Pizza All’Oppio. It's a few months ago the amazing news of a Chinese restaurateur who to fight the crisis has started serving opium poppies shredded spaghetti with a sauce. It seemed to work well for the brilliant restaurateur who saw his clients out from your local, satisfied we will, and with a smile, until one of his clients was stopped at a place of drug block, and arrested for drug use.

Now, a good pizza from the twisted mind (like mine) he immediately thought of as able to apply the same principle to our beloved pizza!!What you would not do to see your local full of customers every night!

Pizza All’Oppio

Without risking being arrested, a natural way there would:

According to the EFSA which is the European Food Safety Authority (Link at bottom of page), poppy seeds, widely used in bakery, in bakery and pizzeria, contain opium.

Always the EFSA states that the use of poppy seeds as an ingredient in food preparation (so even pizzas) It can determine an ingestion of significant doses of morphine, in a special way on a segment of the population such as children from 3 a 10 age.

The poppy seeds that are derived from Papaver somniferum L., It is already widely used in cooking in many European countries, including our Italy, with them are preparing lots of desserts and bakery products, on cakes and in many dishes in the kitchen as an ingredient, in addition to being used for the production of edible oil.

Although the seeds do not contain alkaloids, they may be contaminated when the plants themselves suffer attacks of pests, or during the delicate phase of the collection. The ingestion of these contaminated seeds can cause adverse effects related to morphine content, with the consequent possibility of measuring high levels of this alkaloid in the urine and blood, sufficient to interfere with the modern drug tests.

The European Commission, always through the EFSA it has initiated an audit on the possible risks to human health that can be given from the poppy seed consumption.

The main alkaloid content from contaminated seeds is morphine, followed by codeine, tebaina, noscapina e papaverina. The ingestion of these substances cause adverse effects which affect the central and peripheral nervous system, causing sedation, drowsiness and breathing difficulties. Papaverine instead, It acts as a muscle relaxant.

Anyhow, the content of alkaloids in poppy seeds can be drastically cut down to 90% simply by treating the seeds. Put simply, once cooked, they lose all of their property that stoned.

Pizza All’Oppio

So dear friends pizzaioli, if you want happy customers, They leave your room with a smile, and …they return to find other pizzas with poppy seeds… 🙂 dovete aggiungerli crudi sulla pizza.

The risk of becoming drug addicts eating pizza on pizza in exaggerated quantity is very unlikely, but for sure it will give a positive result for opiates during any drug tests. Similar cases have already occurred, not only in China, Also in Italy.

Source: EFSA – European Food Safety Authority “Scientific Opinion on the risks for public health related to the presence of opium alkaloids in poppy seeds”

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