Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a Vault episode. This time we're going back
Speaker 1: to November for Dangerous Foods three. The Dangerous food in
Speaker 1: NG the third. It is another one of our Dangerous
Speaker 1: Foods episodes where we talked about foods that could actually
Speaker 1: poison you in some kind of context, or maybe just
Speaker 1: some hype about things that people thought were poisonous and
Speaker 1: weren't really, or things that will just get caught in
Speaker 1: your throat because they're still writhing around that sort of thing. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one, this one was another fun one. Uh. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this completed the trilogy or not at
Speaker 1: this as we were according this new intro. I don't
Speaker 1: think we've decided whether we're going to attempt a part
Speaker 1: four yet. Are there enough Dangerous Foods left that we
Speaker 1: can talk about without really stretching it? Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: hoping what will happen is that we'll hear from listeners
Speaker 1: that will ride in in response to these two Vault
Speaker 1: episodes and say, oh, actually, here are some things you
Speaker 1: should cover, and then we'll cover them. That'll take some
Speaker 1: of the work and effort out of the whole the
Speaker 1: whole enterprise. Right, Hey, you out there do our job
Speaker 1: for us, all right. Well, on that note, let's dig in.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey,
Speaker 1: And here in the United States is the week of
Speaker 1: one of our weirdest national holidays, Thanksgiving, the celebration of eating, well, yes, eating,
Speaker 1: and and family and sort of imperfect recollections of US
Speaker 1: history as well as of course Mr Sentence Theater three thousand.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I associated with the Turkey Day Marathon. Now,
Speaker 1: I think Thanksgiving is a weird holiday, especially for listeners
Speaker 1: outside the United States who probably have heard of it.
Speaker 1: But you know you don't have in your own country. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have it in Canada, you have it at
Speaker 1: a different time of a year too, So really, I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that Canadian Thanksgiving is so slightly different
Speaker 1: than America. My ignorance has no bounds, But no Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: is weird because I don't know, if you see it
Speaker 1: this way, most holidays involve feasting as a feature of
Speaker 1: the holiday, But Thanksgiving is the only holiday that is
Speaker 1: about feasting. It seems like that is the content of
Speaker 1: the holiday. Yeah, or at least the feasting aspect of
Speaker 1: it has become so bloated that it eclipses everything else, right,
Speaker 1: and and then likewise we become so bloated we eclipse
Speaker 1: everything else as well. It's a tradition, and in the
Speaker 1: spirit of continuing traditions, we're actually continuing a stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind tradition here today with the third episode
Speaker 1: in our Dangerous Food series, which is a sort of
Speaker 1: cheeky look at foods that can actually have some negative
Speaker 1: consequences if consumed under certain circumstances or uh, not consumed
Speaker 1: in the right way, not prepared in the right way,
Speaker 1: but also with an eye towards avoiding food panic. Right, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: one of the important things to stress here is that
Speaker 1: if you eat just about any food the wrong way, uh,
Speaker 1: some bad stuff can happen. Yeah. Eating is sort of
Speaker 1: like a really incredibly complicated chemistry experiment that you do
Speaker 1: with your own life and your own health as the
Speaker 1: like as the potential outcomes of the experiment, certainly when
Speaker 1: you eat another organism, you're going to encounter its unique biochemistry.
Speaker 1: So with with an animal that might be it's you know,
Speaker 1: venomous glands or or you know, yucky viscera or whatever
Speaker 1: it was eating. Correct, Yeah, pollution that it's that is
Speaker 1: entered into its system. But also just about any spice
Speaker 1: and so many different uh plants that we consume. You
Speaker 1: also have to take into account what sort of uh
Speaker 1: chemical weapons do they have as part of their biology
Speaker 1: that we will be taking into ours. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe you eat organisms. I I advocated an entirely synthetic
Speaker 1: diet composed entirely of molecules fabricated in a lab. Or
Speaker 1: what's the what's the soil and stuff? Right? Is that
Speaker 1: made from organisms? Or is that just a complete, a
Speaker 1: complete fabrication. You know, I'd actually have to assume that
Speaker 1: almost anything you could eat is in some way derived
Speaker 1: from an organism, even if it was never a living
Speaker 1: plant or animal, it's a thing made from some kind
Speaker 1: of plant or animal source. Yeah, we're not quite yet
Speaker 1: at that Star Trek level of just push a few
Speaker 1: buttons on a machine and it'll spit out an artificial
Speaker 1: similacrum of of what you want to eat. Right, this
Speaker 1: hamburger was not made from rocks. It might have been
Speaker 1: made from plants, but not from rocks. So I see
Speaker 1: people in the office drinking soilent, and it makes me
Speaker 1: think that we might be there, that this might just be,
Speaker 1: you know, a complete fabrication. It's brought here on a spaceship.
Speaker 1: I guess. Obviously the answer is that we should do
Speaker 1: a ten Hart series on soilent. Probably that's what the
Speaker 1: people want. So if I'm just kidding folks, please don't
Speaker 1: run away. Yeah, I mean, unless you're soilent and you
Speaker 1: want to advertise on our show, then I guess yes, Um,
Speaker 1: we'll see. But hey, well, we're gonna make a lot
Speaker 1: of enemies in uh in big big food nagrobusiness today.
Speaker 1: So maybe once we've forever closed the door on getting
Speaker 1: a sponsorship from Jolly ranchers or whatever, we can open
Speaker 1: ourselves up to the to the evil soilent dollars. That's right. So,
Speaker 1: as usual in this series, our goal here is not
Speaker 1: to say oh at unusual foods or to cast as
Speaker 1: xenophobic scorn on other culinary customs. Rather, these traditions are
Speaker 1: fascinating and the risks associating associated with certain dishes. I
Speaker 1: think they force us to re examine the foods that
Speaker 1: we eat on a day to day basis. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: force you to think about it in the terms I
Speaker 1: brought up earlier, the fact that your diet, all the
Speaker 1: food and drink you consume, is this ongoing chemistry experiment
Speaker 1: with your body's health on the line. And most of
Speaker 1: the time we really, I mean, we're we're playing kind
Speaker 1: of fast and loose with this experiment. I mean we
Speaker 1: we experiment on things because they taste good or because
Speaker 1: they make you feel a certain way, not so much
Speaker 1: because we've usually done deep research and exactly what the
Speaker 1: chemical effects of them are once they enter our metabolism.
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's something we find out, you know, decades
Speaker 1: down the line in some cases, right, and you read
Speaker 1: about in the British Medical Journal exactly. We'll take a
Speaker 1: few fourays into that journal today. But first, for for
Speaker 1: our first course in this multi course feast of potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous foods, I think we should have dessert. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's do it. Let's start with dessert. Everything is
Speaker 1: kind of super rich at Thanksgiving dinner anyway, So I've
Speaker 1: always thought it doesn't matter what order you're taking it in,
Speaker 1: right right, I mean, the sweet potato casserole is as
Speaker 1: sweet as the dessert, and it served with the turkey.
Speaker 1: So you know what's the difference. Are a sweet potato
Speaker 1: cast role? Guy? It's a when I was a kid. Yes,
Speaker 1: now I find it a bit too sweet. Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I can't deal with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: Well I'll check you on another sweet food here, black
Speaker 1: liquorice thumbs up, thumbs down. You've got thoughts, the black liquorice,
Speaker 1: the candy like the black Twizzler. Yeah, the wax of
Speaker 1: Belisle is that what they call it? Though this is
Speaker 1: in the Demon Belisle. I think somebody calls in the
Speaker 1: in the Wizard's Compendium. I I never had an appreciation
Speaker 1: for candy licorice, black licorice as a as a child,
Speaker 1: I always prefer the ultimately kind of equally grotesque twizzler candy,
Speaker 1: the red Twizzler, you know, Oh yeah, it's just straight
Speaker 1: up sugary. Doesn't have the kind of herbal bouquet of licorice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the wax of Belisle is I think widely considered
Speaker 1: a disgusting abomination. I can't so I'm weird because it's
Speaker 1: often put in this family with other very similar or
Speaker 1: flavors like annis and finnel and things like that. But
Speaker 1: I like those flavors and I don't like black licorice,
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure exactly what the difference is. Obviously
Speaker 1: they've got some kind of flavor and aroma overlap, but
Speaker 1: there's something about the black liquorice candy that just repels
Speaker 1: me in a way that these other flavors don't. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, in one hand, you can say, like the
Speaker 1: candy version of anything runs the risk of being grotesque
Speaker 1: if at least you know to adult palettes or are
Speaker 1: certainly I mean. The other thing you have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind, too, is like when at what point in
Speaker 1: human history you're eating liquorice. Are you eating liquorice when
Speaker 1: it's one of the few choices for sweet candy, or
Speaker 1: if you are you eating or you eating it in
Speaker 1: the age of Snickers and Jolly Ranchers and what have you,
Speaker 1: where you have kind of like the crack cocaine of
Speaker 1: sugar available and you don't have to turn to some
Speaker 1: of these more traditional ways of getting your fix. I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about it like that. But of course, another
Speaker 1: aspect of liquorice will discuss in a minute is that
Speaker 1: it's not just consumed for the taste. People of long
Speaker 1: thought that I had some kind of medicinal, nutritional, or
Speaker 1: therapeutic value. I think that's debatable. Um, but yeah, we
Speaker 1: can get to that in a minute. So I mentioned
Speaker 1: it's widely abhorred, but it's also widely beloved. There are
Speaker 1: people who really really love black liquorice. So uh. To
Speaker 1: get us into thinking about the possible effects of black
Speaker 1: liquorice on the body, I want to start with a
Speaker 1: gym from one of my favorite genres of old news
Speaker 1: articles to dig up, which is the Vault of strange
Speaker 1: food recalls. So in red Vines, you know the candy
Speaker 1: company they make. Oh yes, yeah, they're kind of them,
Speaker 1: like the B movie of Twizzlers. That's my opinion of them. Anyway.
Speaker 1: It's funny you mentioned movies because I think of them
Speaker 1: exclusively as a candy people buy in movie theaters. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where I would always encounter because used to eating
Speaker 1: red Twizzlers at the movie. That was my thing, Like
Speaker 1: that was that was the food that I would have
Speaker 1: food quote unquote that I would get, and sometimes they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have twizzlers in you before to have red vines,
Speaker 1: And yeah, in my experience, if you go in expecting
Speaker 1: twizzards and you get red vines, it's just not going
Speaker 1: to be a satisfying experience. So you sit down to
Speaker 1: see Highlander to the Quickening on opening night, you've got
Speaker 1: your red vines, and you're a little bit disappointed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's just not quite what you wanted. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so in twelve, that company, they issued a recall of
Speaker 1: black licorice quote twists, I guess those are the twisty
Speaker 1: the chords, the whips because the California Department of Public
Speaker 1: Health tested some bags and found they contained elevated levels
Speaker 1: of drum roll lead. Oh that's not supposed to be there, No,
Speaker 1: probably not so. Guidelines at the time stated that children
Speaker 1: and pregnant women should not be exposed to more than
Speaker 1: six micrograms of lead a day. And then the bags
Speaker 1: they tested, a single serving could contain more than thirteen
Speaker 1: micrograms have lead. Uh, and who eats just a single
Speaker 1: serving of anything? If you're at the movie theater, you
Speaker 1: bought that bag. You're gonna eat that whole bag. Uh
Speaker 1: And if so, if you're just hanging out pounding bag
Speaker 1: after bag of licorice twists, that lead can really add up. Now. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: I think this seemed to be like an incidental contaminant
Speaker 1: in some bags of candy. Not a problem with liquorice
Speaker 1: in principle, but there are more fundamental issues with the
Speaker 1: liquorice that might make you want to really think twice
Speaker 1: about potential licorice binges. Will introduce you to the plant,
Speaker 1: and then we'll come back to those things that might
Speaker 1: give you second thoughts. Yeah, the liquors plant itself is
Speaker 1: rather interesting, and uh, you know, I want to come
Speaker 1: back for a second to what we were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about the flavor of liquorice. So certainly, as a child,
Speaker 1: I did not care for the licorice flavor. As I
Speaker 1: have progressed, hopefully progressed as an adult, I have acquired
Speaker 1: a certain appreciation for liquorice flavoring in certain things if
Speaker 1: it's mild enough. So there are there are a number
Speaker 1: of alcoholic beverages that have a liquorice flavor, and it varies.
Speaker 1: There are some traditional middle Eastern licorice flavored drinks. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I find those usually to be a bit too
Speaker 1: strong in that flavor from me. Likewise, there's the whole
Speaker 1: realm of Jagermeister and whatnot, which is also something I
Speaker 1: never developed a taste for. But in a well balanced
Speaker 1: cocktail you often have a liquorice flavor that, if it's
Speaker 1: balanced right works. Yeah. It has this kind of um,
Speaker 1: nice sweet but bitter herbal note. Uh. I think it's
Speaker 1: usually considered like an appartif like it sort of increases
Speaker 1: the appetite, maybe stimulates the production of bile or the
Speaker 1: polast seems like it would. Yeah. Yeah, And and again
Speaker 1: if it's it's it's balanced properly, I find that it works.
Speaker 1: So I turned to one of my favorite cocktail books,
Speaker 1: Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist, which is essentially a botany book. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's all about alcoholic beverages and different spirits and beer
Speaker 1: and wine, etcetera. It's killer. Yeah, it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful book. I'm always pulling it out the shelf
Speaker 1: just to look up, you know, whatever I happen to
Speaker 1: be consuming. But she points out that there are a
Speaker 1: number of botanical sources that produce just the liquorice flavor itself,
Speaker 1: and these include a knees star, a knees knees high stop,
Speaker 1: Finnel high stop, and sweet seally. So there are many
Speaker 1: sources for the flavor itself, many quite unrelated to each other.
Speaker 1: But what they have in common is is this substance.
Speaker 1: This actually this molecule, the liquorice flavor molecule that's known
Speaker 1: as an ethol. And it's soluble in alcohol but not
Speaker 1: in water. So and it separates from the alcohol when
Speaker 1: water is added, causing a milky or green cloudiness which
Speaker 1: you may have noticed if you've ever had a certain
Speaker 1: alcoholic beverages that have a a liquorice spirit in them. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: you certainly see that in for example, Absence, which we
Speaker 1: talked about in the in the last episode where we
Speaker 1: where we talked about Amy Stewart and the Drunken Botanist
Speaker 1: Sails episode. Yeah, like you see that when it emulsifies
Speaker 1: in the water, reads this cloudy luche. Now, the liquorice
Speaker 1: plant itself, Glyceriza glabra is a small Southern European perennial
Speaker 1: and it's actually a type of bean according to Stewart,
Speaker 1: that reaches two to three feet in height and it
Speaker 1: doesn't form a vine the p family. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: root is the part that we harvest, and this is
Speaker 1: what contains the anthol as well as a natural sweetener.
Speaker 1: And the natural sweetener is glycerizon or glycerizic acid. So
Speaker 1: one of the funny things is I think that the
Speaker 1: word licorice itself in English is a sort of way
Speaker 1: down the flow of the of the language game corruption
Speaker 1: of glyceriza, right, licorice glyceriza? Would it would it be
Speaker 1: more appropriate you think for that, like just sort of
Speaker 1: the taste sensation if we call it glicorice, you know,
Speaker 1: like licorice sounds like just a little too sumptuous. But
Speaker 1: if it was a go licorice, then that that that
Speaker 1: that more sums up my response to a really hard
Speaker 1: like rish flavor. Now that's an interesting psychology question. Why
Speaker 1: are some consonant sounds less appetizing than others? The hard
Speaker 1: g does not usually make my appetite leap up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: unless it's sufficiently fringe sounding, I think. But and then
Speaker 1: it then it maybe has lack up on the situation. Yeah. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: so so we're talking about the plant, uh, glyceriza, and
Speaker 1: you said that the the licorice extract comes from the root.
Speaker 1: That's true. You take the roots of this plant, not
Speaker 1: the peas, not the beans in the pod, but the roots,
Speaker 1: and you grind the roots up, you boil them, and
Speaker 1: you produce this licorice juice, which you can then cram
Speaker 1: into all kinds of recipes, licorice candy. Licorice is widely
Speaker 1: used in tobacco products. Do you know that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was really Stewart mentions this that it's used to sort
Speaker 1: of mask the flavor of the of the cigarette or
Speaker 1: what have you. Yeah, and this is, uh, that's funny
Speaker 1: that they would need to mask the flavor flavor country
Speaker 1: mask at all. But then also liquor flavorings are used
Speaker 1: to mask other flavors, for example, in medicines to cover
Speaker 1: the taste of the active compounds, which can often be
Speaker 1: bitter otherwise unpleasant tasting. Um. And somebody out there, I'm
Speaker 1: sure makes like artisanal liquorice mayonnaise. They're they're weird liquorice
Speaker 1: products all over the place. For example, did you know
Speaker 1: in in places in Northern Europe, like in Finland, salty
Speaker 1: liquorice is a thing. Well, it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: imagine that, but I'm going to keep an open mind
Speaker 1: and and say that I could. I could see where
Speaker 1: that could be good. Yeah, okay, So where does the
Speaker 1: liquorice danger come in? Assuming your liquorice has not been
Speaker 1: contaminated with lead in A pair of doctor is named
Speaker 1: James Chamberlain and Igor A. Balnik published a case study
Speaker 1: in the Western Journal of Medicine, and here's what went
Speaker 1: down in their case. This previously healthy, sixty four year
Speaker 1: old man shows up at a Salt Lake City, v
Speaker 1: A hospital. He reports to them that he's had trouble
Speaker 1: breathing after exertion. The he's got shortness of breath when
Speaker 1: lying down, and he's got general fatigue. Now, if you
Speaker 1: are a medical professional out there and you're listening to that,
Speaker 1: you might be thinking like, okay, there could be signs
Speaker 1: of congestive heart failure. Right. Tests showed that he was
Speaker 1: suffering from pulmonary edema. This is a condition when fluid
Speaker 1: collects in your lungs, making it hard to breathe. And
Speaker 1: usually the reason this happens is congestive heart failure. But
Speaker 1: this man had no real signs of having a history
Speaker 1: of heart problems, and in the days leading up to
Speaker 1: the hospital visit, the man didn't report any changes to
Speaker 1: his behavior or diet, except one he'd been on a
Speaker 1: licorice bench. Over the past three days, he had eaten
Speaker 1: by himself a total of four packages of black licorice. Hershey, Twizzlers.
Speaker 1: This is about one thousand, twenty grams or about two
Speaker 1: point two four pounds of black licorice over three days. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I I can't relate to the black Twizzlers
Speaker 1: on this, but uh, I can relate as far as
Speaker 1: red Twizzlers go. U. I said that I don't really
Speaker 1: eat Twizzlers much anymore, but occasionally I will give into
Speaker 1: the temptation. So you're lying. Yeah, I guess I was
Speaker 1: lying to myself, really, because there was a time in
Speaker 1: the past couple of years where somebody brought a bunch
Speaker 1: of Twizzlers to the Dungeons and Dragons game and I
Speaker 1: kind of forgot that. I had a blood test the
Speaker 1: next day from my doctor's exam, and I ended up
Speaker 1: flunking my glucose glucose test because of all the twizzlers
Speaker 1: I'd eaten the night before and I had to like
Speaker 1: retake it later on after a you know, sane um
Speaker 1: consumption of sugar. So I feel him on the twizzler bench,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. Do you think he ate two
Speaker 1: point two four pounds? Uh? You know, I I really
Speaker 1: don't want to do the math on that because I'm
Speaker 1: afraid about I might find well anyway, So, once they
Speaker 1: knew that he had eaten all this liquorice, the doctors
Speaker 1: were able to say, oh, okay, we think we can
Speaker 1: pinpoint the problem. It's the licorice overdose. And so they
Speaker 1: treated him and they kept him in the hospital for
Speaker 1: a couple of days, and his symptoms disappeared. The pulmonaria
Speaker 1: demo went away. They did a new uh chest X ray.
Speaker 1: You could see his lungs were all cleared up, and
Speaker 1: he was fine. And he came back several months later
Speaker 1: checked in, had had no more problems of a similar nature.
Speaker 1: It appeared to just be the liquorice. The authors of
Speaker 1: this case study report that it's rare for a liquorice
Speaker 1: binge to lead to fluid collecting in the lungs, though
Speaker 1: they were able to find a few other cases of
Speaker 1: it in the literature. Only one other case was not
Speaker 1: associated with comorbid conditions, but excess consumption of liquorice has
Speaker 1: been linked to negative health effects such as hard a
Speaker 1: rhythmias and hypertension. So what's going on here, Well, the
Speaker 1: explanation seems to be that when a lot of black
Speaker 1: liquorice comes into the body, it sort of sets off
Speaker 1: a chemical chain reaction starting in your metabolism that makes
Speaker 1: a crucial nutrient leave the body. So natural liquorice contains
Speaker 1: an ingredient as we mentioned before, called glycerizon or glycerizic acid,
Speaker 1: and when it gets metabolized, it eventually leads to the
Speaker 1: renal system, especially the kidneys, purging potassium from the body.
Speaker 1: And one other side effect is that it tends to
Speaker 1: lead to increased sodium retention in the body, so your
Speaker 1: body retains more sodium purges potassium. Medically, that's not good.
Speaker 1: A potassium deficiency in the blood is known as hypokalemia,
Speaker 1: and hypokalemia is bad news for your muscles, including your heart,
Speaker 1: because the simple version is that your body uses potassium
Speaker 1: to regulate the electrochemical communication between nerves and muscle cells.
Speaker 1: Potassium is just very important for electro light balance in
Speaker 1: your body. And if your electrolyte balance is off and
Speaker 1: you're not getting enough potassium, your cells can't communicate properly.
Speaker 1: So will a little bit of licorice hurt me? You're
Speaker 1: probably one if you're one of those people who does
Speaker 1: not believe in the wax of belile but believes in
Speaker 1: the you know, the black manner from heaven. Uh, will
Speaker 1: a little bit hurt you? I'd say no, probably not,
Speaker 1: but you should be careful. You shouldn't overdo it. United
Speaker 1: States FDA has said if you consume more than forty
Speaker 1: grams of licorice a day for two weeks or more,
Speaker 1: you can start to get dangerously low levels of potassium.
Speaker 1: And forty grams that's not a whole lot. Yeah, certainly,
Speaker 1: certainly that you wouldn't want to binge on it, but
Speaker 1: that that's that's I would say, go light on the liquorice,
Speaker 1: would be that. The take home from this, Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: don't binge on it, and probably probably shouldn't eat it
Speaker 1: every day, even if you only eat a little. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a whole world of candies out there. You don't
Speaker 1: have to just go all in on the liquorice. But
Speaker 1: there is some good news. So if you are a
Speaker 1: liquorice fan, not all candies or products labeled licorice actually
Speaker 1: contain natural liquorice extract the stuff that poses the risk. Right.
Speaker 1: We we mentioned all the various other places you can
Speaker 1: get the liquorice flavoring. Yeah, so a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are labeled licorice or actually just products flavored with
Speaker 1: something like annus oil or other things that contain these
Speaker 1: similar herbal compounds that taste like licorice, but they don't
Speaker 1: pose the same risk from the glycerizic acid. So you
Speaker 1: can research your products on your own, try to find
Speaker 1: out what goes in them, and make your decisions accordingly. Now,
Speaker 1: on one hand, we don't like to be alarmist. We
Speaker 1: don't like to say, you know, oh this food scary,
Speaker 1: it's gonna hurt you. But some scientists recently have taken
Speaker 1: a fairly harsh view of whether people should really be
Speaker 1: consuming natural liquorice extract. One study I found by Hesham
Speaker 1: r omar at All, published in Therapeutic Advances and into
Speaker 1: Chronology and Metabolism, had made the following statements quote despite
Speaker 1: its apparent use in a few clinical scenarios, the daily
Speaker 1: consumption of liquorice is never justified because it's benefits are
Speaker 1: minor compared to the adverse outcomes of chronic consumption. And
Speaker 1: then they also say, quote increased awareness among the public
Speaker 1: is required through TV commercials, newspapers, internet sites, magazines, and
Speaker 1: product labels regarding the upper limb bit of ingestion and
Speaker 1: health hazards associated with excess intake. So run out onto
Speaker 1: the streets and and just yell at people like it's
Speaker 1: the like it's the closing moments of invasion of the
Speaker 1: body snatchers, and and say don't eat the liquorice. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to start a pernicious rumor to get
Speaker 1: the job done, you could just suggest that licorice is people. Now.
Speaker 1: I like what you've mentioned earlier about the like annis
Speaker 1: and star Annis being an ingredient some of the flavoring,
Speaker 1: because ultimately that sounds classier, right, I mean, that's that
Speaker 1: has more of a culinary feel to it. I feel
Speaker 1: like if someone were to say, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: some liquorice candy or would you like some star Annis
Speaker 1: oil infused, you know, hard candy. I would say, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll give me some of that, give me some of
Speaker 1: some of the second option, because that sounds like a
Speaker 1: nice craft candy. I totally see what you're saying there.
Speaker 1: That makes me think that partially my aversion to licorice
Speaker 1: candy is is like a learned thing or something like that.
Speaker 1: Because if somebody says, do you want some black liquorice,
Speaker 1: I'm like, get out of my house. If somebody's like,
Speaker 1: would you like some Star and East candy, I'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll try it. Yeah, all right, now I have just
Speaker 1: a couple more things about liquorice to throw in here.
Speaker 1: So back in two thousand nine, chemist in Taiwan found
Speaker 1: that an ingredient in liquorice blocked the absorption of cyclosporing,
Speaker 1: a drug that helps prevent organ rejection in transplant patients.
Speaker 1: Huh so this is this, This was rather interesting, but
Speaker 1: I should I should definitely drive home that the prospect
Speaker 1: of liquorice complicating organ transplants. That was a new idea
Speaker 1: at the time, but it was hardly the only substance
Speaker 1: that was known to uh that to complicate transplants. So
Speaker 1: a lot of things can mess with that, right, including
Speaker 1: things like onions, ginger, ginko. There's just a name a
Speaker 1: few soians. That's that's that's what I read. That's a
Speaker 1: big hit man. Yeah, I mean people, I would love
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone out there who has received an
Speaker 1: oregan transplanters had to sort of alter their their diet
Speaker 1: or lifestyle to accommodate that. But but but yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to make it sound like liquorice is the
Speaker 1: only thing that can unbalance the scenario. On the upside,
Speaker 1: I also ran across a two thousand ten study that
Speaker 1: was published in the journal Leucocyte Biology, and they reported
Speaker 1: that liquorice route might just word off a rare and
Speaker 1: deadly infection that can stem from severe burns. So, in
Speaker 1: this study, scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch
Speaker 1: and Shiner's Hospital found that that glues arise and boosted
Speaker 1: the damaged skins production of proteins UH called anti microbial peptides.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's so that's one week. At some
Speaker 1: points we can put up on the scoreboard for liquorice
Speaker 1: UH in safeguarding our health. Alright, so we don't want
Speaker 1: to scare you off liquorice entirely, but make your liquorice
Speaker 1: decisions intelligently. Be an intelligent consumer of the wax of Belisle.
Speaker 1: All right, are we done talking about candy? Should we
Speaker 1: go onto something more interest? Yeah, we should have something
Speaker 1: we could need some protein, that's what we need, Joe. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and when we come back
Speaker 1: we will discuss the meat of the amphibioid. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, Joe, have you ever eaten frog legs? Honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of embarrassed to say this because I like
Speaker 1: to think of myself as an adventurous eater. But no,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've had the frog legs. Well I have,
Speaker 1: I have not had them recently, but I have had
Speaker 1: fried frog legs in the past. What do you think
Speaker 1: I remember liking them, But it was kind of at
Speaker 1: at an age where I liked anything that was fried
Speaker 1: up in a skullet. So I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I imagine, you know, everything fried is essentially good. It
Speaker 1: hits several key areas for for our taste, you know.
Speaker 1: So I imagine there's some really delicious frog legs out there,
Speaker 1: but I have not necessarily tried them. Now, I hate
Speaker 1: to invoke the cliche, but did it taste like, you
Speaker 1: know what, like like chicken? Right? Yeah, I guess I
Speaker 1: mean every that I mean it's it's the cliche. But
Speaker 1: I have found that a lot of non non chicken,
Speaker 1: non beef, non pork meats do kind of taste like chicken.
Speaker 1: I guess that's like our easiest analog for uh you know,
Speaker 1: a variety of amphibians and reptiles. Like I felt like
Speaker 1: that was the same way when I had what alligator
Speaker 1: wants in New Orleans. But but it's a similar scenario
Speaker 1: to where first of all, if it's fried up, that
Speaker 1: kind of maskle out of the flavor, and if you're
Speaker 1: primed to think it tastes like chicken, then are we
Speaker 1: just looking for those connections in the flavor profile. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's not that it tastes much like chicken, but we
Speaker 1: just don't have that many other meats to compare it to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be. So this next selection does take us
Speaker 1: to the world of frogs, and specifically it takes us
Speaker 1: to the African nation of uh Namibia. Not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the non existent nation of Nambia, which has
Speaker 1: been in the news recently. Uh you'll find it. You'll
Speaker 1: find it on the northwest border of South Africa on
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Ocean. It's home to about two point one
Speaker 1: million people. They're five major ethnic groups and the dominant
Speaker 1: religion is Christian and it's UH and uh it owes
Speaker 1: this to its colonial history. Now, as far as cuisine goes,
Speaker 1: UH millet and maize or staple foods, accompanied by indigenous
Speaker 1: vegetables beef, lam mutton, fish. But like many cultures around
Speaker 1: the world, they also enjoy a little frog from time
Speaker 1: to time. Which I was looking into this and I
Speaker 1: found it a little surprising. I didn't know much about
Speaker 1: like global food customs with frogs. Uh a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I think you think of French cuisine, you may think
Speaker 1: of Cantonese cuisine. These are both areas where frogs are
Speaker 1: often considered delicacies. But you encounter them in just all
Speaker 1: over the world. Like people have long realized that when
Speaker 1: there are frogs around, there's a good chance you can
Speaker 1: eat their legs, their meaty legs. I wonder to what
Speaker 1: extent the regions cultivation of frog as a food item
Speaker 1: is correlated with the extent to which frogs are an
Speaker 1: invasive pest in the area and not invasive to past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll see that in this example. I also couldn't help.
Speaker 1: But wonder do we see less frog legs being consumed
Speaker 1: maybe in the US based on the Muppet movie because
Speaker 1: we had Doc Hoppers French fried frog legs restaurant, and there,
Speaker 1: of course trying to kill kermit. Yeah, or and or
Speaker 1: make him sell out his species. That's an unspeakable crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. You can't eat sentient frogs that sing, indeed,
Speaker 1: not with pipes like that. Now in uh now, maybe
Speaker 1: the giant African bullfrog is the Amphibian delicacy of choice.
Speaker 1: Pixa cephalis ad spursus ad spurs is a k A
Speaker 1: giant pixie frog. Yeah. It's also known locally as ifuma
Speaker 1: or in the plural oma fuma. And what makes it
Speaker 1: interesting is that Namibian traditions call for more of the
Speaker 1: frog to be eaten than is common in a lot
Speaker 1: of other cultures. So not just the legs, right, it's
Speaker 1: more of a it's more in keeping with how other
Speaker 1: cultures would eat and you know American culture too would
Speaker 1: eat a fish or chicken. You know, you would essentially
Speaker 1: gut the creature and then use the remnants cook that up.
Speaker 1: So I was reading from a book for this Indigenous
Speaker 1: Knowledge of Namibia edited by Casilla see Chin Simbu. And
Speaker 1: it's not just Namibians that that enjoy this frog. The
Speaker 1: frog is widely distributed throughout southern and eastern Africa, and
Speaker 1: the Nassinga people of eastern Zambia they consume it whole
Speaker 1: as well, and they call it quote kanyama kalaisi fupa
Speaker 1: the animal without bones. Now they do have bones, but
Speaker 1: one of the apparely interesting things about cooked frog meat
Speaker 1: is that it separates very easily from the bones. So
Speaker 1: these are these frogs, the giant African bullfrog. They're plentiful
Speaker 1: in the rainy season, so they're just everywhere that it
Speaker 1: kind of gets into that pest area. It's like, there
Speaker 1: are frogs all over the ice. Should we not try
Speaker 1: and eat them, which seem to be the natural human
Speaker 1: inclination at least make a stock, right, Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: thing is that they're they're relatively easy to catch and
Speaker 1: can catch them by hand. Often they're caught by children.
Speaker 1: They can inflict a nasty bite if you're not careful.
Speaker 1: And I've read that this is the only example of
Speaker 1: an amphibian that can cause uh, this is how it
Speaker 1: was phrased in this paper. Is looking at actual mechanical trauma. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the other bite can be a little bit nasty if you,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't know how to to to catch one.
Speaker 1: I've never thought about that. Are there no other frogs
Speaker 1: that can really bite you good? Yeah, I was trying
Speaker 1: to think about. I mean, I grew up in in
Speaker 1: rural Tennessee and we were always catching frogs and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember ever being bit by one. So
Speaker 1: the only mechanical attack I can think of I've ever
Speaker 1: witnessed a frog inflicting is pooping on you, which they
Speaker 1: do quite a lot. Yeah, I guess that's just it's
Speaker 1: more of like a chemical base attack though, right there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, generally the frogs defenses are running away or
Speaker 1: being grows uh, or or of course having actual toxins.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like actually causing a physically painful bite, yeah,
Speaker 1: this may be the only only example. So what they
Speaker 1: do is they catch the frogs they you know, they
Speaker 1: corral them, and when it comes time to cook them.
Speaker 1: They clean them, they gut them. They removed the viscera
Speaker 1: as well as the tongue, which is especially frowned upon,
Speaker 1: the upper jaw, and the palate, all of which is
Speaker 1: considered inedible. The fat is either left in or it's
Speaker 1: removed to cook separately, depending on the specific culinary tradition.
Speaker 1: Then the frogs are boiled in the similar you might
Speaker 1: boil other meats such as fish uh, though they sometimes
Speaker 1: throw in medicinal plants, and it's thought that this decreases
Speaker 1: the chances of osh queta keta, which I've also seen
Speaker 1: written as osce uh catacatta. And this is what happens
Speaker 1: to you, This is what can happen to your body
Speaker 1: if you eat the frogs too early. So it was
Speaker 1: also it's also worth knowing there was a long stand
Speaker 1: tradition not to spice the frogs or to fry them,
Speaker 1: because it would make them look unappealing. They seem to
Speaker 1: prefer the frogs to look as much like a frog
Speaker 1: as possible, not sliced up, not spiced, and not fried.
Speaker 1: I found that interesting. Well, I think that is an
Speaker 1: interesting idea in uh in culinary traditions around the world.
Speaker 1: I mean you see that as a major division in
Speaker 1: the way American food is served today. There's sort of
Speaker 1: like the do you want to have the food completely
Speaker 1: d natured and appear as a product where you can't
Speaker 1: recognize the animal or the plant it came from, or
Speaker 1: do you want to sort of like see it as
Speaker 1: close to as it would look when it was alive
Speaker 1: as possible. Yeah, I think shrimp or a fine example
Speaker 1: of this. I was thinking about this the other night
Speaker 1: because I was out with my family and uh, we
Speaker 1: ordered a shrimp dish and the shrimp came out with
Speaker 1: their heads on and everything, which which it kind of
Speaker 1: has two different messages. Like if you don't want to
Speaker 1: think of the shrimp as an animal, then I can
Speaker 1: see where that could be unpleasant to gaze upon. But
Speaker 1: if you want to think of the shrimp as not
Speaker 1: only an animal, but a fresh animal that you're getting
Speaker 1: pretty you know, pretty early in the supply chain, then
Speaker 1: the head can be a way too to be sure
Speaker 1: of that. You know, if you feel more like this
Speaker 1: is fresh shrimp if it still has legs and a
Speaker 1: head and its shell, as opposed to just kind of
Speaker 1: like a a pink comma that you have that you've
Speaker 1: you bought on a massive platter at a grocery store.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I've said this on the show before,
Speaker 1: but I often think one of the appeals of breaded
Speaker 1: fried foods is not just the taste that it's you know,
Speaker 1: oily and crunchy and textually pleasing and all that, but that,
Speaker 1: especially to children, it sort of masks the nature of
Speaker 1: the animal that the food comes from. And so when
Speaker 1: you have breaded fried food products, it has it somehow
Speaker 1: tames what you're eating. Does that make sense? No? No,
Speaker 1: I agree. I've been through through a lot of this
Speaker 1: with my son because he he you know, pretty early on,
Speaker 1: decided that he did not want to eat meats unless
Speaker 1: they were like shrimp, oysters, crabs. He's essentially a pscytarian
Speaker 1: um and and he has absolutely no problem eating like
Speaker 1: he'll look at a live crab and talk about how
Speaker 1: much he wants to eat it, you know, but that
Speaker 1: that he has you know, thus thus far, you know,
Speaker 1: refused to eat you know, poultry, um, and certainly cows
Speaker 1: and pigs, and we you know try and we try
Speaker 1: and honor that as much as possible. Um. But in
Speaker 1: this particular case, I can't help, but suspect I couldn't
Speaker 1: find any sources that really spoke to this, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if they're their Their insistence on the frog looking
Speaker 1: like a frog has to do with avoiding the the
Speaker 1: sickness that can ensue if you eat it when it's
Speaker 1: too young. Yes, uh so, let me go get into ocean,
Speaker 1: get it. Get a little bit um. What comes of
Speaker 1: eating juvenile frogs or eating them too early in the season.
Speaker 1: The symptoms here are a lot like skistosomiasis, which is
Speaker 1: caused by a parasitic flat worm that's found in freshwater snails.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's yeah, not pleasant. The symptoms here are
Speaker 1: acute inflammation, pain while urinating bloody urine, and even temporary
Speaker 1: kidney failure. Yike. So why why does the why does
Speaker 1: the young frog like? What does the youngness of the
Speaker 1: frog have to do with this? This seems to be
Speaker 1: a question that we don't have a firm answer for yet,
Speaker 1: or at least I was not able to find it.
Speaker 1: If anyone else out there has a firm answer, I
Speaker 1: would love to hear it. But basically, everyone knows that
Speaker 1: there are certain steps you can take to avoid it.
Speaker 1: You don't harvest too early when the frogs are not
Speaker 1: mature enough. Specifically, you don't harvest visually immature frogs, frogs
Speaker 1: that haven't croaked yet uh, and or frogs before the
Speaker 1: third rainfall. And there's also this added step of cooking
Speaker 1: them with medicinal ingredients, cooking them with medis in the woods, uh,
Speaker 1: specifically to help mitigate the effects. Is it known if
Speaker 1: that's actually effective. It doesn't seem to be known. Likewise,
Speaker 1: so when when people uh end up growing sick with
Speaker 1: the ocean kata kata, they'll seek medical intervention. And it's
Speaker 1: also ensured whether this really helps or it's just something
Speaker 1: that kind of has to go away on its own. Uh.
Speaker 1: So again, there's not a lot of information out there
Speaker 1: in the particulars here, but there are a few theories
Speaker 1: as to what's going on. When you look for answers
Speaker 1: on this for starters, you'll find a number of kind
Speaker 1: of just article list articles out there. They just say that, okay,
Speaker 1: it's it's a poison. Uh there's some sort of poison
Speaker 1: in the frog. Um. I'm not sure if I'm is
Speaker 1: convinced about that, because clearly it's it's it's only a
Speaker 1: problem with the immature frogs. Right, I've seen it speculated
Speaker 1: that it might be a bacterial infection caused by the
Speaker 1: younger frogs. Uh. But I also keep coming back to
Speaker 1: this idea that it's some sort of a parasite like
Speaker 1: seems to be the area where the symptoms line up
Speaker 1: um closely. I've also read a paper that said that
Speaker 1: cases of international travelers becoming sick after consuming raw fish
Speaker 1: or quote unusual meats such as bull frog meat, that
Speaker 1: they would likely result in a diagnosis of nathosomiasis. This
Speaker 1: is an infection caused by a nematode. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like a decent like broad clinical analysis,
Speaker 1: but I looked at the symptoms. The symptoms don't really
Speaker 1: line up there. Uh, it doesn't the whole you know,
Speaker 1: painful urination, bloody urine, and uh, contemporary kidney failure. So
Speaker 1: the jury seems to remain out on what exactly causes
Speaker 1: the illness. But to me, this sounds like another one
Speaker 1: of these cases where if you eat the food prepared
Speaker 1: the right way, the way you know, the local people
Speaker 1: who developed this cuisine know how to prepare it, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna be all right. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like I didn't find any articles that were saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is really a danger, this
Speaker 1: is a public health risk, which is also why you're
Speaker 1: not seeing a lot of studies into it. It's not
Speaker 1: like someone's in the field saying, we have to we
Speaker 1: have to help, you know, we we've got to solve
Speaker 1: this problem, because no, like local culinary traditions already have
Speaker 1: the problem solved. If you if you just know which
Speaker 1: frogs to eat and which ones not to eat, and
Speaker 1: or how to properly prepare them. But I think I
Speaker 1: wonder about the whole again, about the whole. Don't fry them,
Speaker 1: don't chop them up. That might be because if you
Speaker 1: were buying them from a food seller, which apparently, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, these are prepared in the home, but also
Speaker 1: sometimes they are sold. It does make sense that you
Speaker 1: might want to be able to look at the frog
Speaker 1: you're about to eat and know for certain that it
Speaker 1: was not an immature specimen. If that's going to make
Speaker 1: a difference in your health, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm going to take us back to the
Speaker 1: plant world. Robert, Okay, Yeah, we've had enough meat here
Speaker 1: for the time being, or if you want more meat,
Speaker 1: you could just say, maybe it's time for the chili course. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So time to look at a case study in the
Speaker 1: British Medical Journal from n teen eighty by Normandy Noah
Speaker 1: at All that reviews some curious cases of food poisoning
Speaker 1: with a with a common factor between them. So the
Speaker 1: first case study mentioned in this report sounds like about
Speaker 1: as bleak an evening as you could ask for. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, you got seventeen schoolboys, all about seventeen
Speaker 1: years old, on holiday, chaper owned by three of their teachers,
Speaker 1: staying in a hostel. It gets bleaker. They come back
Speaker 1: for dinner one night and they're supposed to have some
Speaker 1: roast chicken. But the chicken was quote found to be
Speaker 1: unfit to eat. And that's all it says. I love
Speaker 1: the gaps in these case reports you could just leave
Speaker 1: up to the imagination. Was it unfit to eat because
Speaker 1: it smelled like a dumpster? Was it unfit to eat
Speaker 1: because it was cooked to leather? Yea? How how far
Speaker 1: into the meal did they get before this was the pronouncement? Right?
Speaker 1: So anyway, chickens unfit to eat? So instead they threw
Speaker 1: together an alternative supper made for um the following ingredients.
Speaker 1: They had a salad, They had hard boiled eggs, cooked potatoes,
Speaker 1: and raw red kidney beans that have been soaking in
Speaker 1: a saucepan since the night before. Okay, sounds pretty good. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm instantly suspicious of that last dish. I'm curious, Robert,
Speaker 1: when you make beans in your house, I assume you
Speaker 1: make beans. Oh yeah, yeah, we we do. We do
Speaker 1: bean dishes from time to time. Yeah. Do you generally
Speaker 1: do you just like go to a can, open a can,
Speaker 1: or do you soak them from dried and cook them
Speaker 1: from them? We we've done both. I guess we tend
Speaker 1: to do. We tend to do the can thing more often.
Speaker 1: But like in the past, people have gifted us, like
Speaker 1: some really nice what is it rancho gordo beans? Dried
Speaker 1: beans you have to go through the whole rigmarole of
Speaker 1: soaking them and so forth. You. I never did dried
Speaker 1: beans for a long time. Always whenever I was making beans,
Speaker 1: just used can beans. But hey, cooks out there at home.
Speaker 1: If you're the same way, if you if you haven't
Speaker 1: tried rind beans, I think they're way better. I would agree,
Speaker 1: And I would say that it's always a you can
Speaker 1: tell a lot by particularly like a Mexican restaurant. I
Speaker 1: feel when you taste their their beans, just like the
Speaker 1: black beans and the refried beans, like you can you
Speaker 1: can taste the difference. Uh, if they're giving this much
Speaker 1: attention to the bean dish, then it probably botes well
Speaker 1: for the rest of the menu. Yeah. And and good
Speaker 1: beans are good stuff. I think they often get thought
Speaker 1: of as like part of you know, something to sort
Speaker 1: of fill part of the plate. But but good beans
Speaker 1: are really good and if you if you give them
Speaker 1: the right kind of care, you soak them, you cook
Speaker 1: them long enough, and they become nice and tender. You know,
Speaker 1: cooking from dried beans is the way to go. But
Speaker 1: back to the case studies, so they did not follow
Speaker 1: these instructions. They did go from dried beans, but they
Speaker 1: didn't cook them. They just used these soaked uncooked beans.
Speaker 1: The case study says these soaked uncooked beans were quote
Speaker 1: not popular. Only nine of the seventeen boys ate a
Speaker 1: significant quantity of them. About an hour to an hour
Speaker 1: and a half after eating. Interstage left, the evil gods
Speaker 1: of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Nine of the boys got sick,
Speaker 1: two had to be admitted to the hospital, and one
Speaker 1: had to be given an IVY infusion while in the hospital.
Speaker 1: Fortunately none of them died. They all recovered, and the
Speaker 1: doctors studying what caused the outbreak were unable to find
Speaker 1: evidence of microbial pathogens like E. Coli or salmonella that
Speaker 1: you'd normally see if that was the cause. Uh, And
Speaker 1: they weren't able to find evidence of any chemical contaminants
Speaker 1: to explain what made the boys sick. And after you
Speaker 1: combine this case with other observations, it starts to become
Speaker 1: clear that something about undercooked kidney beans itself was the problem,
Speaker 1: because other patients had been documented with similar histories. Eating raw,
Speaker 1: soaked or lightly cooked red kidney beans has this history
Speaker 1: of bringing forth the nausea, the vomiting, the copious diarrhea.
Speaker 1: So what's going on there? Well, the kidney bean is
Speaker 1: a variety of the common being Phaseolus vulgaris. It's the
Speaker 1: same species as pinto beans, navy beans, and so forth,
Speaker 1: just a different strain produced by the genetic engineering of agriculture. Well,
Speaker 1: the uncooked beans, the authors found include toxins such as
Speaker 1: quote hema glutenins, trips and inhibitors, a goiter, erogen, and
Speaker 1: cyanogenic glycosides. And they're right, quote that the hema gluten
Speaker 1: ins where the cause of the vomiting and the diarrhea
Speaker 1: appears likely. So hema glutenin is a lectin. Electin is
Speaker 1: a type of protein that binds to sugar molecules, and
Speaker 1: you'll find them in beans. What effect does it have
Speaker 1: on the body, Well, it's it's sort of there in
Speaker 1: the name, right, hema gluten in. It causes red blood cells,
Speaker 1: the hematic cells to a glutinate to clump together, and
Speaker 1: it's so it clumps to the red blood cells. Kind
Speaker 1: of gross. Other substances also have hemaglutenin properties. For example,
Speaker 1: one reason the influence of virus can be so effective
Speaker 1: is that it has these proteins that work is hemogluten
Speaker 1: ins in the blood. And the authors of the study
Speaker 1: note that in cases when raw red and white kidney
Speaker 1: beans have been fed to rats as eight percent of
Speaker 1: their diet by mass, the rats tended to die within
Speaker 1: three days. But when the hemagluten ins from red kidney
Speaker 1: means were isolated and fed to the rats, the rats
Speaker 1: also lost weight and died. So even if you just
Speaker 1: took the hemagluten ins out and gave that to the rats,
Speaker 1: that seemed to have the same effect. And the authors
Speaker 1: also note that the extreme toxin ric in, which is
Speaker 1: found in castor beans, and we've talked about before that
Speaker 1: that is also a hemagluten in. So the active toxins
Speaker 1: and raw red kidney beans appear to be destroyed pretty
Speaker 1: easily by sufficient heat heating. Just boil the beans, which
Speaker 1: would seem you know, reather straightforward like cook your beans,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, And other studies have confirmed the role of
Speaker 1: raw undercook kidney beans and food poisoning outbreaks. Um, the
Speaker 1: bottom line is, if you boil your beans for a while,
Speaker 1: they'll be fine. Obviously you don't want to eat them raw.
Speaker 1: But here's actually the real danger, the thing that might
Speaker 1: get you if you're not some kind of weird person
Speaker 1: who wants to eat raw red kidney beans, low temperature
Speaker 1: cooking could be a danger. So if, for example, you
Speaker 1: put your beans in the slow cooker and you put
Speaker 1: it on the low setting and you give them a
Speaker 1: couple hours, it's possible that they will never reach the
Speaker 1: internal temperature required to destroy the toxic lectins that could
Speaker 1: make you six. So cook them thoroughly, cook them to
Speaker 1: the boiling point high temperature. And uh and of course,
Speaker 1: if you're using canned beans, those are already boiled, so
Speaker 1: they'll be fine. But if you want to treat yourself
Speaker 1: to the delights of of well cooked beans from the
Speaker 1: dried state, boil them well. With with increased taste comes
Speaker 1: increased responsibility. Right. Yeah, I was actually invited to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an amateur chili cookoff recently, and now I've
Speaker 1: now I'm hesitating, But at the same time, I'm like
Speaker 1: most of the people participating, they're probably gonna use canned beans, right,
Speaker 1: or if they're gonna use dry beans, then they're gonna
Speaker 1: know what's up. They're gonna know how to approach the dish. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd say surely they'll they'll boil them that
Speaker 1: I would be shocked if somebody makes a chili and
Speaker 1: like ads ads soaked beans right before serving it without
Speaker 1: boiling them or something. That would be a really last
Speaker 1: minute you know, they just that they didn't have time
Speaker 1: to actually kick it. Yeah, alright, So we we've had
Speaker 1: we've had three dishes. So far, We've had our liquorice,
Speaker 1: We've we've had our bullfrog, we've had our beans. Nobody
Speaker 1: has died jet or at least we haven't specifically reference
Speaker 1: to study that included a fatality. No. I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of the foods that will kill you we
Speaker 1: already knocked out in previous dangerous foods episodes. I mean,
Speaker 1: most of the time, if something will kill you reliably
Speaker 1: enough for people to write about it, it's not a
Speaker 1: common food, right, Yeah, And there's not like a very
Speaker 1: common and accepted way to avoid Uh, that's sort of
Speaker 1: that sort of death. So mainly I guess we're talking
Speaker 1: about stuff that will make you sick. But hey, what
Speaker 1: about stuff that will make you see into the future. Oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds good. Let's take one more commercial break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will have some hallucinogenic fish
Speaker 1: than Alright, we're back, Robert. Do you want to talk
Speaker 1: about fish madness? Sure, it sounds delightful. I want to
Speaker 1: look at a couple of case studies from a two
Speaker 1: thousand six paper in the Journal Clinical Toxicology by Luke
Speaker 1: to Harrow and Philip Palmier, And here are the cases.
Speaker 1: So In April nineteen, a healthy forty year old man
Speaker 1: was on vacation in the French Riviera in con and
Speaker 1: one night, after eating a dinner of delicious baked sea bream.
Speaker 1: Actually I can't comment on how delicious it was. I
Speaker 1: assume it was delicious. Yeah, I mean, considering where he's
Speaker 1: eating it, right, it must be a very classy dish. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so baked seabream. He starts to feel weak and then nauseated,
Speaker 1: and he starts to vomit during the night. And the
Speaker 1: next day he tries to drive himself home, you know,
Speaker 1: getting back home from the vacation, but he encountered a problem.
Speaker 1: On the way home. His car was surrounded by quote
Speaker 1: giant Arthur pods. Oh my, so this is not just
Speaker 1: mild hallucination here where everything's a little wavy, like he's
Speaker 1: seeing giant insects. No, he's not seeing like tracers and
Speaker 1: you know, like light auras around things. No, he's seeing
Speaker 1: giant Arthur pods surrounding his vehicle, full naked line. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so of course these giant Arthur pods were preventing
Speaker 1: him from driving home, and he went on to experience
Speaker 1: terrifying hallucinations involving quote aggressive and screaming animals, agitated and confused,
Speaker 1: he somehow arrived at a hospital emergency room, and once there,
Speaker 1: though he was in the state of stress and excitation,
Speaker 1: he really didn't show any physical abnormalities. They couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything wrong with his body other than the fact that
Speaker 1: he was freaking out and stressed out and distressed. So
Speaker 1: the hospital kept him for a couple of days and
Speaker 1: after about thirty six hours his hallucinations had disappeared. Another
Speaker 1: case March two thousand two, and to really healthy otherwise,
Speaker 1: ninety year old man bought some sea bream from a
Speaker 1: local fisherman at a place called santra Pez, again in
Speaker 1: the French Riviera. He took it home, he cleaned it,
Speaker 1: he prepared it, and he ate it. About two hours
Speaker 1: after his meal, he started hearing strange noises. He heard
Speaker 1: humans screaming all around him, and he heard the sound
Speaker 1: of shrieking birds. And he experienced these hallucinations and had
Speaker 1: terrible nightmares for about two or three days and then
Speaker 1: it all went away. Now, initially he didn't report the
Speaker 1: symptoms because he was afraid it was the onset of
Speaker 1: a permanent mental illness. And side note, if you're experiencing
Speaker 1: unexpected hallucinations, whatever you think the cause might be, it
Speaker 1: is better to tell somebody and try to get help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't just say I guess that had some weird
Speaker 1: fish right now, because that's that's exactly what Ebenezer Scrooge
Speaker 1: would do, right, just blaming on the potato that you
Speaker 1: could be a bit of cheese. Yeah. But anyway, after
Speaker 1: all this was over, he remembered hearing from someone at
Speaker 1: the fish market that the sea bream, the fish he
Speaker 1: had eaten, had been owned to cause hallucinations in the past,
Speaker 1: and on that basis he called poison control in Marseille.
Speaker 1: So in both cases, the fish the men had eaten
Speaker 1: was this species of sea bream called Sarpa salpa, also
Speaker 1: known as the Salima porgy or the goldline. And I
Speaker 1: think this is because it has these little yellow gold stripes.
Speaker 1: Nothing to do with that company that hawks gold on TV.
Speaker 1: The authors of this paper note that these are not
Speaker 1: the only cases of hallucinogenic fish poisoning known uh and
Speaker 1: the by the way, the scientific term for hallucinogenic fish
Speaker 1: poisoning I hope I do this right is Ichthyolino tox
Speaker 1: is um, and it's widespread throughout tropical regions of the
Speaker 1: Indian and Pacific Ocean, sometimes in the Mediterranean. Widespread but
Speaker 1: not necessarily common, so you see it all over the place,
Speaker 1: but it does appear to be rare. It's not something
Speaker 1: like if you go to the tropics you can just
Speaker 1: expect to get fish madness um. Other fish implicated in
Speaker 1: similar hallucinogenic poisonings would include things like the cea chub,
Speaker 1: the common mullet, the convicts urgin fish, and the coral grouper.
Speaker 1: The convict surgeon fish does sound a little suspect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is pretty good. They've got a whole list. There
Speaker 1: are other ones too, mentioned in the paper. Those were
Speaker 1: I thought the best names. Uh So here are the
Speaker 1: common symptoms you get with theo Alino toxic is um.
Speaker 1: Within the first few minutes to two hours after eating
Speaker 1: the fish, patients usually report symptoms similar to drunkenness, like
Speaker 1: they've got a loss of balance and coordination and quote
Speaker 1: generalized malaise, discomfort, uh sometimes a sore throat, sometimes heartburn
Speaker 1: can occur at this phase, and then comes the second phase.
Speaker 1: This is usually a couple of hours after eating the fish,
Speaker 1: you get the central nervous system effects, and these would
Speaker 1: include delirium, visual and auditory hallucinations, usually reported as frightening
Speaker 1: and weirdly enough, the author's note this, they very often
Speaker 1: seem to involve animals. That's weird that there would be
Speaker 1: like specific content common to the hallucination. It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's like a a ghost that's been summoned to punish
Speaker 1: the carnivore. Yeah. Uh, terrifying nightmares, depression, the feeling that
Speaker 1: you're about to die, quote with reactive tachycardia and hyperventilation,
Speaker 1: so feelings that that death is coming make people have
Speaker 1: elevated heart rhythms and hyperventilation. And then quote transient behavioral disturbances. Uh,
Speaker 1: this sounds just kind of like odd, dangerous and erratic behavior.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the things you can treat.
Speaker 1: You can treat this with drugs like benzodiazepine or neuraleptics
Speaker 1: in order to prevent the patient from hurting themselves or others.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, this conjures into mind these bizarre
Speaker 1: scenario where it's like somebody's got the fish madness and
Speaker 1: it's like just leave him be son, he's got the
Speaker 1: fish madness. It's got to run its course, and we
Speaker 1: just tie him down and make sure he doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: hurt himself. But anyway, sometimes not always, there is gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal distress, nausea, abdom o pain, diarrhea, and at the
Speaker 1: time of this paper there was no known antidote. I
Speaker 1: looked for for recent research looking for an antidote, and
Speaker 1: I was unable to find one. So it looks like
Speaker 1: something that cannot be cured. You can just treat the
Speaker 1: symptoms and wait for it to go away on its own. Now,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that despite being widespread, the cases of poisoning
Speaker 1: of this kind are rare. Hallucinogenic fish poisoning occurs and
Speaker 1: only a fraction of the cases of consuming these fish,
Speaker 1: and toxicity seems to vary depending on a bunch of factors,
Speaker 1: like when the fish was caught, though there are some
Speaker 1: conflicting claims about like which season it is most dangerous,
Speaker 1: and especially how it's prepared. According to a popular anecdote,
Speaker 1: the risk of poisoning goes way up if you don't
Speaker 1: immediately gut the fish after capture, or if you cook
Speaker 1: and serve the head with the rest of the body. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we see similar practices as with the bullfrog, where
Speaker 1: like and it was with with As with a lot
Speaker 1: of animals that we eat, there are things you just
Speaker 1: need to get rid immediately in order to make it now.
Speaker 1: Unlike the red kidney beans, cooking does not seem to help.
Speaker 1: Bad fish trips have been reported not just when the
Speaker 1: fish is eaten raw, but when it's been boiled, steamed, fried.
Speaker 1: This is one where the denaturing process of breading and
Speaker 1: frying will not necessarily save you. Now, the good news
Speaker 1: is it generally does not appear to be fatal, but
Speaker 1: obviously could be dangerous if a dosed person can't get
Speaker 1: medical attention, or you're trying to drive your car through
Speaker 1: a herd of giant Arthur pods. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you have to wonder if you can trip on fish heads,
Speaker 1: is anybody doing it on purpose? The answer so I'm
Speaker 1: not sure about this. The authors of this two thousand
Speaker 1: six paper report that the answer is yes, that people
Speaker 1: have been reported to do it recreationally. Um. They say
Speaker 1: that Arabic speaking populations apparently called this fish the fish
Speaker 1: that makes dreams. Uh. They claim that it has been
Speaker 1: used recreationally as far back as the Roman Empire, though
Speaker 1: I could not find corroborating evidence of this. All references
Speaker 1: to this fact seem to just point back to the
Speaker 1: claim in this paper. Well, and then also I would
Speaker 1: wonder if it what if it has been used that long,
Speaker 1: I mean recreationally or you could say shamanistically, right, because
Speaker 1: that seems to be the pattern we take. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: probably people that that turned to one another and say, hey,
Speaker 1: eat this fish. Who it happens, But it also seems
Speaker 1: likely that someone would say, hey, uh, something magical happens
Speaker 1: when you eat this fish. Let's talk about it. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So I don't doubt at all that it's possible this
Speaker 1: is the case, but I do I am kind of
Speaker 1: suspicious just because I can't find independent verification of evidence
Speaker 1: of this. So I wonder I'm not sure about that
Speaker 1: fact um. But they also claimed that it's been used
Speaker 1: recreationally more recently in Polynesia, and that another hallucinogenic fish,
Speaker 1: the sir mullet or malloid o dick. This samue insis
Speaker 1: is traditionally known among some of the people's of the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian Islands as quote the chief of ghosts now here's
Speaker 1: the question what causes the poisoning. It's hard to know
Speaker 1: for sure. The author's note that one complicating factor is
Speaker 1: that some cases of Theolino toxy um seem to be
Speaker 1: confused with a totally different kind of fish poisoning called sigatara,
Speaker 1: And this is a condition that happens when you eat
Speaker 1: some tropical reef fish that have been contaminated with the
Speaker 1: species of microalgae, a dinoflagellate called gambier Discus toxicus. And
Speaker 1: people with cigara experienced nausea, vomiting, and neurologic disturbances, so
Speaker 1: sounds kind of similar, but not disturbances to the central
Speaker 1: nervous system as with the hallucinogenic fish, and not the
Speaker 1: brain so much as the peripheral nervous system, for example,
Speaker 1: tingling of the fingers and toes, or illogical touch sensations
Speaker 1: like people say that the feelings of hot and cold
Speaker 1: are reversed for them um. So cigatara could be viewed
Speaker 1: as more serious than nick theo Alino tox is um,
Speaker 1: since some patients actually die from sigtara, and if they survive,
Speaker 1: symptoms can last for months or even years. But one
Speaker 1: similarity between hallucinogenic fish poisoning and sigtara is that scientists
Speaker 1: have speculated that the toxins that cause the hallucinations may
Speaker 1: also come from algae consumed by the fish, which contaminates
Speaker 1: the fish's meat with these psychoactive compounds. Just to mention,
Speaker 1: one study by Khaled belasued at All from two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve published in in Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology.
Speaker 1: They did some research on prepared extracts from Sarpa salpa,
Speaker 1: the sea bream, and they took extracts from the liver,
Speaker 1: the brain, and the muscle. And what they found was
Speaker 1: that the liver extract in particular was cytotoxic, meaning toxic
Speaker 1: two cells to human cells. And the source of this
Speaker 1: was they believed that in their research they showed that
Speaker 1: the toxic effects were traceable too elements in the fish's diet,
Speaker 1: specifically quote toxic dinoflagellates which live in epiphyte on Potadenia
Speaker 1: oceanica leaves. Now, epiphyte means a plant that grows on
Speaker 1: another plant, right, So the Postadenia oceanica is a type
Speaker 1: of sea grass that lives in the Mediterranean so the
Speaker 1: fish graze on the sea grass, and the sea grass
Speaker 1: is a host for this little organism which produces the toxins.
Speaker 1: The toxins accumulate in the liver of the fish, and
Speaker 1: the liver can poison a human who eats it. All right,
Speaker 1: I have one final selection here. It is It is
Speaker 1: another meat. It's a rather unique meat. And I will
Speaker 1: warn everyone that that that people will die on this one,
Speaker 1: but probably not that many people. So the dish in
Speaker 1: question is san naxi, which is a Korean delicacy, uh.
Speaker 1: And the chef prepares it by slicing the tentacles off
Speaker 1: of a small live octopus lives live octopus, yes, And
Speaker 1: then these tentacles are are seasoned. They're tossed in sesame
Speaker 1: oil and served with various sauces, you know, generally like
Speaker 1: a chili sauce or something. And then the dish is
Speaker 1: brought to the table while it's everything is still moving
Speaker 1: and writhing around. It's a love crafty and feast. It's
Speaker 1: a it's chewy, but it's also crawley as the tentacles
Speaker 1: continue to move around on the plate with their little
Speaker 1: suction cups. So it has to say the least, it
Speaker 1: has a unique texture, invite and it invites extreme opinions. Wait,
Speaker 1: this makes me think, is this a thing to be
Speaker 1: to be chewed like or a thing to just be
Speaker 1: sort of shot like an oyster? Maybe do not shoot
Speaker 1: like an oyster? Is the is the take on that
Speaker 1: I that I got from from reading about it? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to chew this up. Now I mentioned
Speaker 1: the extreme opinions. This is one of those dishes where
Speaker 1: if you're hearing this, you might be saying, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: give that a shot. That sounds like it's like sushi
Speaker 1: that moves. Other people might say, well that that that
Speaker 1: sounds absolutely disgusting, and it does seem to They do
Speaker 1: seem to target restaurants, deuced team to target tourists for
Speaker 1: this very reason, like people who want something exciting and
Speaker 1: I'm in exotic, right, it's something I imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of people take pictures of them elves eating right. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is because his reputation it said
Speaker 1: that if you that it is a dish that can
Speaker 1: potentially choke you. Uh. And and there is some reason
Speaker 1: reasoning behind this. Uh. The most important thing is that
Speaker 1: if you do have it have this dish, you need
Speaker 1: to chew it up, because the idea here is that
Speaker 1: if you don't chew it up enough, the suction cups
Speaker 1: on the tentacles will remain intact enough to stick to
Speaker 1: the roof of your mouth or the inside of your throat,
Speaker 1: potentially choking you. So I'm reminded of, you know, from
Speaker 1: Hell's heart. I stab at the You know you've captured me,
Speaker 1: you've killed me, You've served me. But maybe I get
Speaker 1: this one last chance to choke you. I mentioned the
Speaker 1: sesame oil. I've also read that the sesame oil helps
Speaker 1: prevent the suckers from attaching as you eat it. But again,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to chew this up. Writer Matt Gross
Speaker 1: discussed the dish in his two thousand eight New York
Speaker 1: Times article A Quest into the Gustatory Heart of Soul,
Speaker 1: and he shared the following. The most surprising thing about
Speaker 1: sun Nacci it tasted good, clean, and meaty. Once I'd
Speaker 1: gotten over the discombobulation that comes from eating something that
Speaker 1: most definitely does not want to be eaten, I was
Speaker 1: chop sticking tentacles into my mouth as if they were octopopcorn.
Speaker 1: Octopopcorn and uh Interestingly enough, I found a news article
Speaker 1: from two thousand twelve in which a man was accused
Speaker 1: of murdering his girlfriend, and he claimed that he didn't
Speaker 1: kill her, but she simply choked to death on an
Speaker 1: order of sun nachi in their hotel room, So take
Speaker 1: that for what it's worth. I couldn't find any coverage
Speaker 1: that followed up on that to see who was actually
Speaker 1: telling the truth there. But again, this is a dish
Speaker 1: that elects strong opinions. Now, I myself, I've chosen to
Speaker 1: abstain from eating octopus, so the idea isn't super appealing
Speaker 1: to me, But I do love sushi and Korean food,
Speaker 1: so I can imagine how one might enjoy it. Now. Octopier,
Speaker 1: of course amazing organisms, and they boast a number of
Speaker 1: different defenses against predators. They have camouflage, ink, threatening displays,
Speaker 1: high speed jet propulsion, escape, and venom. But it would
Speaker 1: seem that in some cases, you know, their their final
Speaker 1: defense is their choke a bill. Now, I wonder would
Speaker 1: that be an actual adaptation. I guess it possibly could be,
Speaker 1: like in the same way that a uh an animal
Speaker 1: could have toxins that would be poisonous. Basically, to discourage
Speaker 1: other animals from eating it. You could have some kind
Speaker 1: of mechanical action of your flesh that punishes an animal
Speaker 1: that eats you and discourages predation. Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there there are adaptations that discourage, you know, being eaten. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I guess it. It's hard to really nail down the
Speaker 1: octopus on this right, because it has so many other
Speaker 1: robust defensive mechanisms. Uh, But we do have examples that
Speaker 1: have come to light where let's say, a dolphin has
Speaker 1: attempted to eat an octopus and it has choked on it.
Speaker 1: But of course that can be said of a lot
Speaker 1: of different foods. I mean a lot of human foods
Speaker 1: are you know, you if it goes down wrong, you
Speaker 1: can choke, and if you choke, you can die. However,
Speaker 1: there is one example of an animal that does seem
Speaker 1: to have a choking the predator adaptation, and that is
Speaker 1: of course the hagfish, which, if you've ever seen footage
Speaker 1: of these, these things are amazing, this kind of faceless,
Speaker 1: joyless um slug fish creature, and when threatened, they squeeze
Speaker 1: out this gill choking slime, just this thick viscus, uh
Speaker 1: lube like material and uh and and this appears to
Speaker 1: be one of its adaptations is that if something tries
Speaker 1: to eat it, they're just gonna get a mouthful and
Speaker 1: perhaps gills full of slime that could choke them out.
Speaker 1: Defend yourself by being disgusting. Yeah, the hag fish has it,
Speaker 1: has it down to a fine science. Now, speaking of choking.
Speaker 1: In previous episodes, we've discussed, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: times how Western culture is given to panic about poisoning
Speaker 1: and danger from unfamiliar foods from other cuisines, but that
Speaker 1: when you look up, the number is actually the most harmful.
Speaker 1: Food poisoning outbreaks in the United States tend to come
Speaker 1: from things that are considered to be very ordinary American products,
Speaker 1: not exotic foods. Uh. One of the big ones is
Speaker 1: let us another leafy greens and a bag, but also meats, cheeses,
Speaker 1: prepared packaged foods like peanut butter. And it turns out
Speaker 1: the same principle holds true not just for food poisoning
Speaker 1: by pathogens and contaminants, but for choking risk. A study
Speaker 1: in reviewed the foods that most children choked on between
Speaker 1: two thousand one and two thousand nine, and the primary
Speaker 1: culprit was, of course, not octopus. Uh, not any kind
Speaker 1: of ethnic cuisine from anywhere in the world. It was
Speaker 1: hard candy. Yeah, that would make sense because you know,
Speaker 1: there are other highly chokable foods, such as say, grapes,
Speaker 1: where with the young kids, you're always being reminded, will
Speaker 1: make sure you slice those grapes in half, you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can do that with grapes. Hard candy is that's
Speaker 1: a taller order. Yeah. So in this period from two
Speaker 1: thousand one to two thousand nine, more than sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: children showed up in e ers choking on hard candy.
Speaker 1: That means that's about fifteen percent of all child emergency
Speaker 1: room visits due to choking were caused by hard candy. So,
Speaker 1: other than the fact that they're disgusting, this is another
Speaker 1: good reason nobody should ever buy Jolly Rancher. Yeah, pick
Speaker 1: up the nice, stuable black twizzlers instead, Far better for you, Right,
Speaker 1: I don't even know those might not even be made
Speaker 1: with the real liquorice extract. Yeah, I'm not sure. Well,
Speaker 1: but you had that that one study where they specifically
Speaker 1: said that was several years back. That's true, so the
Speaker 1: recipe may have changed. Yeah, I don't know. More research
Speaker 1: is required, don't don't, don't take our word for it
Speaker 1: on the the actual liquorice content. If you're Candy Well, Robert,
Speaker 1: I hope you feel satisfied by this feast today. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this was a dangerous feast we made.
Speaker 1: We made it through. We learned a little bit about
Speaker 1: other cultures and other culinary traditions, and yeah, and hopefully
Speaker 1: we learned a little bit of about ourselves. You know,
Speaker 1: by by focusing in on, you know, seemingly exotic food
Speaker 1: that can choke, you were forced to realize, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: most of our food can choke us. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be writhing and around and of suction cups on
Speaker 1: it to pose a potential danger. Yeah all right, Well, hey,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from anyone out there who has
Speaker 1: tried these various dishes. Have you had the African bullfrog?
Speaker 1: Have have you had uh, writhing tentacles in a in
Speaker 1: a soul restaurant? Have you had hallucinogenic fish poisoning? I
Speaker 1: guess we'll probably hear from a lot of people if
Speaker 1: we ask if you've had red kidney beans. But but
Speaker 1: but please out there, cook those beans. Yes, have you
Speaker 1: had these things? And then have you suffered any of
Speaker 1: the symptoms that we've discussed? And hey, we're it's open
Speaker 1: season for comments on black liquor issue. What do you
Speaker 1: love it? Do you hate it? Do you have weird
Speaker 1: feelings about it? Let us know. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: polarizing snack in the new respects. Hey, get in touch
Speaker 1: with us all the normal ways. Heading over to stuff
Speaker 1: Doable your mind dot com. That's where we'll find all
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes and videos and blog post links out
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Speaker 1: and Instagram, and on Facebook, be sure to check out
Speaker 1: our discussion module. That's a group where you can you
Speaker 1: can join up and chat with other listeners. And if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with this directly, as always,
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how
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