Tuesday 18 February 2014

Readers' Letters Of The Day

Here are another couple of items which were on my to-blog list, which popped up in today's Metro:

So Scotland might not be able to join the EU if it becomes and independent country? That sounds like a big incentive for the Scots to vote for independence from Britain.

Keith, Warwickshire.


There is of course no such country or even place as "Britain", but the point stands.

Chopping onions doesn't seem to make you cry any more. Try it.

Paul, Surrey.


Now this I definitely have noticed, very gradually over the past twenty years or so. I wondered whether it was just me, or building up a resistance with age, but clearly it isn't.

Did they go to the trouble of breeding "non-lachrymal onions"? Quite possibly they did, but why didn't they boast about it?

6 comments:

Ian B said...

It still makes me cry. Clearly my tear ducts have not been silently upgraded in the night, as everyone else's have.

Kj said...

http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue18/tamingonion.html

Dr Evil said...

You can still get the stingers that also burn your mouth off eaten raw.

Antisthenes said...

Chopping and peeling onions immersed in water stops tear duct irritation completely. Perhaps that is what the EU environmental policies are all about immersing the UK under meters of water so as drowning out all irritations from that direction.

Mark Wadsworth said...

IB, out of our sample of three people, you are in the minority on that one.

Kj, thanks. How come nobody told me? I was worried that my tear glands weren't working properly any more.

DrE, nothing like some nice crunchy raw onion to eat, is there?

A, that's going a bit far, even by EU standards.

Bayard said...

Onions give of a chemical that reacts with the water in your eyes to make sulphuric acid, I remember reading. There has probably been a breeding programme to produce onions that have less of this nasty stuff in them.

Raw onion, nice to eat, but horrible on the breath.