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. And
Speaker 1: it's the holidays. We know what we do during the holidays,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States of A. You
Speaker 1: put a lot of stuff in your body that maybe
Speaker 1: shouldn't be there. That's right, you you eat. You have
Speaker 1: these various feasts that are all about getting through the
Speaker 1: winter ahead, getting through the cold, dark winter and surviving
Speaker 1: to the spring. It's a it's a it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a riot as old as human history and we're
Speaker 1: still doing it. Yeah, even with with nasty, weird contraptions
Speaker 1: like candy canes. Yes, I have a question, a question.
Speaker 1: Does anybody really like candy canes? Um? I'm sure my
Speaker 1: son would like them if if we we'd see him
Speaker 1: away from it, Like you got a candy cane at
Speaker 1: some event recently and brought it home and we kind
Speaker 1: of convinced him, actually, this is a candy that is
Speaker 1: best served hanging on the tree. This is more of
Speaker 1: a this is more of a decoration. Really, that's a candy.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to lie to him to discourage
Speaker 1: him about you just be like, this will cut your
Speaker 1: tongue and it's gonna you're gonna be sad you ate it.
Speaker 1: Your mouth will feel weird and you'll have injuries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the hyper marketing of many modern candies
Speaker 1: because we we we limit the amount of candy that
Speaker 1: my son uh eats, and that means we like at Halloween,
Speaker 1: he was he had access to all these candies, but
Speaker 1: then he traded them into the switch, which and got
Speaker 1: a toy in exchange. But there were some candies were
Speaker 1: just so well marketed he was convinced they were his favorite,
Speaker 1: Like Ike and Mike for some reason. Pike and Mike, yeah,
Speaker 1: market they have marketing. Well, I mean they have the
Speaker 1: no wait, it's Mike and Ike, Mike and I Mike first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that those guys that well,
Speaker 1: forget which one comes first. But the package is like
Speaker 1: bright green, and they're these colors and he's instantly connecting
Speaker 1: with it and he's saying, oh, this one, this one's good.
Speaker 1: Look those are fruits on there. It's bright, it's it's potent.
Speaker 1: I want to eat that. That's my favorite candy he's
Speaker 1: actually had it. Huh Well, okay, So today's episode is
Speaker 1: going to be a sequel to our last episode about
Speaker 1: dangerous Foods that aired last year, and uh so today
Speaker 1: is Dangerous Foods to the Revenge, No, the second course,
Speaker 1: the return of the food. There is never a good thing, yes,
Speaker 1: a dish best served cold, and there is gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of wonderful, dangerous, poisonous weirdness out there to
Speaker 1: talk about. But we do want to say at the
Speaker 1: beginning that at least I feel deeply Robert, I hope
Speaker 1: you feel the same way that being alarmist is very
Speaker 1: much against the stuff to blow your mind ethos. Right,
Speaker 1: So we are not going to tell you there is
Speaker 1: a silent killer lurking in your pantry, that that saved that.
Speaker 1: For those websites that demonize MSG and stuff we've already debunked,
Speaker 1: this episode is going to be about dangerous and poisonous
Speaker 1: misadventures involving rare foods, everyday foods. But no matter what
Speaker 1: case it is, it's not designed to scare you, but
Speaker 1: it should be a reminder that we live in a
Speaker 1: world of very complex and sometimes fragile biochemical interactions. And
Speaker 1: for those of us living in industrialized countries, I think
Speaker 1: sometimes our consumer mindset leads us to believe that our
Speaker 1: food should meet the industry quality controls standards you'd get
Speaker 1: in the dead products you buy at Walmart or Ikea.
Speaker 1: Maybe so if every version of the same product number
Speaker 1: table at Ikea really is the same, no matter which
Speaker 1: I Kea you go to anywhere in the world, shouldn't
Speaker 1: every baked potato be the same everywhere you go in
Speaker 1: the world. But it's not, is it. I mean foods,
Speaker 1: the foods we eat, our organisms or substances derived from organisms, plants, animals, fungi,
Speaker 1: and as as much as we might like our food
Speaker 1: products to be contained and tamed and dependable as the
Speaker 1: output of a furniture factory, as we all know, sometimes
Speaker 1: life uh finds a way. Yeah, I mean these are organisms. Now.
Speaker 1: In some cases, especially with various fruits and whatnot. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is the the organism's game for you to eat it.
Speaker 1: It wants you to eat it. But in many other cases,
Speaker 1: the organism does not want to be eaten and has
Speaker 1: certain biological systems in place to prevent it, to discourage it,
Speaker 1: to make it difficult for you to carry this uh,
Speaker 1: this this act of gluttony out and uh. And also
Speaker 1: any type of food that is produced, if it's you know,
Speaker 1: a grown part of a thing's body, or it comes
Speaker 1: out of the soil or a creature makes it, it
Speaker 1: is the It is the end of a production line,
Speaker 1: a production line that is not standardized exactly exactly. No,
Speaker 1: it depends on the region. It depends on the environment,
Speaker 1: the climate, the conditions, what materials are available for the
Speaker 1: organism to work with. So, yeah, biochemistry is a deep
Speaker 1: web of complex interactions, and the stuff we're getting is
Speaker 1: not fresh. It's the process. It's the end of a
Speaker 1: very process, and it's just very common around the world
Speaker 1: in various ways for something weird to happen somewhere along
Speaker 1: that process. All right, So what's what's first? First up?
Speaker 1: What's the first course here? Joe? Okay, Well, I want
Speaker 1: to tell you a story. Okay. So, in his work
Speaker 1: known as the Antibossis the ancient Greek historians, Xenophon tells
Speaker 1: a story from his time as a general in the
Speaker 1: Greek war against the Persians, and one of his accounts
Speaker 1: tells of a story that took place in four oh
Speaker 1: one BC. While while Xenophon and his troops are returning
Speaker 1: home from battle with a group. Xenophon has got about
Speaker 1: ten thousand Greek fighters with him, and they're traveling through
Speaker 1: a col Chiefs, which is a region along the coast
Speaker 1: of the Black Sea and what is now the country
Speaker 1: of Georgia. And Xenophon's troops come across a place that
Speaker 1: is swarming with thousands of bees. It just bees everywhere.
Speaker 1: And you might think, oh, that sounds horrible, but for
Speaker 1: a bunch of Greek soldiers, this is actually good news
Speaker 1: because they knew they're in for a treat, fresh honey
Speaker 1: from the hive. That's right. They weren't packing any candy
Speaker 1: canes or I can Mike uh and and Mike ull.
Speaker 1: It might have. Maybe it was reversed back then. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they get the Greeks, the ancient Greeks world.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Greek alphabet I come before M. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. At any rate, they probably weren't getting their
Speaker 1: their sweet tooth satisfied quite like they would they would
Speaker 1: wish it to be. You know, I comes before M,
Speaker 1: and our alphabet to the manufacturers of this candy. A
Speaker 1: little bit of brain problems here with me anyway. So
Speaker 1: so the Greek fighters, they've got honey delicious, right, But
Speaker 1: after eating the honey, the soldiers started to give off
Speaker 1: signs of a strange reaction, and so Xenophon writes that
Speaker 1: the soldiers began to go out of their heads, and
Speaker 1: they suffered from diarrhea and vomiting. Then the soldiers collapsed
Speaker 1: to the ground and wallowed about as if dead drunk,
Speaker 1: and in some cases they seem to have lost their minds. Uh.
Speaker 1: In others the men were like men on their deathbeds.
Speaker 1: Xenophon rights quote. So they lay there in great numbers,
Speaker 1: as though the army had suffered to defeat, and great
Speaker 1: despondency prevailed. On the next day, however, no one had died,
Speaker 1: and it approximately the same hour as they had eaten
Speaker 1: the honey. They began to come to their senses, and
Speaker 1: on the third or fourth day they got up as
Speaker 1: if from a drugging bad honey. So what happened? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had the local bees risen up against them. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: Xenophon's fighters had stumbled into a trove of the substance
Speaker 1: well known to inhabitants of the Black Seacoast, mad honey.
Speaker 1: This is what the ancients called it. Plenty called it
Speaker 1: uh oh, I forget to turn out. I think it's
Speaker 1: millymnomenon the honey that is a mad maker like that.
Speaker 1: And there are other ancient accounts of mad honey poisoning.
Speaker 1: So in sixty seven b c. The Roman military leader
Speaker 1: Pompy the Great is taking a Roman army near the
Speaker 1: southern shore the Black Sea again while chasing the Persian
Speaker 1: army of King Mithridates of Pontus and the Persians. They've
Speaker 1: got a group of allies apparently who know about the
Speaker 1: mad honey, and these allies set a trap for Pompey's army.
Speaker 1: They placed honey combs full of mad honey from the
Speaker 1: local bees into containers and left them along Pompey's path,
Speaker 1: knowing that some of the soldiers would not be able
Speaker 1: to resist a swede indulgence. And they were right the home.
Speaker 1: The Romans were basically Winnie the Pooh. They were Pooh bear,
Speaker 1: I've got to get the honey. Uh. So many Roman
Speaker 1: troops ate the honey. They became incredibly sick and disoriented,
Speaker 1: went out of their heads. While the Romans were wallering,
Speaker 1: wallowing around, you know, in a bit of a sugary stupor.
Speaker 1: The Persian army came back, killed him, led to a
Speaker 1: battle with very asymmetrical outcome. I've read that more than
Speaker 1: a thousand Roman soldiers were killed and very few Persians died,
Speaker 1: very asymmetrical outcome. It's a wonderful exactly. Yeah, a little
Speaker 1: bit of a call back there. Uh, that's I think
Speaker 1: the term would be a massacre. Actually that's the non massacre,
Speaker 1: sticky massacre. But there's an excellent article on Mad Honey.
Speaker 1: Actually I came across by none other than Adrian Mayor.
Speaker 1: If you remember from our episode on geo mythology. Adrian
Speaker 1: Mayor is the main scholar we talked about in that
Speaker 1: that episode, and she's known for the theory that various
Speaker 1: mythological beasts were inspired by ancient people's coming across the
Speaker 1: dinosaur fossils. So, for example, people in Central Asia may
Speaker 1: have found Triceratops remains in the Gobi Desert and this
Speaker 1: led to the creation of griffin myths. And so we
Speaker 1: talked about her in that episode. But she has this
Speaker 1: article in a nine edition of Archaeology magazine called mad Honey.
Speaker 1: It's a great read. You can look it up online.
Speaker 1: But she talks about also how in a d a
Speaker 1: ruler of the Kiev and russ called Olga of Kiev,
Speaker 1: who in general I looked her up. She seems like
Speaker 1: she she's pretty be a she's like bad, she's cool. Um,
Speaker 1: she used fer minted honey from the Black Sea region
Speaker 1: to poison a group of about five thousand of her
Speaker 1: enemies and then had them massacred. Wow. So there's a
Speaker 1: there's a long history of of military missteps or or
Speaker 1: outright uh poisonings and massacres with mad honey. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: with all these ancient accounts, I mean, you have to
Speaker 1: wonder to what extent we're we're getting the true story.
Speaker 1: But these are the accounts as presented by these ancient
Speaker 1: historians and authors. Because I can also see where this
Speaker 1: would be a narrative to invoke if you're on the
Speaker 1: losing side, right, you know, to say, well, yes, our
Speaker 1: troops were were massacred, and our troops were ambushed, but
Speaker 1: they were also poisoned by his local honey or or
Speaker 1: this not because I was right, but but we do
Speaker 1: know now that this is totally plausible because mad honey
Speaker 1: is absolutely a real thing, and mad honey the problem
Speaker 1: is not the bees themselves, but the flowers they pollinate.
Speaker 1: So in the Black Sea coastal region, bees often consume
Speaker 1: huge quantities of nectar from the flowers of the rhododendron plant,
Speaker 1: and rhododendrons produce a potentially deadly neurotoxin called grayanotoxin. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be referring to a paper published in Cardiovascular
Speaker 1: Toxicology by suz A. Jansen at All called Granotoxin Poisoning
Speaker 1: Mad Honey Disease and Beyond from two thousand twelve, And
Speaker 1: what they report is that grayanotoxin is also known as
Speaker 1: andromedo toxin, acetyal, andromedol and rhodotoxin, and it can be
Speaker 1: derived from the body parts of plants in the family
Speaker 1: eric Cassier, which includes rhododendron, pierists, Agarista and Calmia uh.
Speaker 1: And in reality, granno toxin is a family of related toxins.
Speaker 1: So there are a bunch of different grano toxins. We
Speaker 1: should probably speak about it in the plural. There are
Speaker 1: more than twenty five is a forms that have been
Speaker 1: derived from rhododendron. And here's the basic way it works
Speaker 1: in your body. So grannotoxins are poisonous because of their
Speaker 1: ability to bind to the group too receptor site in
Speaker 1: voltage gated sodium channels or v g s c s,
Speaker 1: and so I'll break that down basically, v gs c
Speaker 1: s are protein structures there a little structures within the
Speaker 1: body that span across membranes, and they facilitate the transfer
Speaker 1: of sodium ions which has charged particles of sodium. And
Speaker 1: so the transfer of these charged particles is important for
Speaker 1: communication between the bodies different tissues, allowing the passage of
Speaker 1: action potential in cells like neurons. If you introduce a
Speaker 1: toxin that binds too receptor sites in these sodium channels,
Speaker 1: you can essentially event effective communication between body tissues and
Speaker 1: disrupt the nervous system. Specifically, the researchers think that gray
Speaker 1: anna toxins work by preventing the inactivation of the sodium channel.
Speaker 1: To use a metaphor, it would be like leaving the
Speaker 1: light switch stuck in the on position. You can imagine
Speaker 1: how this would have negative systemic effects on the nerve
Speaker 1: cells and the body at large. But specifically, the authors
Speaker 1: think it probably leads to continuous uninterrupted stimulation of the
Speaker 1: vaguel nervous system, the vegas nerve, which of course is
Speaker 1: very important in the body. It interfaces between the brain
Speaker 1: uh the autonomic nervous system, and many muscles in the body,
Speaker 1: from the heart and the lungs to the voice production center.
Speaker 1: So this is bad stuff. You know, you don't want
Speaker 1: it in your body. It racks the nerves, right. But
Speaker 1: grayanatoxin contamination of honey occurs most often just in the
Speaker 1: Black Sea region of Turkey, especially from the plant's rhododendron
Speaker 1: Rhododendron ponticum and Rhododendron lutam. But rhododendron isn't the only
Speaker 1: plant to produce nectar containing grayannotoxin, which can filter down
Speaker 1: into the honey that the bees produced. Of course, honey
Speaker 1: containing grayannotoxin has also been found in North America, for
Speaker 1: example in North Carolina, where in the nineteen fifties a
Speaker 1: sample was found to contain about a hundred parts per
Speaker 1: million of granotoxin. And what did that come from? While
Speaker 1: the authors speculated was probably derived from bees that aint
Speaker 1: the nectar of the mountain laurel or Kalmia latifolia. So
Speaker 1: I know, if you're a honey fan, you're probably worrying like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: am I gonna get mad honey? Probably not, probably depending
Speaker 1: on where you are and how you get your honey.
Speaker 1: According to a Texas A and M University article citing
Speaker 1: anthropologist Vaughan Bryant, you can find honey in the United States,
Speaker 1: but not not so often so, Bryant says, quote, Normally
Speaker 1: there are not enough rhododendrons in one area for the
Speaker 1: bees to make concentrated mad honey. However, sometimes there a
Speaker 1: late cold snap in the Eastern US that kills a
Speaker 1: lot of flowers but doesn't seem to stun the rhododendrons.
Speaker 1: Thus they're the only thing blooming, and the bees will
Speaker 1: focus all their attention on those flowers and produce concentrated
Speaker 1: mad honey during that period. These flowers are mostly in
Speaker 1: the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern US. That also goes
Speaker 1: with something I've read about this type of poisoning being
Speaker 1: more common in the early spring, when I guess also
Speaker 1: some of these granotoxin producing flowers are they're more cold resistant,
Speaker 1: might might bloom earlier where other flowers aren't available. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so it would be the it would be these rare
Speaker 1: incidences where the poisonous flowers. Toxic flowers are the only
Speaker 1: source for the bees, yeah, because the bees don't love
Speaker 1: them the most. The bees would rather have another flower.
Speaker 1: But if all the other flowers are out of the
Speaker 1: game for some reason, they will go to the granotoxin
Speaker 1: plants and make their honey from that sweet, sweet nectar
Speaker 1: that people also some people have a taste for. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing too that this is going to be more
Speaker 1: of a situation with your certainly your wild honeys in
Speaker 1: these affected areas, and maybe maybe maybe with with some
Speaker 1: like extreme indie honey. I guess you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to get this from a mass produced honey because that
Speaker 1: that involves. I mean, number one, there's just quality control,
Speaker 1: so they tend to know what types of flowers the
Speaker 1: nectar is coming from. But then there is also massive
Speaker 1: mixing involved. So when you get mass produced honey, they're
Speaker 1: blending together huge batches of honey from different hives, and
Speaker 1: even if there were some containing toxin, it would probably
Speaker 1: be mixed and thus diluted way down to a level
Speaker 1: that's not a threat. Okay, So outside of the Black
Speaker 1: Sea region, you would have to you would have to
Speaker 1: really have a string of bad luck, I think to
Speaker 1: run across this stuff, right probably. I mean you could
Speaker 1: come across if somebody's like a wild honey collector, you know,
Speaker 1: or like you said, extreme indie honey. Uh, and there
Speaker 1: are they don't necessarily know what they're doing, or they
Speaker 1: have some bad luck with with what flowers there bees
Speaker 1: have access to and they don't realize it in time
Speaker 1: before they give it to somebody to eat. You could
Speaker 1: encounter mad honey in other parts of the world, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna definitely going to be most common in the
Speaker 1: Black Sea region, especially in Turkey. So if you eat
Speaker 1: some mad honey today, what's going to happen to you? Well?
Speaker 1: Clinical characteristics gonna list a few. This is also this
Speaker 1: is back to Jansen at all. So there's hypotension meaning
Speaker 1: low blood pressure, problems with cardiac rhythm, nausea and vomiting, sweating, dizziness,
Speaker 1: and quote impaired consciousness. It's kind of a euphemism, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also less often but still noted, fainting, blurred vision,
Speaker 1: diplopia or double visions, salivation, convulsions, atrial fibrillation, cardiac arrest,
Speaker 1: and myocardial infarction meaning a heart attack. All that really
Speaker 1: from a hit of bad honey. Yes, if you get
Speaker 1: enough of a concentrated dose you and eat, you eat
Speaker 1: enough of it, you can have symptoms like these. I
Speaker 1: would have liked to have seen a clinical list of
Speaker 1: symptoms that also included the various injuries that the Persian
Speaker 1: military have afflicted on you in ancient times. Side effects
Speaker 1: include massacre, yeah, dismemberment, etcetera. But here's one more thing.
Speaker 1: Not all known cases of mad honey poisoning or accidental
Speaker 1: Sometimes people take granna toxin contaminated honey intentionally as an
Speaker 1: aphrodisiac or as an alternative medicine. And I think the
Speaker 1: jury is still out as to whether at low doses
Speaker 1: granna toxin may actually have some kind of positive effects.
Speaker 1: I think it's not clear yet whether that actually is effective.
Speaker 1: But the authors of the study I mentioned speculate that
Speaker 1: regularly taking contaminated honey for these reasons may lead to
Speaker 1: a condition called chronic mad honey intoxication syndrome. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a syndrome you don't want to have to put
Speaker 1: on your little form you fill out when you get
Speaker 1: a new doctor. That's right, alright. On that note, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick breaking. When we come back, we will
Speaker 1: discuss the dead man's fingers. Alright, we're back, Robert. You
Speaker 1: have piqued my interest dead man's fingers. Are you literally
Speaker 1: talking about eating the fingers of a corpse? Um? No,
Speaker 1: but in a way it's kind of figurative. So are you?
Speaker 1: Are you? Yeah? Digitally if you will. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Are you a crab band? Do you enjoy eating crab?
Speaker 1: I don't eat it that often, but I do like it.
Speaker 1: Do you what is the most crab like form of
Speaker 1: your crab consumption? So? Do do you? Do you enjoy
Speaker 1: soft shell crab on the sandwich, the legs and the
Speaker 1: claws sticking out on the sides. It's another thing. I
Speaker 1: don't eat that often, but when I've had it, I've
Speaker 1: liked it. Okay, it's it's my absolute favorite. I think
Speaker 1: it's the It is the best way to eat an
Speaker 1: animal where there's just there's there's less deniable about what
Speaker 1: you're doing. You're just you're biting into this crab. The
Speaker 1: whole shape is their shape? Is there might as well
Speaker 1: eat a cockroach? Yeah? Yeah, And it's it's the meat,
Speaker 1: but also all these other substances that are all fried up,
Speaker 1: all the other bits of its anatomy. It's I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a very honest mode of consumption, even though
Speaker 1: it is cooked. So it's not like you're just eating
Speaker 1: the raw living crab. No, I can get with that. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this is uh, we're not just talking about crabs
Speaker 1: here though, of course, we're talking about about the dead
Speaker 1: man's fingers. Which if you've ever actively engaged in the
Speaker 1: cook cooking of crabs, and catching of crabs, then you
Speaker 1: you probably have some degree of familiarity of what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here. So in our last Dangerous Foods episode,
Speaker 1: we discussed the manner by which food goo puffer fish
Speaker 1: become edible via the skilled culinary removal of certain tetrodo
Speaker 1: toxin laden inerts. If you it's got certain organs that
Speaker 1: have especially high concentrations of this toxin. Right, so you
Speaker 1: need a skilled chef to cut that little sliver out,
Speaker 1: cook it up and it's good to go. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But a good sushi chef will know what they were,
Speaker 1: what they're doing, right, They'll be able to get it
Speaker 1: out of there and you shouldn't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: If if you're in good hands exactly. So this is
Speaker 1: faintly similar to that. But but this is definitely a
Speaker 1: category where we're going to be dispelling a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas about dangerous foods rather than uh, you know, giving
Speaker 1: you the science behind why it's actually dangerous. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: you've got to tell me where the name comes from. Okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell that, the name itself
Speaker 1: is just kind of lost to history. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't know like where, you know, what region this came from.
Speaker 1: But you do find dead man's fingers in edible crabs,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's of course, it's it's wonderful fear
Speaker 1: marketing right decided you have this rotting hand of the
Speaker 1: drowned dead that's inside your food, and if you eat it,
Speaker 1: according to the you know, the the urban legends, it
Speaker 1: depends what. It depends on the legend. What happens. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're to become violently ill, maybe you're going to contract
Speaker 1: a disease. I found people who said, oh yeah, when
Speaker 1: when we were cleaning crabs as a kid, um, my
Speaker 1: parents are a big brother. You know, it depends who's
Speaker 1: screwing with you, basically, and who's saying, oh, don't eat
Speaker 1: those parts. If you eat the dead man's fingers, you'll die,
Speaker 1: or you'll catch a disease, or or you'll become violently ill. Uh.
Speaker 1: The versions are various, but I find the stories particularly
Speaker 1: interesting given our relationship with crabs, creatures that we have
Speaker 1: to keep alive and then cook alive in order to
Speaker 1: to eat them. So it's it's perfectly strange that we
Speaker 1: summon this tiny, rotting humanoid hand inside the body of
Speaker 1: our victim. Yeah, that is a nice metaphor. Is like
Speaker 1: that the hand that places them into the pot boiling
Speaker 1: water comes back from inside the shell. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of kind of beautiful in its own way. And uh,
Speaker 1: And in trying to figure this out, because I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna spoil it just yet, if you don't know what
Speaker 1: the dead man's hand is, you might expect it to
Speaker 1: be something related to digestion, right, Yeah, I'm guessing crab
Speaker 1: anus or I don't know. No, as far as I
Speaker 1: know you, you you eat the that portion of the crab,
Speaker 1: at least with the soft show crab. But but but
Speaker 1: you know, there are plenty of examples of animals for
Speaker 1: which we cast aside certain internal organs um, either out
Speaker 1: of necessity or just we don't want to bother uh
Speaker 1: processing them into sausages or dog food or whatever. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even the komodo dragon will sling the intestines of intestines
Speaker 1: of a kill around in order to loosen the feces
Speaker 1: from the intestines so that they can eat them. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that. Yeah, it's pretty great because
Speaker 1: they they don't like uh being feces, but they do
Speaker 1: want the large intestine. Yeah. Yeah, they're tasty. They'll eat
Speaker 1: everything but that and the baby komodo dragons there's no
Speaker 1: child rearing and komodo dragon culture. Uh. So the baby
Speaker 1: komotos have to have to climb up trees to get
Speaker 1: away from the adults who will try to eat them,
Speaker 1: but they can. They've also been observed to smear themselves
Speaker 1: in feces and or at least they wind up covered
Speaker 1: in feces, and then the parents will not eat them
Speaker 1: because they're disgusting. So it's kind of like Predator with
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger in the mud, but they can't see them.
Speaker 1: They're just not tasty. Yeah, that would be a good
Speaker 1: interpretation on Predator. Oh yeah, what if all the mud
Speaker 1: was poop, and then the predators just like, look, I
Speaker 1: can't do this exactly. That's what was going on the
Speaker 1: whole time. He could see him, but you know. But anyway,
Speaker 1: but based on all of this, it feels somewhat accurate
Speaker 1: that there would be the sickening, disease spreading or even
Speaker 1: deadly portion of the common food crap. Right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would think so it winds up with the puffer at
Speaker 1: least would just intuitively looking at a crab, it looks
Speaker 1: like something that would have poisonous parts. Yeah, you would
Speaker 1: look at it. It looks back at you, and you
Speaker 1: might ask yourself, can I eat all of this? Clearly not,
Speaker 1: because a lot of it's very, very hard and pointy.
Speaker 1: So the fingers that we're talking about here are nothing
Speaker 1: more than the crabs gills, and this is where respiration
Speaker 1: and filtration takes place, and they consist of uh many
Speaker 1: different plume like filaments arranged around a central axis. In
Speaker 1: the blue crab, for instance, there are eight gills on
Speaker 1: either side. So and and if I guess, if you
Speaker 1: you kind of squint at them, and I've I've looked
Speaker 1: at him when cleaning crabs, and instructed by my my
Speaker 1: in laws who know what they're doing, and I do
Speaker 1: not know what I'm doing, but they tell me, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the dead man's hand right there. Are they like
Speaker 1: crab country people? Oh yeah, yeah, my uh, my wife's
Speaker 1: family has a Cajun blood and her brother lives down
Speaker 1: in um In Ocean Springs, Mississippi. So yeah, they're like
Speaker 1: constantly crabbing, catching crabs, bringing them back. The whole family
Speaker 1: have taken them apart um, and it's it's good eating.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, if you really, if you, if you
Speaker 1: want to interpret it as such, the dead man's hand
Speaker 1: might look like a little diseased lepre con claw or
Speaker 1: something or two of them. Now, the reality here, of course,
Speaker 1: is the crab is an organism, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on underneath that shell um or you know, underneath
Speaker 1: where the shell would be if you're using a soft shell,
Speaker 1: The white muscle meat, that's the prize stuff. That's the
Speaker 1: stuff that gets picked away and put into other other recipes.
Speaker 1: That's the stuff you might buy in bulk, pre picked
Speaker 1: for an exaggerated price. But you also find all these
Speaker 1: other things. If you've ever cleaned a crab, or if
Speaker 1: you've ever eaten soft shell crab. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. There's just some weird, nasty sauce inside the carapace.
Speaker 1: Potentially a lot of it's open to interpretation because there's
Speaker 1: there's a yellowish mustard that is the fat. In females
Speaker 1: you'll find orange ovaries, and in males who find a
Speaker 1: small white testies. There's a stomach, there's a little gray heart. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are intestines, there is an anus. Everything you might
Speaker 1: expect to find when you're taking apart an animal. Uh,
Speaker 1: certainly one that was just living before you boiled it
Speaker 1: up or um. And and also if you're eating a
Speaker 1: spried soft shell crab right off the bun, you definitely
Speaker 1: encounter that that yellow mustard fat and all these other ingredients.
Speaker 1: So we're you supposed to get rid of that stuff
Speaker 1: or what? Well, the instructions vary. So you know, some
Speaker 1: people are gonna be very pure about there about the
Speaker 1: picked crab, right because that's that's the meat, and that
Speaker 1: if you're if you're picking apart cooked crabs, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna probably eat the meat out of it. Right. But uh,
Speaker 1: but but it it depends. I mean, they're a lot
Speaker 1: most of this is edible. The fat is certainly edible,
Speaker 1: and with soft shell crabs you just kind of bite
Speaker 1: into the whole thing and just eat it whole like
Speaker 1: a monster. But at at most what generally what is
Speaker 1: is prescribed as that you remove the eyes, and you
Speaker 1: remove the gills the dead man's fingers, and it's not
Speaker 1: because they're poisonous, but because they're chewy and it's cartilage,
Speaker 1: and and they might be a bit bitter. But it's
Speaker 1: not a do or die situation. It's merely a these
Speaker 1: are the parts of the crab that are not delicious
Speaker 1: and or are not fun to eat, but they're not poisonous,
Speaker 1: they don't carry diseases, and interestingly enough, you know it
Speaker 1: also is going to depend on the culture. I ran
Speaker 1: across a wonderful Serious Eats article by writer cheech Wing,
Speaker 1: and she does this series titled the Nasty Bits, where
Speaker 1: she she kind of she talks about the nasty bits
Speaker 1: of various um foods sources uh, and in particular she
Speaker 1: talks about about crabs. In one of these, she cuts
Speaker 1: open a live crab and tries out crab miso or
Speaker 1: connie miso, which is this Japanese tradition that typically involves
Speaker 1: cooking a partially vivisected crab directly over a low burning flame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like cooking it in its little shell after you
Speaker 1: just cut it open. That's brutal. It well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all of its brutal, that's true. But here's a
Speaker 1: quote from it, because she sums it up really nicely.
Speaker 1: I poured a bit of saki into the shell. The
Speaker 1: grayish green contents bubbled vigorously over the small flame. I
Speaker 1: cooked the parts until they were just heated through, soft
Speaker 1: and rich, with a taste not unlike liver. But kenny
Speaker 1: miso was a delight to eat right out of the shell,
Speaker 1: though I saved a portion of it to have on toast,
Speaker 1: and yet another to have with rice. And it did
Speaker 1: it look very you know, very cool. We eat all
Speaker 1: sorts of weird parts of animals. Uh, some are more
Speaker 1: acquired taste than others. So it makes sense, especially in
Speaker 1: a within Japanese cuisine, right that is so dependent upon
Speaker 1: the riches of the ocean, that there would be uh
Speaker 1: a finer use of the crab innerds here. Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta respect that. But but the dead man dead man's fingers,
Speaker 1: specifically the gills so you're saying, not poisonous, nothing to
Speaker 1: this myth at all. No, not poisonous, not going to
Speaker 1: cause a disease, not gonna kill you. It's just a
Speaker 1: taste issue. It's uh and uh and and the consistency
Speaker 1: of it. And yet some would find even a way
Speaker 1: to appreciate that. Yeah, that's right. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: diverse flavors to play with there beyond the white meat
Speaker 1: of the crab. And uh. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about this, especially if you have access or obligations
Speaker 1: of surrounding live crabs and freshly cooked crabs and and
Speaker 1: you know, pulling them apart. I ran across a wonderful
Speaker 1: pdf from math in science dot info. It's like an
Speaker 1: educational web site, and this particular pdf guides you through
Speaker 1: a quote edible dissection of a blue crab. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a combination between a you know,
Speaker 1: like a school like a biology class dissection and culinary preparation.
Speaker 1: So it it takes you through the creatures anatomy as
Speaker 1: you take it apart, and also tells you what you
Speaker 1: can eat and how you go about eating it. Well,
Speaker 1: I do think in general, for people, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: eat meat. If you're gonna eat the body parts of
Speaker 1: an organism, I think it's good to familiar yourself. Familiarize
Speaker 1: yourself with that organism and what the parts you're eating
Speaker 1: are and where they come from. Yeah, I agree. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we do we do ourselves. We do our
Speaker 1: and we do our animals a disservice when we distance
Speaker 1: ourselves from the source and the reality of our sustenance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you just think about the meat that you're eating
Speaker 1: as a thing that arrives wrapped in plastic wrap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe with a mystical dead leprecha in hand at some point.
Speaker 1: So I'll include links out to both the Nasty Bits
Speaker 1: article as well as the edible dissection instructions on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode of Stuff to Blame mind
Speaker 1: dot Com. Okay, Robert, I have a food to ask about,
Speaker 1: and I only know about it because of a line
Speaker 1: in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I remember you
Speaker 1: remember the scene with the French character who's taunting Arthur
Speaker 1: and his knights. I think that's played by John Cleese, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he outrageous French knights. Yeah, and yeah, so he
Speaker 1: gives a lot he gives a lot of great insults
Speaker 1: to the Knights of Camelot, and at one point he
Speaker 1: alleges that their father smelled of elderberries. And I always
Speaker 1: found that funny. But it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've had this experience where you find something
Speaker 1: funny without knowing what it means. It's just the sound
Speaker 1: of the words that makes you laugh. I've never seen
Speaker 1: an elderberry. I've never, as far as I know, never
Speaker 1: tasted an elderberry. I don't know what the deal with
Speaker 1: him is, but they poisonous um. Yeah, this is an interesting,
Speaker 1: uh subject, because elder berries are another example of a
Speaker 1: food item that can prove dangerous if you consume it
Speaker 1: raw under the right circumstances. But it's also regularly traditionally
Speaker 1: used in h cooking for in various consumable forms. It's
Speaker 1: been used in medicine for ages, it has antioxidant properties,
Speaker 1: it's used to treat sinus infection, cold and flu, and
Speaker 1: then on on the culinary side, has been used in jams, pies, liqueurs,
Speaker 1: and according to BBC Good Food, it is a must
Speaker 1: for quote the famous German black forest ham that is
Speaker 1: salted in seasoned with spices, elderberries and juniper berries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the liqueur in particular, it's actually similar to gin,
Speaker 1: which is uh created with the with juniper berries, so
Speaker 1: it's uh similar to that. But um, but this is
Speaker 1: elder berries is something you tend to pick wild, and
Speaker 1: it's especially a thing in traditional English cooking because this
Speaker 1: is something you would you would run out to the
Speaker 1: hedgerow and you pick some elderberry and you bring it back,
Speaker 1: but not stand there at the hedgerow eating raw, right expect. Well,
Speaker 1: there are accounts of people eating it, and there are
Speaker 1: accounts of people eating it raw and not feeling any
Speaker 1: symptoms from it. But this is not this is certainly
Speaker 1: not recommended. Um. So the the UK's Food Standards Agency
Speaker 1: recommends cooking elder berries to destroy toxins they're present in
Speaker 1: the raw berries. And it's also a general rule of
Speaker 1: thumb to avoid unripe berries. So generally, the way this, uh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna work is that you you're only gonna
Speaker 1: deal with blue or purple berries, and you're gonna avoid
Speaker 1: the red ones completely. Uh So they tend to like
Speaker 1: dark end as they age. Yes, yeah, so you have
Speaker 1: avoid the ripe ones. Uh, it's also also a general
Speaker 1: good rule of thumb. Pregnant breastfeeding individuals as well as
Speaker 1: people with autoimmune conditions auto and the deficiencies rather are
Speaker 1: encouraged to skip elder berries because there is that possibility
Speaker 1: for there's also a possibility for for interactions with various
Speaker 1: uh drugs. But but generally speaking, if it's cooked, it's
Speaker 1: prepared properly, especially like you know, jams, deserts, etcetera. It's
Speaker 1: not being consumed on its own, then you're you're you're fine,
Speaker 1: it's been used without incident, you know, for for for ages, um,
Speaker 1: they're There are different varieties of elderberry, and the main
Speaker 1: ones that you encountered. There's a Sambosis negra, which is
Speaker 1: uh the European elder, also called the black elder, and
Speaker 1: that one is most often used for medicinal purposes. And
Speaker 1: then it's generally advised to avoid the dwarf elder to
Speaker 1: Sambosis elbas uh completely and because he gives you a
Speaker 1: cursed magical stone. Yeah, it sounds wonderful that the black
Speaker 1: elder in the forest meet the black elder at the hedgerow.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, so, but been in tern of what's
Speaker 1: toxic here. The active alkaloids in elderberry plants are hydrocyanic
Speaker 1: acid and uh SAM boosting, and both will cause nausea
Speaker 1: Sam boosey. And is there any connection to sambuca or
Speaker 1: those just set a false cognate? That may be a
Speaker 1: false cognate. I cannot say one way another on that,
Speaker 1: but I doubt it. Okay, So, so far we've talked
Speaker 1: about mad Honey, We've talked about dead Man's fingers, We've
Speaker 1: talked about elderberries. Uh what what is next? Surely there's
Speaker 1: some exotic food item that you have for us to
Speaker 1: discuss here. Well, Robert, I want to take you on
Speaker 1: a food poisoning mystery adventure. Okay, in nineteen seventies England. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is fitting to follow elderberry. So in nineteen nine,
Speaker 1: on the second day of the autumn term, at a
Speaker 1: school in South London, a bunch of schoolboys, all the boys.
Speaker 1: They're lined up for a school lunch including steak pie, gravy,
Speaker 1: boiled potatoes, cabbage and or canned carrots, followed by a
Speaker 1: dessert of apricots or something called quote syrup sponge pudding.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds delicious if our British listeners can tell
Speaker 1: me what that is. I would love to know sponge pudding. Anyway,
Speaker 1: after this lunch, seventy eight boys who had eaten the
Speaker 1: school lunch became sick with things like abdominal pain or
Speaker 1: diarrhea or vomiting, headache, fever. Seventeen had to go to
Speaker 1: the hospital, and three of those were considered dangerously ill.
Speaker 1: U two had what was reported as minimal pain, but
Speaker 1: quote diarrhea was copious. And what I'm quoting from here
Speaker 1: is the ninet edition of the Quarterly Journal of Medicine
Speaker 1: and article by Mary McMillan and J. C. Thompson. Continuing,
Speaker 1: the three boys considered dangerously ill were homatose or in
Speaker 1: a stupor and had peripheral circulatory collapse when they were
Speaker 1: admitted to the hospital. The others admitted to the hospital
Speaker 1: had symptoms such as convulsive twitching or spasms, confusion, hallucination,
Speaker 1: and general delirium. Now, fortunately nobody died. All of the
Speaker 1: boys were well enough to go back home within six
Speaker 1: to eleven days of admission, but with a few of
Speaker 1: them it seemed very close. So what had made them sick?
Speaker 1: Onto the Hunt lab tests for bacterial and viral infection.
Speaker 1: All return negative, so it was not a microbial infection
Speaker 1: of any kind. Doctors also tested the boy's blood and
Speaker 1: feces to see if they could detect other toxic substances,
Speaker 1: for example, elevated levels of lead, arsenic copper. They also
Speaker 1: looked for zinc because at the time zinc phosphide was
Speaker 1: used as a common rat poison. They looked for signs
Speaker 1: of organic compounds such as nicotine, organophile, us for us,
Speaker 1: various pesticides, and defoliants. All of it negative. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if we ruled out the syrup sponge putting it not
Speaker 1: necessarily no, all of these could be suspect. What if
Speaker 1: it was the gravy. We don't know what's in gravy. Finally, well,
Speaker 1: that is what's in school lunch, maybe the same thing
Speaker 1: that's in syrups sponge putting mostly circus animals. Right. Finally,
Speaker 1: one doctor Mary Whittaker of the University of Exeter, as
Speaker 1: well as the authors of the study I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: Mary McMillan and J. C. Thompson um they determined the culprit.
Speaker 1: They found that the sick boys blood plasma had a
Speaker 1: deficiency of something called pseudocolon ester race. Okay, now I
Speaker 1: gotta explain a little body chemistry here. Colon ester Race
Speaker 1: is a naturally occurring enzyme in your body. It's in
Speaker 1: your blood plasma, and it's necessary for the correct functioning
Speaker 1: of an animal's nervous system. So your body, like other
Speaker 1: animal bodies, has a nervous dome as its command center,
Speaker 1: and your muscles, skin, inner organs don't do much without
Speaker 1: the nervous system telling them to do it. And you
Speaker 1: shouldn't just think about this in the you know, conscious,
Speaker 1: deliberate sense of using your brain to move your skeletal
Speaker 1: muscles to jump over a pothole or throw a bowl
Speaker 1: of soup at somebody, or whatever it is you do
Speaker 1: with your body. Uh, this also applies to the unconscious
Speaker 1: functioning of most of your internal organs. They need electrical
Speaker 1: stimulation or inhibition from the nervous system, and these electrical
Speaker 1: signals are transported through the body through structures called synapses. Synapses,
Speaker 1: of course we've talked about it on the show before,
Speaker 1: but they're the gateways between neurons or nerve cells, and
Speaker 1: they allow electrical and chemical signals to pass through. And
Speaker 1: so these signals are often carried by a chemical called
Speaker 1: acetal coline. Meanwhile, you can stop these signals with a
Speaker 1: specific colon ester ace enzyme called acetal colon ester ace,
Speaker 1: which breaks down the acetal coal and that allows the
Speaker 1: passage of the signals. So you need both. You need
Speaker 1: both chemicals in your body to allow and regulate proper
Speaker 1: functioning of the nervous system. If you don't have enough
Speaker 1: colon ester as to break down the acetal colin, your
Speaker 1: nervous system is going to start to experience the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a streak congested with lots of cars, and the
Speaker 1: cars won't stop, so you can experience negative effects all
Speaker 1: over the body as a result of the nervous system
Speaker 1: being unable to effectively inhibit signals firing across synapses. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if this were a game of clue, at this
Speaker 1: point we kind of know what the murder weapon was,
Speaker 1: but not who or whether what the murder is? Is
Speaker 1: it the what was it? Was? It? Was it Colonel Syrup,
Speaker 1: Sponge Pudding, or General Gravy or one of these other
Speaker 1: fine suspects, or in the British version, Reverend Gravy. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: good questions. So, so the boys have been poisoned by
Speaker 1: something that inhibited the production of colon strays in their bodies,
Speaker 1: or it generally inhibited colonester as. Actually I can't remember
Speaker 1: if it was the production or if it naturally lowered. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they had decreased colon ester as and this allowed the
Speaker 1: researchers to isolate the cause of the outbreak because they
Speaker 1: knew what in the meal had the ability to do that.
Speaker 1: Potatoes poisoned potatoes. And before you think, what, who on
Speaker 1: earth would try to poison a group of English schoolboys
Speaker 1: with a weapon as pure and honest as the potato,
Speaker 1: The answer is nobody. It wasn't intentional at all. The
Speaker 1: poisoning was traced to a sack of old potatoes in
Speaker 1: the school kitchen that had been sitting around since summer,
Speaker 1: long enough to develop a formidable poison profile. The potatoes
Speaker 1: were poisoned by their very own nature, and this was
Speaker 1: backed up by interviews with the students, where it was
Speaker 1: later found that the really the only thing all of
Speaker 1: the students who became sick had in common was that
Speaker 1: they'd eaten the potatoes. For example, like a vegetarian student
Speaker 1: was boys and the other things had different options about
Speaker 1: desserts and stuff. But all the sick boys had eaten
Speaker 1: those old potatoes from the summer term. So how on
Speaker 1: earth would an old potato from the summer term do
Speaker 1: something that crazy, dear nervous system. Well, the everyday potato
Speaker 1: is the tuber of a plant called Solanum tuberosum, which
Speaker 1: is a member of the plant family uh Solanassia, or
Speaker 1: the night shade family, which, of course you might recall,
Speaker 1: is sort of known for its poisons. Eggplants, tomatoes, and
Speaker 1: some of their fruits are also members of this family.
Speaker 1: Potato plants naturally contain a range of defensive poisons called glycoalkaloids,
Speaker 1: and two primary alkaloids, and potatoes are called solanine and
Speaker 1: check a scene, And in most cases of potato poisoning,
Speaker 1: the solanine is the one that gets most often singled
Speaker 1: out by name as the primary cause of illness, But
Speaker 1: there there are multiple glycoalkaloids at work, and these toxins
Speaker 1: can be found in many parts of the plant. So
Speaker 1: if you ever decide to grow a potato plant for
Speaker 1: yourself in your home garden, do not eat the fruit
Speaker 1: of this plant, do not eat its flowers, and don't
Speaker 1: get it in your head to make yourself a nice
Speaker 1: cup of potato leaf tea, because all throughout the plant
Speaker 1: you will find the presence of these glycoalkaloid poisons that
Speaker 1: can do to you what happened to the South London
Speaker 1: school boys. Now, most recorded cases of solenine poisoning do
Speaker 1: not end in death, but in some cases, especially where
Speaker 1: they're like aggregating factors such as malnutrition or starvation at play,
Speaker 1: solanine poisonings can be deadly. And I want to give
Speaker 1: a few examples from a book about food intolerance called
Speaker 1: Was It Something You Ate? By John Emsley and Peter Fell,
Speaker 1: published by Oxford University Press in two thousand two. Uh
Speaker 1: they signed an example where during the Korean War, food
Speaker 1: shortages in North Korea forced people in many communities to
Speaker 1: survive on things like rotten potatoes, and in one area,
Speaker 1: three and eighty two people became sick from soulanine poisoning,
Speaker 1: of which fifty five were hospitalized and twenty two died.
Speaker 1: Symptoms included weak pulse, blue lips and ears, pale skin,
Speaker 1: enlargement of the heart and liver, swelling of the face,
Speaker 1: abdomen and extremities, and death usually occurred within five to
Speaker 1: ten days. In the cases where people died in the
Speaker 1: last stages before death, people experienced excitability and attacks of
Speaker 1: shaking all over the body, and they eventually died from
Speaker 1: respiratory failure. It's reported, and there are a couple of
Speaker 1: other cases. In nineteen eighteen in Glasgow, Scotland, sixty one
Speaker 1: people got sick with vomiting, diarrhea and headache after eating potatoes.
Speaker 1: Of them, one boy died of strangulation of the bowel.
Speaker 1: And also in nineteen five a family of seven was
Speaker 1: poisoned by green potatoes and two of them died. Well Joe.
Speaker 1: At this point, I imagine a lot of our listeners
Speaker 1: are thinking, well, heck, we live in of a French
Speaker 1: fry nation. We live in a a fully loaded baked
Speaker 1: potato nation. This is this is bad news. I mean,
Speaker 1: we eat so much potato, our children eat so many
Speaker 1: potato products. The how do we steer clear of this
Speaker 1: potato poisonous? Are we begging for death? Yeah? How to
Speaker 1: avoid uh? The reaper soulanine and its chemical brethren in
Speaker 1: hoods Uh? No, So most potatoes are fine. This is
Speaker 1: the thing you really shouldn't worry about. And there are
Speaker 1: clear signals to look out for, and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what they are. But there's no reason to freak out
Speaker 1: about potatoes in general. Potatoes do contain some amount of
Speaker 1: solanine naturally, And actually Dr Harriet hall Over at Science
Speaker 1: Based Medicine has a really good blog post about this,
Speaker 1: about general soulanine content and potatoes. She writes, quote, it's
Speaker 1: estimated that it would take two to five milligrams per
Speaker 1: kilogram of body weight to produce toxic symptoms, and she's
Speaker 1: referring to soulanine there and the glycoalkaloids. A large potato
Speaker 1: ways about three d rams and has a soulanine content
Speaker 1: of less than zero point two milligrams per gram. That
Speaker 1: works out to about zero point zero three milligrams per
Speaker 1: kilogram for an adult, a hundredth of the toxic dose.
Speaker 1: I figure a murderous wife would have to feed something
Speaker 1: like sixty seven large potatoes to her husband in a
Speaker 1: single meal to poison him, unless he's a phenomenally big
Speaker 1: eat or arsenic would be a better bet. So regular
Speaker 1: potatoes with normal soulanine content. This is not something you
Speaker 1: need to worry it right, unless you're eating hundreds of potatoes,
Speaker 1: and then you probably need to worry about all those somethings. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll probably have I don't know, a reaction to the
Speaker 1: salt first or something. But properly farmed potatoes produced by
Speaker 1: experienced growers tend to be bread for really low glcoalkaloid
Speaker 1: and specifically solanine content in the tuber much lower than
Speaker 1: you'd find in a wild potato UH and according to
Speaker 1: that Emsley and fell book I mentioned earlier, the average
Speaker 1: potato has maybe three to six milligrams of solanine perms
Speaker 1: of mass, so that might be a different figure than
Speaker 1: Hall had, but either way this is not a threat.
Speaker 1: Most of this also is going to be on the
Speaker 1: outside near the peel, so if you peel the potato,
Speaker 1: you're probably getting rid of most of it, and the
Speaker 1: concentration of solanine and the potato tends to increase if
Speaker 1: the potato is bruised or exposed to light, which tends
Speaker 1: to cause greening. You've seen green potatoes before, those are
Speaker 1: the ones you don't eat. Solanine is generally found in
Speaker 1: UH in higher proportions, and potatoes that are have turned
Speaker 1: green or especially have begun to sprout. I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where I've seen the green potatoes, the most have been
Speaker 1: the uh, the sort of science classroom potato experiments. Yes,
Speaker 1: where you have it have toothpick stuck in it and
Speaker 1: you're you're you're growing it out or something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's been exposed to light for a long period, or
Speaker 1: or classic Mr potato head, I imagine, though I don't
Speaker 1: know that I've ever actually encountered one of those. Oh
Speaker 1: I've never thought about him being poisoned, but he really
Speaker 1: probably is gets out on the counter all day. Well,
Speaker 1: so you're thinking, how can I know to avoid this
Speaker 1: kind of poisoning? How do I keep the glycoalkaloids out
Speaker 1: of my body? Well, simple steps. Store your potatoes in
Speaker 1: a cool, dry place, don't eat old potatoes, don't eat
Speaker 1: a potato that is green or sprouting, and if you're
Speaker 1: in doubt, peel your potatoes because there's likely much more
Speaker 1: poison in the peel than in the starchy center. Alright,
Speaker 1: I feel better At this point, I was a little nervous,
Speaker 1: So now I feel better. Okay. Another fun fact about
Speaker 1: the green potatoes, though, the green you see in a
Speaker 1: green potato that maybe quite poisonous. Is not soulanine or
Speaker 1: any other glycoalkaloid itself, but regular old chlorophyll stuff that
Speaker 1: makes plants green. The soulanine and the chlorophyll chlorophyll, they're
Speaker 1: just correlated. So if you see chlorophyll, it probably means
Speaker 1: there are metabolic processes going on in the potato. Uh
Speaker 1: that this means it's probably been exposed to sun or
Speaker 1: something which tends to increase the sulanine content. Okay, One
Speaker 1: last historical side note. In the mid nineteen sixties, researchers
Speaker 1: in the United States bred a new strain of potato
Speaker 1: that was known as the Lenape potato and it was
Speaker 1: released in November nineteen sixty seven by the Crops Research
Speaker 1: Division of the U. S Department of Agriculture and the
Speaker 1: Agricultural Experiment Station of Pennsylvania. And it was a cross
Speaker 1: between some existing potato varieties selected to create a tuber
Speaker 1: perfect for making potato chips. So it had a high
Speaker 1: specific gravity, meaning a high solids content that's a dry matter,
Speaker 1: and a resistance to common parasites and potato diseases such
Speaker 1: as late blight, potato scab, mild mosaic and tuber necrosis
Speaker 1: from leaf roll and stem end browning. No potatoes have
Speaker 1: the best disease name, do I mean? I guess that
Speaker 1: they're just they're just ready for they're always already a
Speaker 1: little bit grotesque, right, Yeah. And it was also considered
Speaker 1: to make potato chips with good color. Could make good
Speaker 1: potato chips even after it's been in cold storage. So
Speaker 1: new superior potato. This is the age if you want
Speaker 1: to Christine just shining like ivory white potato chip. Yes,
Speaker 1: before we reached its age of like cool multicolored potato chips.
Speaker 1: Exactly people wanted it. It should look like it was
Speaker 1: made out of plastic. But unfortunately there was a problem.
Speaker 1: The lenape varietal was found to have a defect. It
Speaker 1: was poisonous, reportedly able to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, fever,
Speaker 1: bad symptoms. And what was the culprit, Well, the potato
Speaker 1: naturally contained elevated levels of glycoalkaloids. So the lenape potato
Speaker 1: was withdrawn from consumer consumer production production and shame, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it actually ever made it to the
Speaker 1: stores to the consumers themselves, or if it did, it
Speaker 1: was pretty soon after withdrawn. But reading up on this
Speaker 1: I wanted to note it was my first occasion to
Speaker 1: check out a nineteen sixties edition of the American Potato Journal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the youth is your first experience. You're not
Speaker 1: picked up this this journal previously. It's a fascinating general
Speaker 1: But also I wanted to mention that I think because
Speaker 1: of its inclusion and influential book, the story about the
Speaker 1: lenape potato was often referenced in the nineteen nineties during
Speaker 1: the first big debate on GMO crops, though the poison
Speaker 1: potato itself was the product of more traditional plant breeding. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: so that's the thing, right, I mean, we've been with
Speaker 1: our with our cultivated um agricultural products. We have been
Speaker 1: manipulating them for quite a while, exactly regular levels, like
Speaker 1: non genetic manipulation I mean, and really by the virtue,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still genetic manipulation. We've been we've been
Speaker 1: manipulating these plants for ages. Yeah, exactly. I think it
Speaker 1: was just generally considered an example of the dangers of
Speaker 1: what happens when you use science to mess around with
Speaker 1: pure natural foods. But of course the other potato varieties
Speaker 1: that you know, we know and love are the product
Speaker 1: of agriculture and breeding, and you know, scientific investigation into
Speaker 1: the daily in genetics of potato varietals. Uh, and a
Speaker 1: much less dangerous You can produce a much less dangerous
Speaker 1: potato through these processes than the glycoalkaloid rich wild potato.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure what kind of argument that makes, really,
Speaker 1: So we're continuing to to to try and breathe the
Speaker 1: quizette's how to rack of the potato. But there's always potatoes.
Speaker 1: There's always the chance you'll create these various monsters on
Speaker 1: the way, right, I think, So, all right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will jump into another dangerous food example, and yes, there
Speaker 1: will be at least one more dune reference. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So this is a big one, of course.
Speaker 1: I think everybody's run across an example of this, someone
Speaker 1: saying the apple, the sweet innocent apple, the everyday apple
Speaker 1: a day keeps the doctor away. Fruit. This contains seeds,
Speaker 1: and if you eat these seeds, you will you will
Speaker 1: be become poisoned and you will die. If you heard
Speaker 1: variations of this, I don't know if I've been told
Speaker 1: I would die, but I've heard that the seeds contain poison,
Speaker 1: and I think in a limited sense that is true, correct,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is true. It's one of it. As
Speaker 1: we'll discuss. It's definitely one of these cases where you
Speaker 1: are not going to poison yourself eating the seeds of apples.
Speaker 1: It's just there. There's there's no there's no record of
Speaker 1: this ever happening, And when you start looking at the
Speaker 1: math and the quantity of toxins and the seeds, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just impossible. Yeah. I think, as with almost
Speaker 1: everything else we've talked about in this episode, the old
Speaker 1: adage and chemistry holds true. Or is it chemistry toxicology?
Speaker 1: The dose makes the poison anything, including water, including sugar,
Speaker 1: including whatever. Anything in the correct dose it just poisonous.
Speaker 1: So the question is how much of it are you
Speaker 1: getting and how little does it take to hurt you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the reality here is that, yes, the seeds, pits,
Speaker 1: and stones of many varieties of fruit contains small amounts
Speaker 1: of cyanide. Uh. There are a number of forms of cyanide,
Speaker 1: and if you take enough of the wrong one or
Speaker 1: the right one, depending on what your your goal is,
Speaker 1: you can suffer poisoning. Symptoms include headache, dizziness, fast heart rate,
Speaker 1: shortness of breath, and vomiting. Uh. This may be followed
Speaker 1: by seizures, slow heart rate, low blood pressure, loss of consciousness,
Speaker 1: and you know, cardiac arrest and death. I mean, it's cyanide.
Speaker 1: It's it's a poison. Now. Apples in particular contain a
Speaker 1: compound called a migdalin in their seeds, and this is
Speaker 1: a cyanide and sugar based molecule. All right, So if
Speaker 1: you start chewing the seeds, uh, your saliva enzymes they
Speaker 1: hit this particular compound. They cut off the sugar part
Speaker 1: from the molecule, and the remainder then can decompose to
Speaker 1: produce the poisonous gas hydrogen cyanide. Yeah, which which sounds
Speaker 1: crazy and and definitely makes me think of that seen
Speaker 1: in Dune where where where the duke bites into the
Speaker 1: poison tooth in his mouth, uh, and then breathes out
Speaker 1: in an attempt to kill his captors, to kill the
Speaker 1: Vladimir Harconin. Oh, that's a that's a good scene. It's
Speaker 1: a great scene. Yeah, and it makes you think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you should just been into an apple and just done.
Speaker 1: He fails to kill Harcona. He does he kills Peter, Oh,
Speaker 1: Peter de Friz. Yeah, he's he's so he's able to
Speaker 1: take out one of the batties. But but but luck,
Speaker 1: pure luck saves the baron, as you allude to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that scene would have been much more awkward if he'd
Speaker 1: been trying to hold on while I eat sixty apples.
Speaker 1: You allow me to chew the My final request is
Speaker 1: that you give me unlimited apple seeds to chew, and
Speaker 1: you hang out really close to my face. It would
Speaker 1: have it was not that that is not a mentat
Speaker 1: created plan, a mentat approved plan. Okay, but so how
Speaker 1: many seeds does it really take? Okay? So here's another case,
Speaker 1: as like we did in a previous example, where you
Speaker 1: have to bust out some grams and milligrams so cyanide
Speaker 1: that toxicity and humans, you're generally talking point five to
Speaker 1: three point five milligrams per kilogram of body weight, so
Speaker 1: you know it depends on your body how big you are.
Speaker 1: Um for a fatal dose, you'd need to hit at
Speaker 1: least one point five milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of do Now you have a basic
Speaker 1: range of toxicity and death the seeds of the apple themselves.
Speaker 1: You're looking at three milligrams of cyanide per gram of seeds,
Speaker 1: and one seed is approximately point seven grams, so you
Speaker 1: would it would be like two points something milligrams of
Speaker 1: cyanide per seed. Yeah, you need to Basically, you would
Speaker 1: need to chew an absurd number of apple seeds to
Speaker 1: pull this off. And there are no reports of anyone
Speaker 1: actually doing it, either intentionally, you know, out of I
Speaker 1: don't know madness, or or accidentally. Even Johnny apple Seed
Speaker 1: running around two and on apples all day was not
Speaker 1: able to kill himself. But I think there are some
Speaker 1: other seeds in natural fruits that we eat all the
Speaker 1: time that are a little bit more dangerous than apple pits. Right,
Speaker 1: this is true. Uh, And there's there's actually an excellent
Speaker 1: article that came out in The Guardian uh last year,
Speaker 1: actually uh really good and has a wonderful chart that
Speaker 1: just shows you the different levels of cyanide and these
Speaker 1: different fruits often include a link to it on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode is Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. But the basics are that apple seeds
Speaker 1: with three milligrams. Program that places apple somewhere in the
Speaker 1: middle of our spectrum between the point one milligram program
Speaker 1: of the common nectarine, So that's the low end up
Speaker 1: to the seventeen point five milligrams program in the European
Speaker 1: green gauge plum. I've never heard of that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had not either. It's a European specialty. Uh And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a big one. Likewise, the apricot is pretty
Speaker 1: big too. The kernels of the apricot fourteen point four.
Speaker 1: And there have been plenty of cases of problematic ingestion
Speaker 1: of apricot kernels, typically by children, as well as a
Speaker 1: cherry pits or another one. Cherry pits have three point nine.
Speaker 1: Now with those, I think i've read that you have
Speaker 1: to do some processing to make them especially dangerous, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you chew up cherry pits, there's something they're
Speaker 1: more dangerous, that's right. So remember the saliva that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier in the apple seeds, So there's that breaking
Speaker 1: down in the separation of that compound. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: chewing the seeds, chewing the kernel. Also, i've i've I've
Speaker 1: heard that if you were to just grind up a
Speaker 1: bunch of cherry pits. You might have similar scenario as well.
Speaker 1: I mean you would have a similar scenario. So those
Speaker 1: are those are the areas where you there's more concern,
Speaker 1: and generally that means that the concern with cherries, for example,
Speaker 1: is going to be improper food preparation, like somebody who
Speaker 1: has no idea what they're doing and they grind up
Speaker 1: a bunch of of cherries for something without removing the pit.
Speaker 1: Or it's a case where child gets ahold of a
Speaker 1: bunch of kernels from apricots or a bunch of of
Speaker 1: of cherry pits and starts chewing them. Those are situations
Speaker 1: where the condition often escalates and there is you know,
Speaker 1: some serious toxicity that a doctor has to deal with. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta invite you all over for a taste of
Speaker 1: my fresh made pasta with home ground apricot pit pesto.
Speaker 1: But it's one of these situations where, yeah, the average
Speaker 1: person might not realize that the the average cherry with
Speaker 1: the with the pit in it does contain bits of
Speaker 1: cyanide and you could you could have a lethal dose
Speaker 1: of cyanide in your house. It's just if you're following
Speaker 1: the rules, you're going to be throwing all that cyanide out.
Speaker 1: If you eat it the normal way, there's no danger, right.
Speaker 1: But this is maybe a good reason why I remember
Speaker 1: when I was a kid having there being games about
Speaker 1: spitting fruit pits. Did you have games I feel like
Speaker 1: spitting fruit fruit pits? Yeah, it's like you you you know,
Speaker 1: how far can you spit the watermelon seeds? Getting watermelon
Speaker 1: seeds saying they're dangerous? But maybe the same is true
Speaker 1: of cherry pits and stuff like that. Maybe this is
Speaker 1: a way of culturally preserving the instinct to not chew
Speaker 1: up and swallow those those poisonous apricot pits and cherry seeds. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: you know I was. I was thinking about this when
Speaker 1: we first discussed this, because just last night, my son,
Speaker 1: he's four and a half, he eats all the time,
Speaker 1: and I was giving him some some orange slices to
Speaker 1: eat in the bathtub, because you have to there has
Speaker 1: to be some overlap, otherwise he would there would be
Speaker 1: no going to bed. Uh. And he is he's especially
Speaker 1: recently he's been very demanding about how he doesn't want
Speaker 1: seeds in anything. And he and I bring him the
Speaker 1: fruit and he says, oh, does he have seeds in it.
Speaker 1: I don't want the seeds. And I explain, if you
Speaker 1: you take the seeds out, you spit the seeds out.
Speaker 1: This is how fruit works. And you just have to
Speaker 1: to roll with the Yeah, well not into the bat
Speaker 1: you know, he asked the same thing. I can just
Speaker 1: spit him in the bath. No, you can't spit him
Speaker 1: in the bad and back. And this is why you
Speaker 1: have a bowl with fruit now. But but I wonder,
Speaker 1: like to what extent this is a you know, this
Speaker 1: is a natural instinct for for young children, especially to
Speaker 1: be appalled by the seed because in in fact, the
Speaker 1: seed of some fruits could prove dangerous to them, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same way that I've I've heard some there's
Speaker 1: some theories about picky eating and children that are basically
Speaker 1: amounts to the same thing that that that picky eating
Speaker 1: and children is a natural inborn defense mechanism against potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous foods that are going to be more dangerous for
Speaker 1: them given their their small body size. That's funny because
Speaker 1: I see the exact same evolutionary process working itself out
Speaker 1: in some babies and in my dog, where it seems
Speaker 1: like just anything that will fit in the mouth will
Speaker 1: go in there but then come back out right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: with the dogs, Oh yeah, sometimes, I mean I don't know,
Speaker 1: my dog wants to eat things that I often think
Speaker 1: like that doesn't make biological sense to have a drive
Speaker 1: to try to eat that rock. Well, am I correct
Speaker 1: in this that with dogs like that's part of their
Speaker 1: tasting process, like to to to judge the food it
Speaker 1: goes in the mouth first. Oh yeah, I guess that
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense. Yeah, I could be wrong and
Speaker 1: that I'm not a dog expert, but but at any rate,
Speaker 1: that also the the you know, the the whole incident
Speaker 1: here with with seeds also comes up. I understand with
Speaker 1: some pets that I didn't really explore that thread, but
Speaker 1: I was seeing a number of different posts and articles
Speaker 1: out there about oh do I need to be concerned
Speaker 1: about my dog eating these pits? Well, there's certainly lots
Speaker 1: of foods that are probably not dangerous to you, but
Speaker 1: might be dangerous to a pet for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: for different body chemistry, but also just because of different
Speaker 1: body size. A serving that is contains nothing all that,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing in concentration dangerous to you, might be
Speaker 1: a big dose for a small animal. Right, yeah, especially
Speaker 1: a small dog, small cat, etcetera. All right, you know,
Speaker 1: on on a final note here, you know, so many
Speaker 1: of the things we've been talking about, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about like the dosage level, the quantity ease. Uh, keep
Speaker 1: in mind the spice rack. Okay. Uh. We actually have
Speaker 1: an older episode of Stuff to blow your mind that
Speaker 1: is all about nutmeg nutmeg, and I encourage you to
Speaker 1: check that episode out because nutmeg is fascinating. It has
Speaker 1: this weird, wonderful history full of like Eastern medicine, um,
Speaker 1: European fashion, um, medieval medieval manipulation of the humors. Also
Speaker 1: like bloody colonial monopolies. It's I've definitely read about its
Speaker 1: use as a recreational drug. Yeah, they're a Malcolm x
Speaker 1: uh wrote about it's it's use in prisons. You would
Speaker 1: take a match box full of nutmeg and you would have,
Speaker 1: you know, an altered state. Uh. There are various other
Speaker 1: accounts from from history. Samuel Samuel Peeps wrote about an
Speaker 1: individual who who took nutmeg and ran naked through the
Speaker 1: streets of London. Samuel Peeps. Yeah, yeah, so so there's
Speaker 1: a lot there's a rich history with nutmeg. But yeah,
Speaker 1: nutmeg is an example of something where if you you uh,
Speaker 1: use just a few sprinkles here and there on top
Speaker 1: of your egg nog or whatever, and it's it's perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: I put a little on my smoothie every morning. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you take larger quantities there can be toxic
Speaker 1: effects spice trans yes, spice trands essentially except a very
Speaker 1: unpleasant spice trans uh with lots of nausea and a
Speaker 1: really horrible hangover. Now I've read no accounts of recreational
Speaker 1: nutmeg use beyond sprinkles for flavoring that end. Well, it's
Speaker 1: all grotesque, and nobody tries at a second time uh
Speaker 1: for the most part unless they have no other option.
Speaker 1: There are just extremely bored. But but it serves as
Speaker 1: a I think a fine lesson because if you look
Speaker 1: at your spice rack in your house, you were looking
Speaker 1: at a number of different substances that are in many
Speaker 1: cases toxins. There. They they evolved in the original plants
Speaker 1: that they came from as a deterrent to keep people
Speaker 1: from eating them, or to keep people from eating them
Speaker 1: on you know, certain portions. Yeah, in many cases the
Speaker 1: pungency and flavor that we prize them for when applied
Speaker 1: to a very small amount in our food is by
Speaker 1: itself disgusting. This is it's by design disgusting. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be that way as a defense mechanism. Yeah, food
Speaker 1: technologies essentially our mastery of all of these elements. We
Speaker 1: figured out how to manipulate them, how to change them,
Speaker 1: often with fire, and then and then utilize even these
Speaker 1: these these potent poisons in very small quantities that changes
Speaker 1: the flavor. So yeah, anything in your spice rack, if
Speaker 1: you took it in sufficient quantities, you in many cases
Speaker 1: could have an altered experience, probably not a good altered experience,
Speaker 1: but an altered one, and or experienced the toxic effects.
Speaker 1: So it's just you know, worth keeping in mind. I
Speaker 1: think nutmeg is a great example of that. Uh and
Speaker 1: I love nutmeg and uh uh and yet I would
Speaker 1: I would definitely not advise eating a matchbox full of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So main takeaways from this episode. Don't eat the green potatoes.
Speaker 1: The dose makes the poison. Don't grind up cherry wrapper
Speaker 1: coop pits and make a pesto out of them. Don't
Speaker 1: freak out over the dead man's fingers though, you know,
Speaker 1: take them out for flavor purposes, don't eat four cups
Speaker 1: of nutmeg. I mean basically the take home is, don't
Speaker 1: take your food for granted, Like, no have some basic
Speaker 1: idea of where food comes from, the processes that that
Speaker 1: lead it to your plate, uh, the organisms from that
Speaker 1: they stem from, and like if you have, the more
Speaker 1: you know about about what your food actually is, the
Speaker 1: less shocking any of these dangers are, and also the
Speaker 1: better prepared you are for these for for the often
Speaker 1: you know, small chances that you might encounter these problems.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. Maybe that's the
Speaker 1: main takeaway from this episode. When you think about your food,
Speaker 1: think about organisms. Don't think about it as a product
Speaker 1: it came from a factory, though in many cases it
Speaker 1: probably was probably you know, if it's a package product,
Speaker 1: probably was processed in a factory somewhere. But it is
Speaker 1: an organism or derived from an organism. Think about the
Speaker 1: organism it came from, the plant, the animal, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Think about its place in nature, all the things that
Speaker 1: fed it and grew its bones, as it in turn
Speaker 1: feeds you and grows your bones and hopefully doesn't poison you.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a perfect message for the holiday.
Speaker 1: So on that note, if you would like to certainly
Speaker 1: check out any of the links we mentioned here, that
Speaker 1: older episode on Nutmeg, last year's episode on dangerous foods, etcetera,
Speaker 1: you can check all of that out it's stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. You also find blog posts,
Speaker 1: you will find videos, You will find links out to
Speaker 1: various social media accounts as well, and if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly, as always, you
Speaker 1: can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Because it how stuff works dot com. The
Speaker 1: f