How to choose a watermelon? - video recipes at home

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Green, striped and tasty: how to choose a ripe

useful watermelon without nitrates.

The second half of August and September - the best time of year to match particularly pleasant with very helpful. Matured, and at every step of selling watermelons! Not those in expensive supermarkets are imported from Spain and even from Brazil at the very beginning of summer, and our Astrakhan, Volgograd, Dagestan and our former Central Asian melons. Prices are quite affordable - a hefty 10-pound watermelon worth as much as only one kilogram of any imported plums!

Watermelon is very tasty, very helpful, not expensive, but ... no, "but" you can not do. Watermelon can be caught immature or with a touch of the infamous nitrates, which reduce almost to zero the dignity of the representative of the gourd family. Watermelon is not a berry, as many believe. With this striped fruit due are many other myths about it and talk. And prompt townspeople, who saw the melons only on TV, they do not make a mistake when choosing a luxurious dessert.

Juice for kings and subjects

Watermelon is not really a berry, even like! Similar to the great circular berry seeds with a plurality of specific sets of inside and sugars. But no, the watermelon is the only species of the genus of the family pumpkin watermelon. And the fruit of this species is called the melon, and his closest relatives - that pumpkin.

This is what brings even watermelons with berries. In watermelon sugar represented mainly fructose and glucose, and our traditional "sugar", scientifically sucrose, found in watermelon in a small amount. Therefore, watermelon can eat with diabetes - of course, within reasonable limits.

Watermelon has another, perhaps the most important feature of its useful - melon juice has the highest available alkalinity products. .. Most of the vegetables, fruits, berries, etc. are acidic, some have a neutral or slightly alkaline, but watermelon - record. There is a scientific and objective criterion - the acidity of the medium, pH referred to in Latin letters. Moreover, when changing the pH of all unit acidity varies 10 times!

For example: the acidity of our ordinary tap water is about 5 (our water sour). But the more the pH, the lower the acidity. A watermelon juice acidity - a record 9. Subtract 5 from 9, we get 4. This means that our ordinary water at 10 thousand times (ten to the fourth power) sour watermelon juice! Or what is the same thing - watermelon "alkaline" tap water in 10 thousand times! Rare case.

Therefore, watermelon is an excellent diuretic and is useful for people suffering from liver and kidney disease, arthritis, atherosclerosis, hypertension. There is evidence that watermelon juice dissolves even ureaty (uric acid) that cause "disease of kings" - gout. There is a special procedure of cleansing the body using a metered eating watermelon flesh in a few days.

But most importantly - delicious watermelon! Unless, of course, sweet, ripe and does not contain an excess of fertilizers and pesticides, which like to use unscrupulous melon growers to speed ripening. Or rather not even ripening, and for swelling melon to the maximum size and weight, that is, for more profits. The most dangerous in watermelon considered nitrates.

Adverse fertilizer

Nitrates - a salt of nitric acid, known to all as nitrate. Saltpeter is sodium, formerly known as the Chilean, because huge nitrate deposits are in Chile. It is potassium nitrate, and the most famous and popular - ammonium nitrate. The popularity of ammonium nitrate due not only to its excellent "fertigation" qualities.

Unfortunately, readily available ammonium nitrate can be made effective explosives, but we are now only about watermelons.

Nitrates in plants and fruits is always there, but in negligible quantities and safe. But in order to grow a new melon, it is necessary, and then can not escape, making the soil a significant amount of fertilizers, including nitrates. If you go through - in pursuit of the Baris, or worse, shpritsevat growing melon nitrate solution, the melon of these substances will be too much and even dangerous much. Most other such machinations involved in the Chinese leasing in the Russian land for growing vegetables and melons. Although our native citizens do not miss an opportunity to annoy us with nitrates.

Nitrates are dangerous due to the fact that - sorry, a bit simple chemistry - in our digestive tract, they are converted into nitrites (note the second and). And these nitrites transform hemoglobin to methemoglobin, which does not perform a vital function of hemoglobin, ie, do not supply the body with oxygen. In humans, there are signs of oxygen starvation. Namely: nausea, then vomiting and diarrhea. Increased liver and compacted, and with painful symptoms.

Wilt heart rate, reduced blood pressure, increase in breathing, headache, noise in the ears, faints in severe poisoning form of man. However, this is only if the nitrate was too much, and often poisoning occurs only diarrhea and apathy.

Fortunately, in recent years, cases of serious poisoning watermelons almost not observed. But medium and low severity were. Lower contents of nitrate in watermelon by soaking pulp in water is impossible, it is obvious (in the case of cabbage - possible). It is therefore very important to choose a watermelon out of the pile that is on your nearest street or in the market.

is selected on the taste, the color and crackling

The first rule - the watermelon should be ripe. However, the edible flesh of watermelon is protected by a dense, durable and completely opaque crust. According to the type and color of the flesh of the watermelon before the maturity determined, making it a triangular cut-out and demonstrate to the buyer cut piece. Now, however, it is forbidden, and the right - the crust can be dirty, a knife from the seller, too dirty, hands on and say nothing. We have to use other methods.

It is generally believed that when tapped on the ripe watermelon he should publish a kind of ringing sound. Yes, as often happens. Unfortunately, it also happens the other way around! So this method is to use a well-known folk useless. Not very effective and tail-seed, which should be dry at a ripe watermelon. Yes, this is necessary, but watermelon can ripen, and not on the plantation, and then its tail will also be suhenkim but watermelon - poor quality.

But another traditional method of determining ripeness is reliable: squeeze hands watermelon - ripe must groan. In addition, on the side to be a spot on the long (must be long!) Lying on the ground, preferably yellow.

Women can test the quality of a watermelon with her beautiful nails - if the scratch crust, with a ripe watermelon is easy to remove thin peels.

Unfortunately, the ripeness of watermelon is a necessary condition for the absence of nitrates, but not at all sufficient. Of course, cutting the melon to check, you can use the indicator paper strip or a nitrate-tester, but it is not cheap. Although when it comes to a child's health, it should be spent.

On the palate it is impossible to determine the nitrate content, the sharp taste of saltpeter appears only when it is a very high concentration, which in watermelons is still not the case. They are very well distinguishable color of the flesh and the kind of seeds. So, if your watermelon is properly selected, that is ripe, flesh color bright red, but the taste is not very sweet watermelon seeds and bright - this is very suspicious! In good flesh should be bright red and very sweet, and dark seeds. That's when excess nitrates probably not. Congratulations, you have won, eat health - in the most literal sense of the word.

I almost forgot. The Japanese brought watermelons almost cube-shaped - it's exotic and convenient for transportation. In fact, the selection was not just a newborn melon placed in a cubic cell, where he grows into a cube with rounded tops. No advantage in terms of taste and usefulness of such watermelons there, but in terms of hype - very much, because in such a watermelon in the supermarket need crazy money.