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JonnyP
23-09-2012, 12:01 PM
Janie picked this up on Facebook.. Dunno if its true, but its very interesting if it is..

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people there was this Doctor that visited the many farmers to see if he could help them combat the flu...
Many of the farmers and their families had contracted it and many died.

The doctor came upon this one farmer and to his surprise, everyone was very healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was doing that was different the wife replied that she had placed an unpeeled onion in a dish in the rooms of the home, (probably only two rooms back then). The doctor couldn't believe it and asked if he could have one of the onions and place it under the microscope. She gave him one and when he did this, he did find the flu virus in the onion. It obviously absorbed the bacteria, therefore, keeping the family healthy.

Now, I heard this story from my hairdresser. She said that several years ago, many of her employees were coming down with the flu, and so were many of her customers. The next year she placed several bowls with onions around in her shop. To her surprise, none of her staff got sick. It must work. Try it and see what happens. We did it last year and we never got the flu.

Now there is a P. S. to this for I sent it to a friend in Oregon who regularly contributes material to me on health issues. She replied with this most interesting experience about onions:

Thanks for the reminder. I don't know about the farmer's story...but, I do know that I contacted pneumonia, and, needless to say, I was very ill... I came across an article that said to cut both ends off an onion put it into an empty jar, and place the jar next to the sick patient at night. It said the onion would be black in the morning from the germs...sure enough it happened just like that...the onion was a mess and I began to feel better.

Another thing I read in the article was that onions and garlic placed around the room saved many from the black plague years ago. They have powerful antibacterial, antiseptic properties.

This is the other note. Lots of times when we have stomach problems we don't know what to blame. Maybe it's the onions that are to blame. Onions absorb bacteria is the reason they are so good at preventing us from getting colds and flu and is the very reason we shouldn't eat an onion that has been sitting for a time after it has been cut open.

LEFT OVER ONIONS ARE POISONOUS

I had the wonderful privilege of touring Mullins Food Products, Makers of mayonnaise. Questions about food poisoning came up, and I wanted to share what I learned from a chemist.

Ed, who was our tour guide, is a food chemistry whiz. During the tour, someone asked if we really needed to worry about mayonnaise. People are always worried that mayonnaise will spoil. Ed's answer will surprise you. Ed said that all commercially-made mayo is completely safe.

"It doesn't even have to be refrigerated. No harm in refrigerating it, but it's not really necessary." He explained that the pH in mayonnaise is set at a point that bacteria could not survive in that environment. He then talked about the summer picnic, with the bowl of potato salad sitting on the table, and how everyone blames the mayonnaise when someone gets sick.

Ed says that, when food poisoning is reported, the first thing the officials look for is when the 'victim' last ate ONIONS and where those onions came from (in the potato salad?). Ed says it's not the mayonnaise (as long as it's not homemade mayo) that spoils in the outdoors. It's probably the ONIONS, and if not the onions, it's the POTATOES.

He explained onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially uncooked onions. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced onion.. He says it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and put it in your refrigerator.

It's already contaminated enough just by being cut open and out for a bit, that it can be a danger to you (and doubly watch out for those onions you put in your hotdogs at the baseball park!). Ed says if you take the leftover onion and cook it like crazy you'll probably be okay, but if you slice that leftover onion and put on your sandwich, you're asking for trouble. Both the onions and the moist potato in a potato salad, will attract and grow bacteria faster than any commercial mayonnaise will even begin to break down.

Also, dogs should never eat onions. Their stomachs cannot metabolize onions.

Please remember it is dangerous to cut an onion and try to use it to cook the next day, it becomes highly poisonous for even a single night and creates toxic bacteria which may cause adverse stomach infections because of excess bile secretions and even food poisoning.

Tony1948
23-09-2012, 01:21 PM
Thanks for that Jonny.I cook a lot of chilly and curry's and do alot of prep the day befor...............NO MORE.

fish
23-09-2012, 01:44 PM
ille take my onions with a pich of salt ,makes for good reading and ime sure the intention was right but ive eaten onions saved over as excess for an ingredient and eaten them later in some cases days and not got ill,i also like to use kibbled onions in things theyre raw and defo been hanging about to dry them.best bet is to get your flu jab especially if at an at risk catagory,also if your not 'at risk' you can still get a flu jab it costs about £8.00 as a private patient.

JonnyP
23-09-2012, 02:45 PM
I have eaten plenty of left over onions before and been ok.

Its a bit like another story I once heard. I think I got it off a radio programme once, they said if you want to keep spiders out of your house, put a conker in the corner of each room and you will never get any spider coming in. Other people phoned in to say it worked for them, so I tried it. I forgot about it after a while until I saw a conker in the corner of my room ------- with a cobweb over it lol

Maybe onions do absorb nasties out the atmosphere. I will certainly try this out if we get any bugs, and I dont think I will be storing any more cut uncooked onions.

fish
23-09-2012, 02:56 PM
I have eaten plenty of left over onions before and been ok.

Its a bit like another story I once heard. I think I got it off a radio programme once, they said if you want to keep spiders out of your house, put a conker in the corner of each room and you will never get any spider coming in. Other people phoned in to say it worked for them, so I tried it. I forgot about it after a while until I saw a conker in the corner of my room ------- with a cobweb over it lol

Maybe onions do absorb nasties out the atmosphere. I will certainly try this out if we get any bugs, and I dont think I will be storing any more cut uncooked onions.

must admit its made me think about it too! lol

as for the conkers well i think they work fro the big buggers,wife threw the conkers out this summer whilst changing the room round and we have had loads of spiders int house,this is not good for the amount of underwear washing i produce!

Tigger004
23-09-2012, 05:27 PM
Interesting, will have a poke around on the web and post back anything worthwhile......watch this space

luresalive
23-09-2012, 06:22 PM
I've tried the conker thing as the wife and son are arachnaphobics, and I do believe there has been a difference, the house may not be free from spiders but they are definitely much fewer in number over the past few years, however the conkers seem to lose their potency after about 3 months.

jus_young
23-09-2012, 10:42 PM
Time to stink the house out then and see if I can shift this man flu. Damned awful it is, and we all know that man flu is far worse than anything else you can catch.

Maybe onions do absorb bacteria, eating them raw after they have been sat for a while might well cause a few problems but cooking them is going to sort out most things.

f0rm4t
23-09-2012, 10:55 PM
Great story. Nice one Jonny.
Although I've gotta say, my most favourite lunch at work is a a wholemeal sub role with cheese and my own body weight in white onion, with black pepper and salad cream. Naturally, I always cling film and fridge whatever onion if left over, many times over a weekend, which I'll then polish off at lunch time the next week, and I've never so much as fated.

happybonzo
24-09-2012, 07:41 AM
Also, dogs should never eat onions. Their stomachs cannot metabolize onions.



and yet some "experts" reccomend giving Dogs Garlic.
Very interesting article though - thanks for taking the trouble to share it

HillBill
24-09-2012, 12:50 PM
Some one knows their onions lol :)

We grow and eat loads of onions, red, white, shallots, we grow garlic too. I've not been ill for nearly 20 years. I think the last thing i had was tonsilitus at school, and i'm 33 now. But its only recently we have been growing onions. I'll pass this info on to my parents as they are always getting chest/throat infections. It might help them :)

Thumbcrusher
24-09-2012, 02:29 PM
Urban Myth apparently. It's been doing the rounds on facebook for quite some time now! anyway heres a small "analysis" of the myth i found elsewhere, (lets be honest if this actually worked then every hospital in the country would be full of onions lol!)...

Analysis: There's no scientific basis for this old wives' tale, which dates at least as far back as the 1500s, when it was believed that distributing raw onions around a residence guarded against the bubonic plague. This was long before germs were discovered, of course, and the prevalent theory held that contagious diseases were spread by miasma, or "noxious air." The assumption was that onions, whose absorbent qualities had been well known since ancient times, cleansed the air by trapping harmful odors.

"When a home was visited by the plague," writes Lee Pearson in Elizabethans at Home (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), "slices of onion were laid on plates throughout the house and not removed till ten days after the last case had died or recovered. Since onions, sliced, were supposed to absorb elements of infection, they were also used in poultices to draw out infection."

In the ensuing centuries the technique remained a staple of folk medicine, with application not only as a preventative for the plague, but to ward off all kinds of epidemic diseases, including smallpox, influenza, and other "infectious fevers." The use of onions for this purpose even outlasted the concept of miasma, which gave way to the germ theory of infectious disease by the late 1800s.

The transition is illustrated by passages from two different 19th-century texts, one of which claims that sliced onions are capable of absorbing a "poisonous atmosphere," while the other says onions will absorb "all the germs" in a sickroom.

"Whenever and wherever a person is suffering from any infectious fever," we read in Duret's Practical Household Cookery, published in 1891, "let a peeled onion be kept on a plate in the room of the patient. No one will ever catch the disease, provided the said onion be replaced every day by one freshly peeled, as then it will have absorbed the whole of the poisonous atmosphere of the room, and become black."

And, in the Western Dental Review, published in 1887, we read: "It has been repeatedly observed that an onion patch in the immediate vicinity of a house acts as a shield against the pestilence. Sliced onions in a sick room absorb all the germs and prevent contagion."

There is, of course, no more scientific basis for the belief that onions absorb all the germs in a room than the belief that onions rid the air of "poisons."

GalaxyRider
24-09-2012, 06:13 PM
The same could be said of having a sofa in the room, or a tv, or maybe a carpet or whatever. These types of tales abound, but are clearly nonsense.

They are in the same league as not getting pregnant the first time you have sex, going out with wet hair causes colds and not taking your coat off means you won't feel the benefit when you go out again!

Thumbcrusher
24-09-2012, 06:30 PM
and not taking your coat off means you won't feel the benefit when you go out again!

Oh well that must be true 'cos me mam always used to say that!:ashamed: