By the time you’re old enough to walk your parents will probably have put some serious effort into trying to get you to understand the difference between what’s safe to eat and what isn’t. We have symbols on packaging to let us know if some things are poisonous and then rules and regulations for other things like chicken and beer that try to help us understand how to handle and prepare them safely so no one gets sick from bacteria. No one wants to eat poison, after all. Except for the handful of times when we’ve gone ahead and found a way to do just that, avoiding the danger to have a tasty snack just because we can.
10. Just 2 Teaspoons of Nutmeg Can Cause Toxic Effects
Every fall the pumpkin spice craze sweeps the Western world with the flavor added to coffee, cake, cereal, and even kitty litter. The actual spice blend has nothing to do with pumpkins, though it’s a necessary addition to any pumpkin pie recipe, and includes cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. Nutmeg, in particular, is one of the more aromatic components that really gives the blend its iconic aroma and flavor. But nutmeg all on its own is not as safe as most people would imagine.
Nutmeg can actually lead to intoxication and, in fact, the spice has been touted as a sort of all natural, low budget way to get high for years. The use of nutmeg as a drug can lead to acute psychotic symptoms as well as dizziness, hallucinations, seizures, organ failures and, in some cases when other drugs were combined with it, death.
The toxic compound in nutmeg is called myristicin, and it works on your body much the same way mescaline does. As little as 10 mg or 2 teaspoons of nutmeg can cause myristicin intoxication symptoms.
9. Pufferfish Are Not Naturally Toxic
Fugu, or pufferfish, has been an infamous food that most of us have heard of even if we’ve never seen it in person. There’s even an old episode of The Simpsons from 1991 in which Homer eats the potentially deadly dish.
The toxicity in pufferfish comes from something called tetrodotoxin, which is concentrated in the fish’s liver. If you consume the toxin, it blocks nerve cells in your body. The result of that is that your muscles are no longer able to contract. A mild case can cause numbness and maybe make it hard to breathe. But in severe cases, because your muscles can’t contract at all, your lungs and heart can’t function and you die.
The thing about the pufferfish’s toxin is that it’s not a natural part of the fish. It’s from bacteria that live in the same habitat as the fish that they consume. You can get farm-raised pufferfish that are 100% non-toxic because the fish are never exposed to the dangerous bacteria. But failing that you can always try to eat the traditional fugu prepared by a very skilled chef who has been taught to prepare the fish while eliminating the poison. They do a decent job and only a handful of people seem to die every year from it so maybe the odds will be in your favor..
8. Most Wild Almonds are Poisonous
California alone has an $11 billion almond industry indicating people really do go nuts for these nuts. Almond milk has become a major player in the almond world but the nuts alone are still remarkably popular and find a lot of use as snacks, in cereals, candy bars and a lot more. It’s somewhat ironic then that they’re only edible by chance.
Researchers sequenced the genome of almonds back in 2019 and determined that the modern, tasty almond is a genetic mutation. Old school almonds were toxic across the board – and even today if you try to eat wild almonds then they are going to taste bitter and be potentially deadly if you eat around 50 of them. There’s enough cyanide to kill a healthy adult and more than enough to kill a child.
The mutation in today’s tasty almonds switched off the tree’s ability to produce toxic compounds. It was a random chance that farmers capitalized on and turned into an industry.
7. Poisonous Potatoes Can Be Safely Eaten with Clay Gravy
Potatoes have a decidedly weird history. First grown in the Peruvian Andes thousands of years ago, the tubers made their way to Europe in the 1500s where they were met with distrust. People thought they caused leprosy for a time. Of course, they were soon accepted and became widespread and are arguably one of the most popular and important foods in the world today. But that’s today.
If you head back to Peru, there’s a tradition of eating potatoes with clay there. They make a sauce out of the clay to coat the potatoes to make them more palatable, as strange as that sounds. The clay is not tasty in and of itself and tastes like salty dirt. But some of the native potatoes are extremely bitter and the clay sauce they eat them with neutralizes that.
Aside from making potatoes more palatable, the clay served another purpose: neutralizing toxins. Wild potatoes contained compounds called solanine and tomatine. The toxin compounds bind to the clay and pass through your digestive system. And while the people there managed to breed potatoes that weren’t toxic, some strains still exist and are still served with the clay sauce to make them edible.
6. Shelled Cashews are Toxic
If you’re a fan of peanuts, you can usually find them shelled or unshelled in stores all over the place. Pistachios are often sold in the shell, but you can get them out of the shell, too. And walnuts and almonds are usually shelled but, especially around the holidays, you can bust out a nutcracker and do the work yourself. Almost every nut you might want to eat can be purchased in the shell, except for the cashew. That’s because the shelled cashews are toxic. And you don’t need to eat the shell to suffer the effect. The oil in a cashew shell can cause rashes and blisters.
Cashews are in the same family as poison ivy and poison sumac, which is why they produce the irritating oil. Though rare, consuming cashews you process yourself that haven’t been properly roasted or steamed to destroy the oil can lead to hospitalization for things like dermatitis. If a person had a sensitivity to the oil and consumed too many cashews, the reaction could be fatal.
5. Greenland Shark Meat Needs to be Fermented to be Edible
Most of us will never see a Greenland shark, much less be motivated to eat one but you know that if something exists in the world with a face, someone else has tried to eat it. The problem with trying to eat a Greenland shark, the slow moving and remarkably long-lived ocean dwellers, is that their meat is toxic.
The flesh of the Greenland shark contains something called trimethylamine oxide which turns into trimethylamine. Consuming trimethylamine produces effects similar to alcohol intoxication which can start with sickness and nausea, progress to blindness, and finally cause death.
Humans can’t eat Greenland shark so the meat needs to be treated. In Iceland, the meat is fermented for 6 months or dried. Dried shark is fed to sled dogs but the fermented dish, known as Hákarl, is an Icelandic delicacy. The flavor has been described as fishy or rotten with a urine aftertaste. Not the best from the sounds of things, but at least it won’t kill you.
4. Cassava Root Contains Cyanide
Cassava is where you get tapioca from and the big tuberous roots are widely eaten all over the world. Though cassava is not as big in North America as it is elsewhere, countries in Africa produce billions of tons of the root every year and it’s one of the staple crops in many of them. The root can be consumed in many forms including as a flour but it has to be processed correctly. Raw cassava can be deadly.
Raw cassava contains cyanogenic glycosides. If you eat these they can convert into cyanide in your body. The best way to prevent this is by soaking the cassava root in water which breaks down those dangerous compounds. Traditionally, this is how the root is prepared, too.
There have been many documented cases of an illness called konzo in Africa which results in paralysis among other symptoms linked to cassava in part because the tradition of soaking the roots for a week in a stream has to be skipped sometimes due to many factors including war making it impossible for people to rely on having the time and stability to prepare cassava properly.
3. Just 4 or 5 Raw Kidney Beans Can Cause Toxicity
Red kidney beans are one of the most popular legumes in the world. In the US alone farmers produce over 86,000 metric tons of them. They’re generally sold either dried in bags where they need to be soaked for hours before they can be eaten or in cans where they can be eaten right away. But you rarely see raw red kidney beans and for good reason – they’re highly toxic.
Red kidney beans have compounds called lectins inside of them. Four or five raw beans can cause toxic effects with symptoms getting worse the more you eat. That’s why if you’re preparing raw beans you need to follow proper cooking procedures and make sure they reach a temperature that can kill the toxic compounds. Beans cooked in slow cookers never get hot enough.
The specific dangerous lectin has the unwieldy name phytohaemagglutinin. A raw bean can contain 20,000 to 70,000 units of this toxin while a cooked bean could go as low as 200.
2. Ackee Fruit is Deadly Until It Has Ripened Naturally
Ackee and saltfish is the national dish of Jamaica and if you’ve never had it before, track down a good quality Jamaican restaurant and give it a try because it can be delicious. But you definitely want to get someone who knows what they’re doing to make it since ackee fruit is poisonous and leads to something ominously named Jamaican Vomiting Sickness.
As the name suggests, bad ackee can cause vomiting but also abdominal pain, convulsions and death. If the fruit is ripe and has opened up on its own, then it’s ready for consumption and is great. If it’s unripe then watch out, that’s where the trouble comes from.
The fruit has to ripen on the tree and turn red then open up naturally on its own. The edible part of the fruit contains a compound called hypoglycin. This is extremely toxic until the fruit has ripened and the compound naturally diminishes in the light of the sun. Otherwise it causes severe hypoglycemia, which is low blood sugar. It can be treated with dextrose if caught in time.
1. Distilling Psychotropic Compounds From Mushrooms in Reindeer Urine
There are three kinds of mushrooms in the world, at least in terms of how a hungry human can make use of them. There are safe, delicious, non-toxic mushrooms that you can eat and enjoy and go about your day. There are relatively safe psychotropic mushrooms that will cause you to have a heck of a trip complete with hallucinations but you’ll still survive the experience. And then there are mushrooms that will kill you, some much faster than others.
The mushroom known as fly agaric straddles the fence a bit in terms of food safety. It may qualify as all three kinds of mushrooms which doesn’t make sense at first until you understand how humans have been consuming it.
With its red cap and white spots, it’s a very recognizable fungus, but you can’t eat it as is. Or you shouldn’t, anyway. Though the hallucinogenic compound is one of the strongest in the mushroom kingdom, consuming too much of it can lead to nausea, convulsions and coma. It also looks nearly identical to a handful of other mushrooms which are incredibly deadly and even experts have a hard time telling them apart. So how do people safely make use of it?
The answer to that lies with reindeer. The mushrooms grow in the far north and reindeer are known to eat them frequently and also safely. Reindeer herders then collect the urine from the stoned reindeer and distill it down to get the effects of the hallucinogenic compounds without any of the other dangerous toxins that have been filtered out by the reindeer.