Many people think that the pineapple fruit is a native Hawaiian food. However, it is actually from the Caribbean islands. It was found by Columbus in the area in 1493. The pineapple is so sweet that many people started to love it immediately after their first bite. The attention toward this spiky fruits increased as there had been so many studies on the fruit. It turned out that the food contained bromelain. In 1980s, researchers found out that the enzyme is very effective in dividing proteins. A good example is the division of collagen in steaks and also in the tongue.
If we make a comparison between the stem and the pineapple fruit, surprisingly there are so much more bromelain in the stem. The fruit is often used for commercial item as they are sold fresh or processed into canned fruits. As for the stem, many people started to extract the bromelain from it once they realized that the stem has high potential as product too.
The bromelain is then turned to powder. The powdered bromelain has many functions, among which is to tenderize meat, reduce swelling, inflammation or excessive blood clotting. As the enzyme is so functional, many people consume the powdered enzyme instead of taking all the bromelain from pineapples.
Bromelain becomes an enemy to protein because it can separate amino acids that are an organic compound of a living cell. Then let us not talk not only about the steak that can be softened easier by bromelain. Let us talk about the tongue that consumes bromelain. After all tongue also has amino acids and protein. Have you ever felt that your tongue feels painful when eating pineapples? If you do, then you are experiencing the same degradation process as the steak. But the pain should not be for too long as the tongue has the ability to regenerates these cells and it will not end up like the steaks.
This means that even though the tongue may not be in a comfortable state when consuming the protein, but it will have no permanent injury or damage. Once you have eaten the pineapple which has bromelain in it, the body will also begin to metabolize the fruit and enzyme so that it will not be harmful. As for the hands of the workers who harvest pineapples for years, when their hands are damaged, it is not because of the bromelain exposure. This has been proved by reseraches and studies.
