Potatoes, honey, tomatoes, tuna and other foods you should be careful about eating

Better spit it out

Product: Berries and fruit pits

Attention: Hydrogen cyanide, popularly known as prussic acid, is found in the stones of cherries, plums, apricots and other fruits of the rose family. It is very poisonous and in large quantities can cause permanent damage to human health. There are people who eat pitted cherries, and others who still peel out the cores from the pits of peaches and apricots, where a real ball of hydrocyanic acid is hidden. By the way, I once really knew a girl who laughed and ate cherries with all the pits! Don’t be afraid of the past form – she is healthy, we only meet less often, and I don’t know if she eats these berries this morning too!

The chubby giant

Product: Rabarbers

Attention: Hooray! This is a product that I have traumatic childhood memories of. Namely, in the countryside, my aunt grew a huge rhubarb near the barn. Over the course of a couple of summer months, I enjoyed it just like Kamasūtra in all its poses – from jelly, compotes, debesmanna and flatbread to – son, do you want something sweeter? Go pick one stem and dip it in sugar!

So – to the harm! Rhubarb, especially its leaves, contains a lot of oxalic acid, which is very harmful because it attracts and deposits calcium, which in turn can turn into kidney stones and gout. Five kilograms of rhubarb leaves will take you to Valhalla in an instant! Of course, a person is not a cowslip – he still consumes the stems of this plant more, but they must also be peeled and otherwise properly processed before use. Wonder why I don’t have gout yet?

Not wine, but nut

Product: Nutmeg

Attention: In fact, this nut is hallucinogenic! Remember, six grams will lead to convulsions and nine to blackout. Even eating one nut can trigger nutmeg psychosis, which manifests itself as the most profound hopeless depression. Thanks to the unique aroma of this product, both chefs and culinary experts add it to their gastronomic masterpieces, but only in very low doses.

Be afraid of the green tuber!

Product: Potato

Attention: It turns out that this one of the world’s most popular products contains Glic alkaloids in its roots, leaves and tuber – especially if the potato is left in contact with sunlight for a long time. This chemical compound can cause seizures, diarrhea, coma, and even death. A ratio of 3-6 milligrams per kilogram of human body weight can be fatal. So beware of potatoes with a greenish tinge! Especially because of its everydayness! Never keep it in a lighted place, like on a windowsill, and then start cooking it a week later!

Distinguish by taste

Product: Bitter almonds

Attention: This popular nut has two subspecies – sweet and bitter. You can only see with the eye that the bitter sister is a little smaller. The chemical compound amygdalin gives them a specific smell, bitterness and makes them very dangerous – even ten eaten nuts can be fatal for small children! The only thing that pleases me is that hardly a person could enjoy such a quantity of bitter nuts. However, despite all the toxicity, the nut itself contains a lot of cool stuff – vitamin B17, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, vegetable proteins and other good fatty acids. It is from bitter almonds that their oil is obtained. Doctors have also recognized it as a powerful player against pain, colds, it improves vision, brain activity and is a good helper in the fight against cancer!

Bees don’t care

Product: Drunk honey

Attention: It has been known since ancient times that bees tend to collect sweet nectar from poisonous plants. A person, having licked a couple of spoons of it, starts to behave like an untempered alcoholic! It is not dangerous for insects in small quantities, which cannot be said for its two-legged users – at first it is cold sweat, followed by nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headache. Remember – 100-150 grams of intoxicated honey can cause loss of consciousness or even fatal outcome! It is difficult to distinguish it from real honey in appearance, but in taste it is bitter and resembles burnt sugar.

Look at it for color!

Product: Tomato

Attention: Tomato stems and leaves, as well as unripe fruits, contain several chemical elements that are not very pleasing to the human body – especially our stomach and intestinal tract. The good news – to get seriously poisoned, a person would have to eat almost a wheelbarrow of unripe nightshades. And what’s more, what could be tastier than lightly salted or canned green tomatoes? You each have to make the next choice yourself!

A predator from the ocean

Product: Tuna

Attention: It turns out that during its long life, the fish accumulates a large amount of mercury in its body. Tuna is dry to spit on it, but when it enters the human body, this unfriendly chemical element will attack our kidneys. That’s why young children and pregnant women should avoid it altogether. I don’t even know how to comment on it – the cod living in the Baltic Sea was also once insulted for the accumulation of mercury. And in defense of tuna, I have a story from life. Once, while fishing in Mauritius, the Creole captain of our ship took out his machete in gratitude for the catch he had caught and cut a 40 kilo tuna in half, leaving us the meatiest part – the tail. On the way to the hotel, we licked off its raw tenderloin, slathered it with lime and light rum, and to be honest, I’ve never eaten anything tastier in my life.

Radish from South America

Product: Cassava

Attention: Also known as cassava, the cassava fruit or gum is rich in starch and is a very important food item in Africa. The only problem: cassava gum in raw form is highly poisonous because it contains the cyanogenic glycosides linamarin and lotaustralin. These glycosides are later broken down to hydrocyanic acid. Therefore, cassava must be carefully chopped, soaked in water and boiled or dried to get rid of cyanides before consumption. Refined starch grains obtained from cassava are called tapioca.

And it looks so delicious!

Product: Cash

Attention: The western cashew is cultivated for its fruit, the cashew nut. Nothing dangerous will be found in the nuts that you can buy in our supermarkets, because they have been freed from their pulp and skin, saturated with poisonous oil, which after the processing process is used both in industry and medicine. Since cashew fruit cleaning is 100% manual work, even the most experienced peelers can see burn marks on their hands – so chemically toxic is the poison of its peel. In addition, after removing the skin, all nuts are heat-treated on special surfaces to extinguish even the smallest traces of poison.

This article and many other interesting things can be read in the latest issue of “Deviņvīri” magazine, which can be purchased at press outlets throughout Latvia.