way now you know it evolved so well to produce such a combat army!)
2. On our side:
When this sensation is felt by your sensory cells in your eyes (whose role is to sense things in your environment and send messages to your brain), they are telling your brain that it needs to evacuate this irritant.
The brain then in turns sends signals to your lacrimal glands (behind your eyes) to start making up tears, = producing more water, therefore diluting away the amount of sulfuric acid in your eyes and eventually evacuate it outside your body.
It's by following this logic, that the best way to come over rapidly from this situation is - after stepping well away from the onion - keep your eyes wide opened to make yourself cry more. The worse is to close them or rub them with your hands full of this gas that landed on them!
I found that if you put your onions in the frigde, I don't cry so much. Must be because all those reactions will be slowed down at lower temperature - the warriors are not very efficient when cold!!
Or by cutting your onions under water, the gas can't swim, it drowns - although I agree it's not practical!!
Also those sulphur boxes are mostly contained in the root so technically if you cut the root first or last, you shouldn't cry so much!
What about you? What's your trick for not crying?
Well I'm happy to report it's all about chemicals and chemical reactions.
1. The onion point of view
You see, the poor onion only wants to protect itself from bacterial or other attacks when rooted in the soil. In order to do this, its cells (=building blocks, from latin meaning "small room") contain amino acid sulfoxides that we'll call Sulfur Boxes.
When you're cutting an onion, you're breaking those cells = small rooms, releasing Warriors (enzymes) whose roles is to break those Sulfur Boxes to transform the amino acid sulfoxides into sulphenic acids.
Another Warrior then comes into action helping this sulphenic acid to reach more easily its victim by making it volatile. Sulphenic acid becomes then a gas, with a very uncool complicated name.
When this gas, that we call lachrymatoric factor LF (litterally something that makes you cry), reaches the water from your eyes, it transforms itself again into sulfuric acid, a more known irritant, burning your eyes.
(I think you'll never look at an onion the same way now you know it evolved so well to produce such a combat army!)
2. On our side:
When this sensation is felt by your sensory cells in your eyes (whose role is to sense things in your environment and send messages to your brain), they are telling your brain that it needs to evacuate this irritant.
The brain then in turns sends signals to your lacrimal glands (behind your eyes) to start making up tears, = producing more water, therefore diluting away the amount of sulfuric acid in your eyes and eventually evacuate it outside your body.
It's by following this logic, that the best way to come over rapidly from this situation is - after stepping well away from the onion - keep your eyes wide opened to make yourself cry more. The worse is to close them or rub them with your hands full of this gas that landed on them!
I found that if you put your onions in the frigde, I don't cry so much. Must be because all those reactions will be slowed down at lower temperature - the warriors are not very efficient when cold!!
Or by cutting your onions under water, the gas can't swim, it drowns - although I agree it's not practical!!
Also those sulphur boxes are mostly contained in the root so technically if you cut the root first or last, you shouldn't cry so much!
What about you? What's your trick for not crying?
Yay! Thanks for this post and allowing me to geek out! Oh, science, how I've missed studying you. Now back to blogging!
ReplyDeleteI usually find that slowing my breathing down, cutting the onion as calm as possible and only breathing through my mouth usually helps, but isn't easy and usually forget until it's too late.
ReplyDeleteAt the times I have remembered, it does 'seem' to work, but not all onions are the same and don't release the same amount of gas, so my trick hasn't been fully put to the test... yet []^_^]
The only method that ever worked with me is to stop breathing with my nose... A tip my flatmate gave me, because apparently if the gas reaches your sinus, it makes it worse.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether it is true, but it works.