People who often enter the kitchen have a painful experience called “peeling onions.” When an onion is cut, it releases a compound called tear factor. This compound can cause strong irritation to our eyes and make us cry. But the deliciousness of onions makes us want to stop, so we can only complain and cry in the kitchen while cutting onions.
How can we not cry when cutting onions? Some people say that the knife should be soaked in cold water before cutting the onion. Some people say that the onion should be soaked in cold water before cutting. Others said that the onion should be heated in the microwave for a little while. Mirror cutting onions…Various reliable and unreliable methods have emerged one after another, and there is another method that sounds very good, but it is not believed to be: chewing gum and cutting onions will not cry.
Is this relatively simple and efficient method really feasible? The answer is that, after practice, this method is very reliable. Does it feel amazing? Let’s take a look at the scientific principles behind this. If you want to know why chewing a piece of gum when cutting an onion, you can stop crying. It starts with the way our tears flow.
There is a small hole in our lower eyelid near the bridge of the nose. This small hole connects the bridge of the nose and the throat. Usually our excess tears will drain out through this small hole without overflowing the eye sockets. When our lacrimal gland is stimulated by mental or other factors, the amount of tear secretion will suddenly increase so much that this small hole has no time to drain the excess tears, so we will keep crying. But if we chew a piece of gum in our mouth at this time, the mouth will keep closing, and every time we close it will create negative pressure in the mouth. It is precisely because of the existence of this negative pressure zone that this small hole becomes a vacuum pump. Its ability to discharge tears will be several times that of usual, and the excess tears will soon be drained through this small hole. Naturally, there will be no tears overflowing from the eyes.
