Health and wellness influencers make up a huge chunk of social media, often with new and outlandish health ‘hacks’ that are often more about winning your eyeballs for a few seconds than providing genuine advice.
With that in mind you should always be wary of any health tips you get from the likes of TikTok or Instagram. Be sure to verify any claims with a bit of your own research whilst making sure the sources are credible and medically-backed.
One recent TikTok trend that’s landed millions of viewers is ‘cucumber milking’.
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Unless you've been living under a rock (or have just resisted the allure of the video sharing app), cucumbers are all the rage right now.
Cucumbers themselves are well worth eating. A serving of these green fruits masquerading as veggies will give you a healthy dose of vitamin C, vitamin K, potassium, magnesium, and folate, and they’re water-rich too.
But milking them? It seems pretty likely that there’s no benefit there.
Milking a cucumber involves slicing it in half and then rubbing the two exposed ends together. A foam will build up that you then wash away, with TikTokers claiming it will make your cucumber less bitter.
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Responding to the trend, certified doctor and NHS surgeon Dr Karan Rajan hopped on the platform to share his own advice.
In response to a cucumber milking video, he said that cucumbers contain 'a smattering of nutrients and plant chemicals, and one of these happens to be a bitter chemical called cucurbitacin.'
"These bitter compounds are actually produced by the plant as a self defence mechanism.
"When wounded, a bitter white froth is released to prevent animals from eating it.”
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While you might prefer to eat cucumbers without a hint of bitterness, Dr Rajan says it’s worth tolerating the mild pepperiness: "But they're also good for you as they have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects.
"These bitter compounds are one of the many reasons why eating vegetables and plants is good for us.
"But most of these defence chemicals are found in the skin of the cucumber, just underneath the end."
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He joked: "So when you give your cucumber a happy ending... it's not gonna make much or any difference to the flavour profile as the flesh doesn't really have that bitterness."
To that end, ‘milking’ a cucumber does… nothing.
If you simply can’t stand that mild, healthy bitterness, Dr Rajan concludes: "You can peel off the green skin - but you'll also miss a lot of the vegetable's key nutrients."
Topics: TikTok, Health, Social Media
Rachael Davis