Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's time for a vault episode. This time we thought
Speaker 1: we jump into our old friends, the dangerous foods. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're getting into the holidays, the you know,
Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving, the Christmas, etcetera. Times of feasting, sometimes eating
Speaker 1: things that you normally wouldn't, sometimes eating a little bit
Speaker 1: too much. It's traditionally a time when we've explored foods that,
Speaker 1: at least in some cases, can be a danger to
Speaker 1: your health. I think these episodes we we were sort
Speaker 1: of doing a mix of things. We were highlighting some
Speaker 1: actual dangers associated with certain types of food in certain scenarios,
Speaker 1: but also sort of mocking food danger panic right right, Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure we touch on in the actual episode,
Speaker 1: this episode is not meant to make you panic about
Speaker 1: what you eat, but maybe just to think a little
Speaker 1: more about some of the peculiar qualities of our food. Now,
Speaker 1: we actually did three of these episodes, I think, so
Speaker 1: this is going to be the second one we did.
Speaker 1: We've already rerun the first one at some point back there.
Speaker 1: This was the second one that originally aired December twenty Yeah.
Speaker 1: Luckily for you, you don't have to listen to an
Speaker 1: order all you know, these are these are potpourri episodes
Speaker 1: for sure, a smorgess board of of of potentially horrifying foods.
Speaker 1: Let's hop right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's the holidays. We know
Speaker 1: what we do during the holidays, at least here in
Speaker 1: the United States of A. You put a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in your body that maybe shouldn't be there. That's right,
Speaker 1: you you eat. You have these various feasts that are
Speaker 1: all about getting through the winter ahead, getting through the cold,
Speaker 1: dark winter and surviving to the spring. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a it's a riot as old as
Speaker 1: human history and we're still doing it. Yeah, even with
Speaker 1: with nasty, weird contraptions like candy canes. Yes, I have
Speaker 1: a question, a question, does anybody really like candy canes? Um?
Speaker 1: I'm sure my son would like them, if if we
Speaker 1: we steer him away from it. Like, he got a
Speaker 1: candy cane at some event recently and brought it home
Speaker 1: and we kind of convinced him, actually, this is a
Speaker 1: candy that is best served hanging on the tree. This
Speaker 1: is more of a this is more of a decoration. Really,
Speaker 1: that's a candy. You don't even have to lie to
Speaker 1: him to discourage him about you just be like, this
Speaker 1: will cut your tongue and it's gonna you're gonna be
Speaker 1: sad you ate it. Your mouth will feel weird and
Speaker 1: you'll have injuries. Yeah, it doesn't have the hyper marketing
Speaker 1: of many modern candies because we we we limit the
Speaker 1: amount of candy that my son uh eats, and that
Speaker 1: means we like at Halloween, he was he had access
Speaker 1: to all of these candies, but then he traded them
Speaker 1: into the switch which and got a toy in exchange.
Speaker 1: But there were some candies were just so well marketed
Speaker 1: he was convinced they were his favorite. Like Ike and
Speaker 1: Mike for some reason. Hike and Mike, Yeah it marketed.
Speaker 1: Do they have marketing? Well, I mean they have the No, wait,
Speaker 1: 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: I forget which one comes first, but the package is
Speaker 1: like bright green, and they're these colors, and he's instantly
Speaker 1: connecting with it and he's saying, oh, this one, this
Speaker 1: one's good. Look, those are fruits on there. It's bright,
Speaker 1: it's it's potent. I want to eat that. That's my
Speaker 1: favorite candy. He's never actually had it. Huh well, okay,
Speaker 1: so today's episode is going to be a sequel to
Speaker 1: our last episode about Dangerous Foods that aired last year,
Speaker 1: and uh so today is Dangerous Foods to the Revenge, No,
Speaker 1: the second course, the return of the food. There was
Speaker 1: never a good thing. Yes, a dish best served cold,
Speaker 1: And there is gonna be a lot of wonderful, dangerous,
Speaker 1: poisonous weirdness out there to talk about. But we do
Speaker 1: want to say at the beginning that at least I
Speaker 1: feel deeply Robert, I hope you feel the same way
Speaker 1: that being alarmist is very much against the stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind ethos. So we are not going to
Speaker 1: tell you there is a silent killer lurking in your pantry.
Speaker 1: That that save that for those websites that demonize MSG
Speaker 1: and stuff. We've already debunked. This episode is going to
Speaker 1: be about dangerous and poisonous misadventures involving rare foods everyday foods.
Speaker 1: But no matter what case it is, it's not designed
Speaker 1: to scare you, but it should be a reminder that
Speaker 1: we live in a world of very complex and sometimes
Speaker 1: fragile biochemical interactions, and for those of us living in
Speaker 1: industrialized countries, I think sometimes our consumer mindset leads us
Speaker 1: to believe that our food should meet the industry quality
Speaker 1: controls standards you'd get in the dead products you buy
Speaker 1: at Walmart or Ikea. Maybe so if every version of
Speaker 1: the same product number table at Ikea really is the
Speaker 1: same no matter which I Kea you go to anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world, shouldn't every baked potato be the same
Speaker 1: everywhere you go in the world. But it's not, is it.
Speaker 1: I mean foods, the foods we eat, our organisms or
Speaker 1: substances derived from organisms, plants, animals, fungi, and as as
Speaker 1: much as we might like our food products to be
Speaker 1: contained and tamed and dependable as the output of a
Speaker 1: furniture factory, as we all know, sometimes life uh finds
Speaker 1: a way. Yeah, I mean, these are organisms. Now in
Speaker 1: some cases especially with various fruits and whatnot. Uh. It
Speaker 1: is the the organisms game for you to eat it.
Speaker 1: It wants you to eat it. But in many other
Speaker 1: cases the organism does not want to be eaten and
Speaker 1: has certain biological systems in place to prevent it, to
Speaker 1: discourage it, 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 inn 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 long process, and it's just very common around the
Speaker 1: world in various ways for something weird to happen somewhere
Speaker 1: along that process. Alright, 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: the 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 in his true coops are
Speaker 1: returning home from battle with a group. Xenophons got about
Speaker 1: ten thousand Greek fighters with him, and they're traveling through
Speaker 1: col Chiefe, which is a region along the coast of
Speaker 1: the Black Sea and what is now the country of Georgia,
Speaker 1: and Xenophon's troops come across a place that is swarming
Speaker 1: with thousands of bees. They're just bees everywhere. And you
Speaker 1: might think, oh, that sounds horrible, but for a bunch
Speaker 1: of Greek soldiers, this is actually good news because they
Speaker 1: knew they're in for a treat, fresh honey from the hive.
Speaker 1: That's right. They weren't packing any candy canes or I
Speaker 1: can Mike uh and and Mike uh. It might have
Speaker 1: maybe it was reversed back then. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they got the Greeks. The ancient Greeks world oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the Greek alphabet, yeah, I come before M. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure at any rate, they probably weren't getting their their
Speaker 1: sweet tooth satisfied quite like they would they would wish
Speaker 1: it to be. You know, I comes before him and
Speaker 1: our alphabet apologize 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 rights 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 seemed to have lost their
Speaker 1: minds uh. In others the men were like men on
Speaker 1: their deathbeds Xenophon rights quote. So they lay there in
Speaker 1: great numbers, as though the army had suffered to defeat,
Speaker 1: and great despondency prevailed. On the next day, however, no
Speaker 1: one had died, and it approximately the same hour as
Speaker 1: they had eaten the honey. They began to come to
Speaker 1: their senses, and on the third or fourth day, they
Speaker 1: got up as if from a drugging bad honey. So
Speaker 1: what happened? Yeah, I had the local bees risen up
Speaker 1: against them. Uh No, Xenophon's fighters had stumbled into a
Speaker 1: trove of the substance well known to inhabitants of the
Speaker 1: Black seacoast, mad honey. This is what the ancients called it.
Speaker 1: Plenty called it. Uh Oh, I forget the term now,
Speaker 1: I think it's millymnomenon the honey, that is, a mad
Speaker 1: maker like that. And there are other ancient accounts of
Speaker 1: mad honey poisoning. So in sixty b C. The Roman
Speaker 1: military leader Pompey the Great is taking a Roman army
Speaker 1: near the southern shore the Black Sea again while chasing
Speaker 1: the Persian army of King Mithridates of Pontus and the Persians.
Speaker 1: They've got a group of allies apparently who know about
Speaker 1: the mad honey, and these allies set a trap for
Speaker 1: Pompey's army. They placed honey combs full of mad honey
Speaker 1: from the local bees into containers and left them along
Speaker 1: Pompey's path, knowing that some of the soldiers would not
Speaker 1: be able to resist a sweet indulgence and they were
Speaker 1: right the home. The Romans were basically Winnie the Pooh,
Speaker 1: they were poop, I've got to get the honey. Uh.
Speaker 1: So many Roman troops ate the honey. They became incredibly
Speaker 1: sick and disoriented, went out of their heads. While the
Speaker 1: Romans were wallering, wallowing around, you know, in a bit
Speaker 1: of a sugary stupor. The Persian army came back, killed him,
Speaker 1: led to a battle with very asymmetrical outcome. I've read
Speaker 1: that more than a thousand Roman soldiers were killed and
Speaker 1: very few Persians died, a very asymmetrical outcome. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful exactly. Yeah, a little bit of a call back there. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's I think the term would be a massacre. Actually
Speaker 1: that's the non massacre, sticky massacre. But there's an excellent
Speaker 1: article on mad honey. Actually I came across by none
Speaker 1: other than Adrian Mayor. If you remember from our episode
Speaker 1: on geo mythology. Adrian Mayor is the main scholar we
Speaker 1: talked about in that that episode, and she's known for
Speaker 1: the theory that various mythological beasts were inspired by ancient
Speaker 1: people's coming across the dinosaur fossils. So for example, people
Speaker 1: in Central Asia may have found triceratops remains in the
Speaker 1: Gobi Desert and this led to the creation of Griffin myths.
Speaker 1: And so we talked about her in that episode. But
Speaker 1: she has this article in a nine edition of Archaeology
Speaker 1: magazine called Mad Honey. It's a great read, you can
Speaker 1: look it up online. But she talks about also how
Speaker 1: in a d N a ruler of the Kievan russ
Speaker 1: called Olga of Kiev, who in general I looked her up.
Speaker 1: She seems like she she's pretty be a she's like bad,
Speaker 1: she's cool. Um. She used fer minted honey from the
Speaker 1: Black Sea region to poison a group of about five
Speaker 1: thousand of her enemies and then had them massacred, So
Speaker 1: that there's a there's a long history of military missteps
Speaker 1: or or outright uh poisonings and massacres with Mad Honey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and with all these ancient accounts, I mean, you have
Speaker 1: to 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, you know to say, well, yes, our troops
Speaker 1: were were massacred and our troops were ambushed, but they
Speaker 1: were also poisoned by his local honey or or this
Speaker 1: not because I was a commander, right, But but we
Speaker 1: do know now that this is totally plausible because mad
Speaker 1: honey is absolutely a real thing, and mad honey the
Speaker 1: problem 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 gray anotoxin.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be referring to a paper published
Speaker 1: in Cardiovascular Toxicology by Sue us A. Jansen at All
Speaker 1: called Granotoxin Poisoning, mad Honey Disease and Beyond from two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. And what they report is that grayanotoxin is
Speaker 1: also known as andromedo toxin, acetyal, andromed al and rhodotoxin,
Speaker 1: and it can be derived from the body parts of
Speaker 1: plants in the family er Cassier, which includes rhododendron, pierists, agarista,
Speaker 1: and Calmia and in reality, granno toxin is a family
Speaker 1: of related toxins. So there are a bunch of different
Speaker 1: grano toxins. We should probably speak about it in the plural.
Speaker 1: There are more than twenty five is a forms that
Speaker 1: have been derived from rhododendron. And here's the basic way
Speaker 1: it works in your body. So grannotoxins are poisonous because
Speaker 1: of their ability to bind to the group to receptor
Speaker 1: site in voltage gated sodium channels or v g s
Speaker 1: c s. And so I'll break that down. Basically, v
Speaker 1: gs c s are protein structures there a little structures
Speaker 1: within the body that span across membranes and they facilitate
Speaker 1: the transfer of sodium ions which has charged particles of sodium.
Speaker 1: And so the transfer of these charged particles is important
Speaker 1: for communication between the body's different tissues, allowing the passage
Speaker 1: of action potential in cells like neurons. If you introduce
Speaker 1: a toxin that binds too receptor sites in the sodium channels,
Speaker 1: you can essentially prevent effective communication between body tissues and
Speaker 1: disrupt the nervous system. Specifically, the researchers think that gray
Speaker 1: anotoxins 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: vagueal 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
Speaker 1: body from the heart and the lungs to the voice
Speaker 1: production center. So this is bad stuff. You don't you
Speaker 1: don't want it in your body, Its right, But grannotoxin
Speaker 1: contamination of honey occurs most often just in the Black
Speaker 1: Sea region of Turkey, especially from the plant's rhododendron Rhododendron
Speaker 1: ponticum and Rhododendron lutam. But rhododendron isn't the only plant
Speaker 1: to produce nectar containing grayannotoxin, which can filter down into
Speaker 1: the honey that the bees produced. Of course, honey containing
Speaker 1: grayannotoxin has also been found in North America, for example
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, where in the nineteen fifties a sample
Speaker 1: was found to contain about a hundred parts per million
Speaker 1: of granotoxin and what did that come from? While the
Speaker 1: authors speculated it was probably derived from bees that eight
Speaker 1: the nectar of the mountain laurel or Calmia 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 is
Speaker 1: a late cold snap in the Eastern US that kills
Speaker 1: a 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 that they're more
Speaker 1: cold resistant, 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, the toxic flowers are the
Speaker 1: the only source for the bees. Yeah, because the bees
Speaker 1: don't love them the most. The bees would rather have
Speaker 1: another flower. But if all the other flowers are out
Speaker 1: of the game for some reason, they will go to
Speaker 1: the granotoxin plants and make their honey from that sweet,
Speaker 1: sweet nectar 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 these
Speaker 1: affected areas and may and 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 are gonna list a few. This is also
Speaker 1: this is back to Jansen at all. So there's hypotension
Speaker 1: meaning low blood pressure, problems with cardiac rhythm, nausea, 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 have have seen a clinical
Speaker 1: list of symptoms that also included the various injuries that
Speaker 1: the Persian military have afflicted on you in ancient times.
Speaker 1: Side effects include massacre, yeah, dismemberment. But here's one more thing.
Speaker 1: Not all known cases of mad honey poisoning or accidental
Speaker 1: Sometimes people take grand a toxin contaminated honey intentionally as
Speaker 1: an aphrodisiac or as an alternative medicine. And I think
Speaker 1: the jury is still out as to whether at low
Speaker 1: doses gryannotoxin 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. All right, we're back, Robert.
Speaker 1: You have piqued my interest dead man's fingers? Are you
Speaker 1: literally 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? Are you? Yeah? Digitally if you will. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Are you a crap band? Do you
Speaker 1: enjoy eating crab? I don't eat it that often, but
Speaker 1: I do like it. Do you What is the most
Speaker 1: crab like form of your crab consumption? So? Do you?
Speaker 1: Do you? Do you enjoy soft shell crab on the sandwich,
Speaker 1: the legs and the claws sticking out on the sides.
Speaker 1: It's another thing. I don't eat that often, but when
Speaker 1: I've had it, I've liked it. Okay, It's it's my
Speaker 1: absolute favorite. I think it's the it is the best
Speaker 1: way to eat an animal where there's just there's there's
Speaker 1: less deniability about what you're doing. You're just you're biting
Speaker 1: into this crab. The whole shape is their shape is
Speaker 1: there might as well eat a cockroach. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's it's the meat, but also all these other substances
Speaker 1: that are all fried up, all the other bits of
Speaker 1: its anatomy. It's I feel like it's a very honest
Speaker 1: mode of consumption, even though it is cooked. So it's
Speaker 1: not like you're just eating the raw living crab. No.
Speaker 1: I can get with that. Okay, well, this is uh,
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about crabs here though, of course,
Speaker 1: we're talking about about the dead man's fingers, which if
Speaker 1: you've ever actively in gay in the cook cooking of crabs,
Speaker 1: and catching of crabs, then you you probably have some
Speaker 1: degree of familiarity of what I'm talking about here. So
Speaker 1: in our last Dangerous Foods episode, we discussed the manner
Speaker 1: by which food goo puffer fish become edible via the
Speaker 1: skilled culinarya removal of certain tetrodo toxin laden inerts. Right,
Speaker 1: if it's got certain organs that have especially high concentrations
Speaker 1: of this toxin. Right, so you need a skilled chef
Speaker 1: to cut that little sliver out, cook it up and
Speaker 1: it's good to go, right, Yeah, But a good sushi
Speaker 1: chef will know what they were, what they're doing, right,
Speaker 1: they'll be able to get it out of there, and
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to worry about it if if you're
Speaker 1: in good hands. Exactly. So this is faintly similar to that.
Speaker 1: But but this is definitely a category where we're going
Speaker 1: to be dispelling a lot of ideas about dangerous foods
Speaker 1: rather than uh, you know, giving you the science but
Speaker 1: behind why it's actually dangerous. Okay, Well, you've got to
Speaker 1: tell me where the name comes from, Okay, Uh, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell that, the name itself is
Speaker 1: just kind of lost to 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 marketing. Right.
Speaker 1: Decide if you have this rotting hand of the drowned
Speaker 1: 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 gonna 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 of
Speaker 1: boiling water comes back from inside the shell. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of beautiful in its own way.
Speaker 1: And uh, and in trying to figure this out, because
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna spoil it just yet. If you don't
Speaker 1: know what the dead man's hand is you might expect
Speaker 1: it to be something related to digestion, right, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing crab anus or I don't know. No, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, you you you eat the that portion
Speaker 1: of the crab, at least with the soft show crab.
Speaker 1: But but but you know, there are plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of animals for which we cast aside certain internal organs um,
Speaker 1: either out of necessity or just we don't want to
Speaker 1: bother 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 that. Yeah, it's pretty great because they yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't like, uh, eating feces, but they do want
Speaker 1: the large intestine. Yeah. Yeah, they're tasty. They'll eat everything
Speaker 1: but that. And the baby komodo dragons there's no child
Speaker 1: rearing and komodo dragon culture. Uh so the baby komotos
Speaker 1: have to have to climb up trees to get away
Speaker 1: from the adults who will try to eat them, but
Speaker 1: they can. They've also been observed to smear themselves in
Speaker 1: feces and or at least they wind up covered in feces,
Speaker 1: and then the parents will not eat them because they're disgusting.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like Predator with Arnold Swartzenegger in
Speaker 1: the mud, but they can't see them, they're just not tasty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a good interpretation on Predator. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what if all all the mud was poop and then
Speaker 1: the predators just like, look, I can't do this exactly.
Speaker 1: That's what was going on the whole time. He could
Speaker 1: see him. But you know, but anyway, but based on
Speaker 1: all of this, it feels somewhat accurate that there would
Speaker 1: be the sickening, disease spreading or even deadly portion of
Speaker 1: the common food crap, Right, Yeah, I would think so
Speaker 1: minds up with the off or at least with just
Speaker 1: intuitively looking at a crab it looks like something that
Speaker 1: would have poisonous parts. Yeah, you would look at it,
Speaker 1: it looks back at you, and you might ask yourself,
Speaker 1: can I eat all of this? Clearly not, because a
Speaker 1: lot of it's very very hard and pointy. So the
Speaker 1: fingers that we're talking about here are nothing more than
Speaker 1: the crabs gills, and this is where respiration and filtration
Speaker 1: takes place. And they consist of uh many different plume
Speaker 1: like filaments arranged around a central axis. In the blue crab,
Speaker 1: for instance, there are eight gills on either side. So
Speaker 1: and and if I guess, if you, you kind of
Speaker 1: squint at them, and I've I've looked at him when
Speaker 1: cleaning crabs and instructed by my my in laws who
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, and I do not know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, but they tell me, oh, that's the dead
Speaker 1: man's hand right there. Are they like crab country people?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, my uh, my wife's family has Cajun
Speaker 1: blood and her brother lives down in um in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they look like constantly crabbing, catching crabs, bringing
Speaker 1: them back. The whole family have taken them apart um,
Speaker 1: and it's it's good eating. But but yeah, if you really,
Speaker 1: if you, if you want to interpret it as such,
Speaker 1: the dead man's hand might look like a little diseased
Speaker 1: lepre con claw or something or two of them. Now,
Speaker 1: the reality here, of course, is the crab is an organism,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot going on underneath that shell um
Speaker 1: or you know, underneath where the shell would be. If
Speaker 1: you're using a soft shell, the white muscle meat, that's
Speaker 1: the prize stuff. That's the stuff that gets picked away
Speaker 1: and put into other other recipes. That's the stuff you
Speaker 1: might buy in bulk, pre picked for an exaggerated price.
Speaker 1: But you also find all these other things. If you've
Speaker 1: ever cleaned a crab, or if you've ever eaten soft
Speaker 1: shell crab, you know what I'm talking about. There's just
Speaker 1: some weird, nasty sauce inside the carapace. Potentially a lot
Speaker 1: of it's open to interpretation because there's there's a yellowish
Speaker 1: mustard that is the fat. In females you'll find orange ovaries,
Speaker 1: and in males who find a small white testies. There's
Speaker 1: a stomach, there's a little gray heart, there are intestines,
Speaker 1: there is an anus. Everything you might expect to find
Speaker 1: when you're taking apart an animal. Uh, certainly one that
Speaker 1: was just living before you know, boiled it up or um.
Speaker 1: And and also if you're eating a s fried sauceshell
Speaker 1: crab right off the bun, you definitely encounter that that
Speaker 1: yellow mustard fat and all these other ingredients. So we're
Speaker 1: you supposed to get rid of that stuff or what. Well,
Speaker 1: the instructions vary, so you know, some people are gonna
Speaker 1: be very pure about their about the picked crab, right
Speaker 1: because that's that's the meat, and that if you're if
Speaker 1: you're picking apart cooked crabs, you're just gonna probably eat
Speaker 1: the meat out of it. Right. But uh, but but
Speaker 1: it it depends. I mean, the most of this is edible.
Speaker 1: The fat is certainly edible, and with soft shell crabs
Speaker 1: you just kind of bite into the whole thing and
Speaker 1: just eat it whole like a monster. But at at
Speaker 1: most what generally what is is prescribed as that you
Speaker 1: remove the eyes, and you remove the gills the dead
Speaker 1: man's fingers, and it's not because they're poise, no, but
Speaker 1: because they're chewy and its cartilage and and they might
Speaker 1: be a bit bitter. But it's not a do or
Speaker 1: die situation. It's merely a these are the parts of
Speaker 1: the crab that are not delicious and or are not
Speaker 1: fun to eat, but they're not poisonous, they don't carry diseases,
Speaker 1: and interestingly enough, you know it also is going to
Speaker 1: depend on the culture. I ran across a wonderful Serious
Speaker 1: Eats article by writer Chee Chee Wang and she does
Speaker 1: this series titled The Nasty Bits, where she she she
Speaker 1: talks about the the Nasty Bits of various um foods
Speaker 1: sources uh and in particular she talks about about crabs.
Speaker 1: In one of these, she cuts open a live crab
Speaker 1: and tries out crab miso or connie miso, which is
Speaker 1: this Japanese tradition that typically involves cooking a partially vivisected
Speaker 1: crab directly over a low burning flame. Wow. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like cooking it in its little shell after you just
Speaker 1: cut it open. That's brutal. It well, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all of its brutal, that's true. But 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. The 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 did you
Speaker 1: look very you know, very cool. We eat all sorts
Speaker 1: of weird parts of animals. Uh, some are more acquired
Speaker 1: taste than others. So it makes sense, especially in a
Speaker 1: within Japanese cuisine, right, that is so dependent upon the
Speaker 1: riches of the ocean, that there would be uh, a
Speaker 1: finer use of the crab inerts here. Well, I gotta
Speaker 1: respect that. But the dead man dead man's fingers, specifically
Speaker 1: the gills. So you're saying, not poisonous, nothing to this
Speaker 1: myth at all. Nope, not poisonous, not gonna cause a disease,
Speaker 1: not gonna kill you. It's just a taste issue. It's
Speaker 1: uh and uh and and the consistency of it. And
Speaker 1: yet some would find even a way to appreciate that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean there are diverse flavors to play
Speaker 1: with there beyond the white meat of the crab. And uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about this, especially if
Speaker 1: you have access or obligations of surrounding live crabs and
Speaker 1: freshly cooked crabs and and you know, pulling them apart.
Speaker 1: I ran across a wonderful pdf from math in science
Speaker 1: dot info. It's like an educational website, and this particular
Speaker 1: pdf guides you through a quote edible dissection of a
Speaker 1: blue crab. And so it's it's kind of a combination
Speaker 1: between a you know, like a school like a biology class, dissection,
Speaker 1: and culinary preparation. So it it takes you through the
Speaker 1: creatures anatomy as you take it apart, and also tells
Speaker 1: you what you can eat and how you go about
Speaker 1: eating it. Well. I do think in general for people,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna eat meat, if you're gonna eat the
Speaker 1: body parts of an organism, I think it's good to
Speaker 1: familiar yourself, familiarize yourself with that organism and the parts
Speaker 1: you're reading are and where they come from. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean I think we do we do ourselves. We
Speaker 1: do our and we do our animals a disservice when
Speaker 1: we distance ourselves from the source and the reality of
Speaker 1: our sustenance. Yeah, if you just think about the meat
Speaker 1: that you're eating as a thing that arrives wrapped in
Speaker 1: plastic wrap. Yeah, maybe with a mystical dead leprica in
Speaker 1: hand there at some point. So I'll include links out
Speaker 1: to both the Nasty Bits Uh article as well as
Speaker 1: the edible dissection instructions on the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blame. Mind dot Com Okay, Robert,
Speaker 1: I have a food to ask about, and I only
Speaker 1: know about it because of a line in Monty Python
Speaker 1: and the Holy Grail. I remember, you remember the scene
Speaker 1: with the French character who's taunting Arthur and his nights.
Speaker 1: I think that's played by John Cleese, right, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he outrageous French knights. Yeah. Yeah, So he gives
Speaker 1: a lot, he gives a lot of great insults to
Speaker 1: the Knights of Camelot, and at one point he alleges
Speaker 1: that their father smelled of elderberries. And I always found
Speaker 1: that funny. But it's one of those things where I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've had this experience where you find something funny
Speaker 1: without knowing what it means. It's just the sound of
Speaker 1: the words that makes you laugh. I've never seen an elderberry.
Speaker 1: I've never, as far as I know, never tasted an elderberry.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the deal with them is. But
Speaker 1: are they poisonous? Um? Yeah? This is an interesting, uh subject,
Speaker 1: because elderberries are another example of a food item that
Speaker 1: can prove dangerous if you consume it raw and under
Speaker 1: the rise circumstances. But it's also regularly traditionally used in
Speaker 1: you know, cooking for in various consumable forms. It's been
Speaker 1: used in medicine for ages, it has antioxidant properties, it's
Speaker 1: used to treat sinus infection, cold and flu and then
Speaker 1: on on the culinary side, has been used in jams, pies,
Speaker 1: liqueurs and according to BBC Good Food, it is a
Speaker 1: must for quote the famous German black forest ham that
Speaker 1: is 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 created with the with juniper berries, so it's
Speaker 1: uh similar to that. But um, but this is an
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'd pick some elder berry and you'd bring
Speaker 1: it back, but not stand there at the hedgerow eating raw.
Speaker 1: Right aspect, Well, there are accounts of people eating it,
Speaker 1: and there are accounts of people eating it raw and
Speaker 1: not feeling any symptoms from it. But this is not
Speaker 1: this is certainly not recommended. Um. So the the UK's
Speaker 1: Food Standards Agency recommends cooking elderberries to destroy toxins that
Speaker 1: are present in the raw berries. And it's also a
Speaker 1: general rule of thumb to avoid unrighte berries. So generally
Speaker 1: the way this, uh, this is gonna work is that
Speaker 1: you you're only gonna deal with blue or purple berries,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna avoid the red ones completely. So they
Speaker 1: tend to like dark nd as they age. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so you avoid the ripe ones. Uh. It's also also
Speaker 1: a general good rule of thumb. Pregnant breastfeeding individuals as
Speaker 1: well as people with autoimmune conditions autoimmune 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, desserts, 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 uh sambusis nigra, 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: samboosis elvis uh completely and because he gives you a
Speaker 1: cursed magical stone. Yeah, it's it sounds wonderful that the
Speaker 1: black elder in the forest meet the black elder at
Speaker 1: the hedgerow. But uh, but yeah so but but in
Speaker 1: terms of what's toxic here, the active alkaloids in elderberry
Speaker 1: plants are hydrocyanic acid and uh samboosin, and both will
Speaker 1: cause nausea sam boosey. And is there any connection to
Speaker 1: sambuca or those just set a false cognate? That may
Speaker 1: be a false cognate. I cannot say one way or
Speaker 1: another on that, but I doubt it. Okay, So, so far,
Speaker 1: we've talked about mad Honey, We've talked about dead man's fingers,
Speaker 1: We've talked about elder berries. Uh, what what is next?
Speaker 1: Surely there's some exotic food item that you have for
Speaker 1: us to discuss. Well, Robert, I want to take you
Speaker 1: on a food poisoning mystery adventure in nineteen seventies England.
Speaker 1: This is fitting to follow elderberry So in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: on the second day of the autumn term at a
Speaker 1: school in South London, 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. Oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds delicious. If our British listeners can tell me
Speaker 1: 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: Uh 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 nine 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 comatose 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 are 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, organophosphor us, various pesticides,
Speaker 1: and defoliants. All of it negative. Okay, So if we
Speaker 1: ruled out the syrup sponge putting it no, not necessarily no,
Speaker 1: all of these could be suspect. What if it was
Speaker 1: 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 syrup 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 determine the culprit.
Speaker 1: They found that the sick boy's blood plasma had a
Speaker 1: deficiency of something called pseudocolonesterrace. Okay, now I gotta explain
Speaker 1: a little body chemistry here. Colonester race is a naturally
Speaker 1: occurring enzyme in your body. It's in your blood plasma,
Speaker 1: and it's necessary for the correct functioning of an animal's
Speaker 1: nervous system. So your body, like other animal bodies, has
Speaker 1: a nervous system as its command center, and your muscles, skin,
Speaker 1: inner organs don't do much without the nervous system telling
Speaker 1: them to do it. And you shouldn't just think about
Speaker 1: this in the you know, conscious, deliberate sense of using
Speaker 1: your brain to move your skeletal muscles to jump over
Speaker 1: a pothole or throw a bowl of soup at somebody,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is you do with your body. Uh.
Speaker 1: This also applies to the unconscious functioning of most of
Speaker 1: your internal organs. They need electrical stimulation or inhibition from
Speaker 1: the nervous system, and these electrical signals are transported through
Speaker 1: the body through structures called synapses. Synapses, of course we've
Speaker 1: talked about them on the show before, but they're the
Speaker 1: gateways between neurons or nerve cells, and they allow electrical
Speaker 1: and chemical signals to pass through. And so these signals
Speaker 1: are often carried by a chemical called acetal coline. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you can stop these signals with a specific colon ester
Speaker 1: as enzyme called acetal colon ester ace, which breaks down
Speaker 1: the acetal coline that allows the passage of the signals.
Speaker 1: So you need both. You need both chemicals in your
Speaker 1: body to allow and regulate proper functioning of the nervous system.
Speaker 1: If you don't have enough colon ester as to break
Speaker 1: down the acetal coline, your nervous system is going to
Speaker 1: start to experience the equivalent of a street congested with
Speaker 1: lots of cars and the cars won't stop, so you
Speaker 1: can experience negative effects all over the body as a
Speaker 1: result of the nervous system being unable to effectively inhibit
Speaker 1: signals firing across synapses. Okay, so if this were a
Speaker 1: game of clue. At this point, we kind of know
Speaker 1: what the murder weapon was, but not who or whether
Speaker 1: what the murder is? Is it the Yeah? What was
Speaker 1: it was? It? Was it Colonel Syrup, sponge Pudding, or
Speaker 1: General Gravy or one of these other fine suspects, or
Speaker 1: in the British version, Reverend Gravy. Uh yeah, good questions. So, so,
Speaker 1: the boys had been poisoned by something that inhibited the
Speaker 1: production of colon ester as in their bodies, or it
Speaker 1: generally inhibited colonester as. Actually I can't remember if it
Speaker 1: was the production or if it naturally lowered. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: had decreased colon ester as and this allowed the researchers
Speaker 1: to isolate the cause of the outbreak because they knew
Speaker 1: 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 act 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 poisoned, 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 solanassier, or
Speaker 1: the nightshade family, which of course you might recall is
Speaker 1: sort of known for its poisons. Eggplants, tomatoes, and some
Speaker 1: of their fruits are also members of this family. Potato
Speaker 1: 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 seine, 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 and 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 these South London
Speaker 1: school boys. Now, most recorded cases of solanine 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 and
Speaker 1: at play, solanine poisonings can be deadly. And I want
Speaker 1: to give a few examples from a book about food
Speaker 1: intolerance called Was It Something You Ate? By John Emsley
Speaker 1: and Peter Fell, published by Oxford University Press in two
Speaker 1: thousand two. Uh they signed an example where during the
Speaker 1: Korean War, food shortages in North Korea forced people in
Speaker 1: many communities to survive on things like rotten potatoes, and
Speaker 1: in one area, three and eighty two people became sick
Speaker 1: from solanine poisoning, of which fifty five were hospitalized and
Speaker 1: twenty two died. Symptoms included weak pulse, blue lips and ears,
Speaker 1: pale skin, enlargement of the heart and liver, swelling of
Speaker 1: the face, abdomen and extremities, and death usually occurred within
Speaker 1: five to ten days. In the cases where people died
Speaker 1: in the last stages before death, people experienced excitability and
Speaker 1: attacks of shaking all over the body, and they eventually
Speaker 1: died from respiratory failure. It's reported, and there are a
Speaker 1: couple of other cases. In nineteen eighteen in Glasgow, Scotland,
Speaker 1: sixty one people got sick with vomiting, diarrhea and headache
Speaker 1: after eating potatoes. Of them, one boy died of strangulation
Speaker 1: of the bowel. And also in nineteen a family of
Speaker 1: seven was poisoned by green potatoes and two of them died.
Speaker 1: Well Joe, At this point, I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners are thinking, well, heck, we live in of
Speaker 1: a French fry nation, live in a a fully loaded
Speaker 1: baked 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 poisoning? 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 souleanine 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: weighs about three hundred grams 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: eater or arsenic would be a better bet. So regular
Speaker 1: potatoes with normal soulenine 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 probab we need to worry about all
Speaker 1: those sunfries. Yeah, yeah, you'll probably have I don't know,
Speaker 1: a reaction to the salt first or something. But properly
Speaker 1: farmed potatoes produced by experienced growers tend to be bread
Speaker 1: for really low glcoalkaloid and specifically solanine content in the
Speaker 1: tuber much lower than you'd find in a wild potato.
Speaker 1: Uh And according to that Emsley and fell book I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the average potato has maybe three to six
Speaker 1: milligrams of solanine per grams of mass, so that might
Speaker 1: be a different figure than Hall had, but either way,
Speaker 1: this is not a threat. Most of this also is
Speaker 1: going to be on the outside near the peel, so
Speaker 1: if you peel the potato, you're probably getting rid of
Speaker 1: most of it, and the concentration of solanine and the
Speaker 1: potato tends to increase if the potato is bruised or
Speaker 1: exposed to light, which tends to cause greening. You've seen
Speaker 1: green potatoes before, those are the ones you don't eat.
Speaker 1: Solanine is generally found in UH in higher proportions, and
Speaker 1: potatoes that are have turned green or especially have begun
Speaker 1: to sprout. I think that, Yeah, where I've seen the
Speaker 1: green potatoes the most have been the the sort of
Speaker 1: science classroom potato experiments. Yes, well you you have it,
Speaker 1: have toothpicks stuck in it, and you're you're you're growing
Speaker 1: it out or something. Yeah, and it's been exposed to
Speaker 1: light for a long period or Mr or classic Mr
Speaker 1: Potato head. I imagine. I don't know that I've ever
Speaker 1: actually encountered one of those. Oh, I've never thought about
Speaker 1: him being poisoned, but he really probably is. It gets
Speaker 1: out on the counter all day. Well, so you're thinking,
Speaker 1: how can I know to avoid this kind of poisoning?
Speaker 1: How do I keep the glycoalkaloids out of my body? Well?
Speaker 1: Simple steps. Store your potatoes in a cool, dry place.
Speaker 1: Don't eat old potatoes, don't eat a potato that is
Speaker 1: green or sprouting. And if you're in doubt, peel your
Speaker 1: potatoes because there is likely much more poison in the
Speaker 1: peel than in the starchy center. All right, I feel
Speaker 1: better At this point, I was a little nervous, so
Speaker 1: now I feel better. Okay. Another fun fact about the
Speaker 1: green potatoes, though, the green you see in a green
Speaker 1: potato that maybe quite poisonous is not soulanine or any
Speaker 1: other glycoalkaloid itself, but regular old chlorophyll stuff that makes
Speaker 1: plants green. The solanine and the chlorophyll chlorophyll, they're just correlated.
Speaker 1: So if you see chlorophyll, it probably means there are
Speaker 1: metabolic processes going on in the potato. Uh that This
Speaker 1: means it's probably been exposed to sun or something which
Speaker 1: tends to increase the soulanine content. One last historical side note.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen sixties, researchers in the United States
Speaker 1: bred a new strain of potato that was known as
Speaker 1: the Lenape potato, and it was released in November nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven by the Crops Research Division of the U.
Speaker 1: S Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural Experiment Station of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And it was a cross between some existing potato varieties
Speaker 1: selected to create a tuber perfect for making potato chips.
Speaker 1: So it had a high specific gravity, meaning a high
Speaker 1: solids content that's a dry matter, and a resistance to
Speaker 1: common parasites and potato diseases such as late blight, potato scab,
Speaker 1: mild mosaic and tuber necrosis from leaf roll and stem
Speaker 1: end browning. No potatoes have the best disease name, do
Speaker 1: I mean? I guess that they're just they're just ready
Speaker 1: for they're always already a little bit grotesque, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was also considered to make potato chips with
Speaker 1: good color, could make good potato chips even after it's
Speaker 1: been in cold storage. So new superior potato. But this
Speaker 1: is the age if you want to pristine, just shining
Speaker 1: like ivory white potato chip. Before we reached this age
Speaker 1: of like cool multicolored potato chips exactly people wanted it.
Speaker 1: It should look like it was made out of plastic.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately there was a problem. The lenape varietal was
Speaker 1: found to have a defect. It was poisonous. Reportedly able
Speaker 1: to cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, fever, bad symptoms. And what
Speaker 1: was the culprit. Well, the potato naturally contained elevated levels
Speaker 1: of glycoalkaloids. So the lenape potato was withdrawn from consumer
Speaker 1: consumer production production and shame. I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: it actually ever made it to the stores to the
Speaker 1: consumers themselves, or if it did, it was pretty soon
Speaker 1: after withdrawn. But reading up on this, I wanted to
Speaker 1: note it was my first occasion to check out a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties edition of the American Potato Journal. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is your first experience. You're not picked up this
Speaker 1: this journal previously. It's so fascinating journal. But also I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention that I think because of its inclusion
Speaker 1: and influential book, the story about the lenape potato was
Speaker 1: often referenced in the nineteen nineties during the first big
Speaker 1: debate on GMO crops, though the poison potato itself was
Speaker 1: the product of more traditional plant breeding. Yeah, like that's
Speaker 1: the thing, right, I mean, we've been with our with
Speaker 1: our cultivated um agricultural products. We have been manipulating them
Speaker 1: for quite a while, exactly regular levels like non genetic manipulation.
Speaker 1: I mean really by the virtue, I mean it's still
Speaker 1: genetic manipulation. We've been we've been manipulating these plants for ages. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think it was just generally considered an example of
Speaker 1: the dangers of what happens when you use science to
Speaker 1: mess around with pure natural foods. But of course, the
Speaker 1: other potato varieties that you know, we know and love
Speaker 1: are the product of agriculture and breeding, and you know,
Speaker 1: scientific investigation into the Mendalian genetics of potato varietals. Uh,
Speaker 1: and a much less dangerous you can produce a much
Speaker 1: less dangerous potato through these processes than the glycoalkaloid rich
Speaker 1: wild potato. So I'm not sure what kind of argument
Speaker 1: that makes really, So we're continuing to to to try
Speaker 1: and breathe the quizettees Hadiac of the potato. But there's
Speaker 1: always any potatoes. There's always the chance you'll create these
Speaker 1: various monsters on the way, right, I think, So all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will jump into another dangerous food example, and yes,
Speaker 1: there 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 is as
Speaker 1: we'll discussed, 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 almost everything
Speaker 1: else we've talked about in this episode, the old adage
Speaker 1: in chemistry holds true. Or is it chemistry toxicology? The
Speaker 1: dose makes the poison anything, including water, including sugar, including whatever.
Speaker 1: Anything in the correct dose had just poisonous. So the
Speaker 1: question is how much of it are you getting and
Speaker 1: how little does it take to hurt you? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the reality here is that, yes, the seeds, pits, and
Speaker 1: stones of many varieties of fruit contains small amounts of cyanide. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a number of forms of cyanide, and if
Speaker 1: you take enough of the wrong one or the right one,
Speaker 1: depending on what your your goal is, you can suffer poisoning.
Speaker 1: Symptoms include headache, dizziness, fast heart rate, shortness of breath,
Speaker 1: and vomiting. Uh. This may be followed by seizure, slow
Speaker 1: heart rate, low blood pressure, loss of consciousness, and you know,
Speaker 1: cardiac arrest and death. I mean it's cyanide. It's it's
Speaker 1: a poison. Now. Apples in particular contain a compound called
Speaker 1: amygdalin in their seed, and this is a cyanide and
Speaker 1: sugar based molecule. All right, So if you start chewing
Speaker 1: the seeds, uh, your saliva enzymes they hit this particular compound,
Speaker 1: They cut off the sugar part from the molecule, and
Speaker 1: the remainder then can decompose to produce the poisonous gas
Speaker 1: hydrogen cyanide. Yeah, which which sounds crazy and and definitely
Speaker 1: makes me think of that scene in Dune where where
Speaker 1: where the duke bites into the poison tooth in his mouth, uh,
Speaker 1: and then breathes out in an attempt to kill his captors,
Speaker 1: to kill the Vladimir Harconin. Oh, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good scene. It's a great scene. Yeah, and and it
Speaker 1: makes you think, well, maybe you should just bitten into
Speaker 1: an apple and just doesn't He fails to kill Harcona.
Speaker 1: He does. He kills Peter. Oh, Peter de Fries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's so he's able to take out one of
Speaker 1: the batties. But uh, but but luck, pure luck saves
Speaker 1: the baron as you allude to. Yeah, that scene would
Speaker 1: have been much more awkward if he'd been trying to
Speaker 1: hold on while I eat sixty apples. You allow me
Speaker 1: to to the My final request is that you give
Speaker 1: me unlimited apple seeds to chew, and you hang out
Speaker 1: really close to my face. It would have it was
Speaker 1: not that that is not a ment at created plan,
Speaker 1: a mentat approved plan. Okay, but so how many seeds
Speaker 1: does it really take? Okay? So here's another case, as
Speaker 1: like we did in a previous example, where you have
Speaker 1: to bust out some grams and milligrams. So cyanide toxicity
Speaker 1: and humans, you're generally talking point five to three point
Speaker 1: five milligrams per kilogram of body weight, so you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on your body how big you are. Um
Speaker 1: for a fatal dose, you'd need to hit at least
Speaker 1: one point five milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of you. 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 be like two points something milligrams of cyanide per seed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to Basically, you would need to chew an
Speaker 1: absurd number of apple seeds to pull this off. And
Speaker 1: there are no reports of anyone actually doing it, either intentionally,
Speaker 1: you know, out of I don't know, madness, or or accidentally.
Speaker 1: Even Johnny apple Seed running around two and on apples
Speaker 1: all day was not able to kill himself. But I
Speaker 1: think there are some other seeds in natural fruits that
Speaker 1: we eat all the time that are a little bit
Speaker 1: more dangerous than apple pits. Right, this is true? Uh,
Speaker 1: And there's there's actually an excellent article that came out
Speaker 1: in the Guardian Um last year actually uh really good
Speaker 1: and has a wonderful chart that just shows you the
Speaker 1: different levels of cyanide and these different fruits. Often include
Speaker 1: a link to it on the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode it stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But
Speaker 1: the basics are that apple seeds with three milligrams per gram.
Speaker 1: That places apple somewhere in the middle of our spectrum
Speaker 1: between the point one milligram program of the common nectarine,
Speaker 1: so that's the low end up to the seventeen point
Speaker 1: five milligrams program in the European green gauge plum. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that, Yeah, I had not either. It's
Speaker 1: a European specialty. Uh and it's yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: big one. Likewise, the apricot is pretty big too. The
Speaker 1: kernels of the apricot fourteen point four, and there have
Speaker 1: been plenty of cases of problematic ingestion of apricot kernels,
Speaker 1: typically by children, as well as a cherry pits or
Speaker 1: another one. Cherry pits have three point nine. Now with those,
Speaker 1: I think I've read that you have to do some
Speaker 1: processing to make them especially dangerous, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: chew up cherry pits, there's something they're more dangerous, that's right.
Speaker 1: So remember the saliva that I mentioned earlier in the
Speaker 1: apple seeds, So there's that breaking down in the separation
Speaker 1: of that compound. Uh So, yeah, chewing the seeds, chewing
Speaker 1: the kernel. Also, I've i've I've heard that if you
Speaker 1: were to do grind up a bunch of cherry pits,
Speaker 1: you might have a similar scenario as well. I mean
Speaker 1: you would have a similar scenario. So those are those
Speaker 1: are the areas where you there's more concern, and generally
Speaker 1: that means that the concern with cherries, for example, is
Speaker 1: going to be improper food preparation, like somebody who has
Speaker 1: no idea what they're doing and they grind up a
Speaker 1: bunch of cherries for something without removing the pit. Or
Speaker 1: it's a case where child gets ahold of a bunch
Speaker 1: of kernels from apricots or a bunch of of cherry
Speaker 1: pits and starts chewing them. Those are situations where the
Speaker 1: condition often escalates and there is you know, some serious
Speaker 1: toxicity that a doctor has to deal with. Well, I
Speaker 1: gotta invite you all over for a taste of my
Speaker 1: fresh made pasta with home ground apricot pit pasto. But
Speaker 1: he's one of these situations where, yeah, the average person
Speaker 1: might not realize that the the average cherry with the
Speaker 1: with the pit in it does contain bits of cyanide,
Speaker 1: and you could you could have a lethal dose of
Speaker 1: cyanide in your house. It's just if you're following the rules,
Speaker 1: you're going to be throwing all that cyanide out. If
Speaker 1: 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 seedslon seeds saying
Speaker 1: they're dangerous? But maybe the same is true of cherry
Speaker 1: pits and stuff like that. Maybe this is a way
Speaker 1: of culturally preserving the instinct to not chew up and
Speaker 1: 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 have 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 he's
Speaker 1: especially recently he's been very demanding about how he doesn't
Speaker 1: want seeds in anything. And he and I bring him
Speaker 1: the fruit and he says, oh, do you have seeds
Speaker 1: in it? I don't want the seeds. And I explain,
Speaker 1: if you you you take the seeds out, you spit
Speaker 1: the seeds out. This is how fruit works, and you
Speaker 1: just have to to roll with Yeah, well not into
Speaker 1: the bath, you know. He asked the same thing. I
Speaker 1: can just spit him in the bath. No, you can't
Speaker 1: spit him in the bath. Just come back. And this
Speaker 1: is why you have a bowl with fruit in it.
Speaker 1: But but I wonder, like to what extent this is
Speaker 1: a you know, this is a natural instinct for for
Speaker 1: young children, especially to be appalled by the seed, because
Speaker 1: in fact, the seed of some fruits could prove dangerous
Speaker 1: to them, you know, in the same way that I've
Speaker 1: I've heard some there's some theories about picky eating and
Speaker 1: children that are basically amounts to the same thing that
Speaker 1: that that picky eating and children is a natural, inborn
Speaker 1: defense mechanism against potentially dangerous foods that are gonna be
Speaker 1: more dangerous for them given their their small body size.
Speaker 1: That's funny because I see the exact same evolutionary process
Speaker 1: working itself out in some babies and in my dog,
Speaker 1: where it seems like just anything that will fit in
Speaker 1: the mouth will go in there but then come back
Speaker 1: out right. Sometimes with the dogs, Oh yeah, sometimes, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know, my dog wants to eat things
Speaker 1: that I often think like that doesn't make biological sense
Speaker 1: to have a drive to try to eat that rock. Well,
Speaker 1: am I correct in this that with dogs like that's
Speaker 1: part of their tasting process, like to to to judge
Speaker 1: the food it goes in the mouth first. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that kind of makes sense. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: be wrong and that I'm not a dog expert, but
Speaker 1: but at any rate, that also the the you know,
Speaker 1: the the the whole incident here with with seeds also
Speaker 1: comes up, I understand with some pats. I didn't really
Speaker 1: explore that thread, but I was seeing a number of
Speaker 1: different posts and articles out there about oh, do I
Speaker 1: need to be concerned about my dog eating these pits? Well,
Speaker 1: there's certainly lots of foods that are probably not dangerous
Speaker 1: to you, but might be dangerous to a pet for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons, for different body chemistry, but also
Speaker 1: just because of different body size. A serving that is
Speaker 1: contains nothing all that, you know, nothing in concentration dangerous
Speaker 1: to you, might be a big dose for a small animal, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially 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 about,
Speaker 1: like the dosage level, the quantities. Uh, keep in mind
Speaker 1: the spice rack. Okay. Uh. We actually have an older
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to blow your mind that is all
Speaker 1: about nutmeg. Nutmeg, and I encourage you to check that
Speaker 1: episode out because nutmeg is fascinating. It has this weird,
Speaker 1: wonderful history full of like Eastern medicine, um, European fashion, um,
Speaker 1: medieval medieval manipulation of the humors. Also like bloody colonial monopolies.
Speaker 1: It's I've definitely read about its use as a recreational drug. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There a Malcolm X wrote about it's it's use in prisons,
Speaker 1: you would take a match box full of nutmeg and
Speaker 1: you would have, you know, an altered state. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are various other accounts from from history. Samuel Samuel Peeps
Speaker 1: wrote about an individual who who took nutmeg and ran
Speaker 1: naked through the streets of London. Samuel Peeps. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so there's a lot. There's a rich history with nutmeg.
Speaker 1: But yeah, nutmeg is an example of something where if
Speaker 1: you you uh, use just a few sprinkles here and
Speaker 1: there on top of your egg nog or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it's it's perfectly fine. I put a little on my
Speaker 1: smoothie every morning, um. But if you take larger quantities
Speaker 1: there can be toxic effects sic trans yes, spice trands
Speaker 1: essentially except a very unpleasant spice trans uh with lots
Speaker 1: of nausea and like a really horrible hangover. I've read
Speaker 1: no accounts of recreational nutmeg use beyond sprinkles for flavoring
Speaker 1: that end. Well, it's all grotesque, and nobody tries at
Speaker 1: a secon in time, uh for the most part, unless
Speaker 1: they have no other option. There are just extremely bored.
Speaker 1: But but it serves as a I think a fine
Speaker 1: lesson because if you look at your spice rack in
Speaker 1: your house, you were looking at a number of different
Speaker 1: substances that are in many cases toxins. There. They they
Speaker 1: evolved in the original plants that they came from as
Speaker 1: a deterrent to keep people from eating them, or to
Speaker 1: keep people from eating them beyond you know, certain portions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in many cases, the pungency and flavor that we prize
Speaker 1: them for, when applied to a very small amount in
Speaker 1: our food, is by itself disgusting. This is it's by
Speaker 1: design disgusting. It's supposed to be that way as a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism. Yeah, food technologies essentially are mastery of all
Speaker 1: of these elements. We figured out how to manipulate them,
Speaker 1: how to change them, often with fire, and then and
Speaker 1: then utilize even these these these potent poisons in very
Speaker 1: small quantities that to changes the flavor. So, yeah, anything
Speaker 1: in your spice rack, if you took it in sufficient quantities,
Speaker 1: you in many cases could have an altered experience, probably
Speaker 1: not a good altered experience, but an altered one and
Speaker 1: or experienced the toxic effects. So it's just you know,
Speaker 1: worth keeping in mind. I think nutmeg is a great
Speaker 1: example of that, and I love nutmeg and uh uh,
Speaker 1: and yet I would I would definitely not advise eating
Speaker 1: a matchbox full of it. Okay, So main takeaways from
Speaker 1: this episode don't eat the green potatoes the dose makes
Speaker 1: the poison. Don't grind up cherry wrapper coop pits and
Speaker 1: make a pesto out of them. Don't freak out over
Speaker 1: the dead man's fingers though you know, take them out,
Speaker 1: uh for flavor purposes. Don't eat four cups of nutmeg.
Speaker 1: I mean basically the take home is, don't take your
Speaker 1: food for granted, Like, no, have some basic idea of
Speaker 1: where food comes from, the processes that that lead it
Speaker 1: to your plate, uh, the organisms from that they stem from.
Speaker 1: Like if you have, the more you know about about
Speaker 1: what your food actually is, the less shocking any of
Speaker 1: these dangers are, and also the better prepared you are
Speaker 1: for these for for the often you know, small chances
Speaker 1: that you might encounter these problems. I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good point. Maybe that's the main takeaway from this episode.
Speaker 1: When you think about your food, think about organisms. Don't
Speaker 1: think about it as a product that came from a factory,
Speaker 1: though in many cases it probably was. Probably you know,
Speaker 1: if it's a package product probably was processed in a
Speaker 1: factory somewhere, but it is an organism or derived from
Speaker 1: an organism. Think about the organism it came from, the plant,
Speaker 1: the animal, whatever it is. Think about its place in nature,
Speaker 1: all the things that fed it and grew its bones,
Speaker 1: as it in turn feeds you and grows your bones
Speaker 1: and hopefully doesn't poison you. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: perfect message for the holiday. So on that note, if
Speaker 1: you would like to certainly check out any of the
Speaker 1: links we mentioned here, that older episode on Nutmeg, last
Speaker 1: year's episode onundangerous foods, etcetera. You can check all of
Speaker 1: that out It's stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: You also find blog posts, you will find videos. You
Speaker 1: will find links out to various social media accounts as well,
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us directly,
Speaker 1: as always, you can email us at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com