Why cutting the onions makes us cry?

Show me a someone who say they cannot cry and I will make them.

A line said by an ONION. One might either laugh or do a facepalm at the dialogue, you can also commend the wit if you want! Anyways coming back, we all have gone through the waves of tears coming down and the nostrils also flowing away! No, these are not tears of emotions, well one can say pain but not really. These are the tears we get when we chop/slice/dice a vegetable belonging to family genus allium known as ONION.

So, why do cutting an onion makes our eyes teary and nose runny? Its not because they are humorless or cannot makes us laugh! So why does that happen, Let's understand the same. 

Onions are the species which are grown under the soil, well not fully the bulb of the plant i.e. the round curvature that we generally use grows underneath while the rest grow above the soil. Being under the soil, onions tend to absorb the minerals along with the nutrients it requires to grow major and they are specifically good at absorbing sulfur.

So onions contain amino acid sulfoxides inside them. So similar to how a cut on a human skin will release blood and everything will mix; in same fashion when an onion is cut the break or tear will result in the amino acid sulfoxide and other enzymes will mix to create a chemical called as Syn-Propanethial-S-Oxide. Now this chemical is volatile in nature and takes a form of gas in normal temperature.

This gas when reaches our eyes especially the layer which protects the eyeball, the reaction there creates a very very mild form of sulphuric acid. Now before anyone starts jumping and saying "Whatttt?? Acid in my eye!!!" Please note that it is a very mild form of the same. Also our eyes as part of self defence generate a tear response to wash off the same!

Now we know why we get so teary eyes when cutting or dicing onions.

Is there anything we can do to avoid the tears you ask?? Well there are some which are if not totally but can surely reduce the amount of tears that flow through. 

One of the things that one can do is refrigerate the onions for some time before cutting them, this will slow down the initial reaction leading to the formation of syn-propanethial-s-oxide. Soaking in water for some time also helps. Also any other ways through which you can prevent the gas reaching out to your eyes will do the job!!

Well, that's some cutting through curiosity we did for today. Until next time, stay tuned!

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