So, anyway, the other day I bought two of these ice coffees and took them home, one went into the fridge for my wife and the other I opened and immediately drank about a quarter of the bottle. Everything seemed quite fine and dandy until about 10 seconds after I swallowed the rather large mouthful when an overwhelming taste of metallic bitterness flooded my mouth and throat (not synaesthesia, you do actually have taste receptors in certain other places in your gastrointestinal tract also - I will get to that later though), It was disgusting and I was horrified that I had just drank a huge mouthful of what was obviously poison (Thinking about it now, not once did I think to vomit???) the drink didn't smell, it didn't look off and in all senses seemed to be a regular ice coffee, so I did the only thing that I could think of in these trying circumstances...... I asked my loving (and very patient) wife to taste it for me, which she did (Amazing hey!!) and reported that there was nothing out of the ordinary? WTF? So, once again, I proved myself to be a gallant gentleman and requisitioned her drink and tasted that, the result.... Nothing.... For about 10 seconds and my mouth was once again flooded with that horrid bitterness....Ok?!..
My wife asked if I thought it could be pinenuts, to which I apparently responded with a look that very clearly indicated what I thought of her current mental health at this particular moment (I am not always the nicest person to be around) and asked (very eloquently), huh? She went on to explain that I had told her about these pinenuts that originated somewhere in China that had the bizarre effect of making everything that the victim eats taste bitter for about THREE MONTHS AFTER, fuck that! No way, I thought. Then I started to remember about the weird pinenut that we had gotten in at work, I had noticed them because they were a lot paler in color than usual and were also smaller, rounder and had a darker "root" on the pinenut. I hadn't eaten them until two days previously as I had been working on a different section and I tend to only pick at my own Mis-en-Place while working. I don't remember there being any different taste than usual, which makes me feel comfortable enough to say that they must have tasted normal (one of the reasons I taste my prep is that it is the only reliable way to make sure all product is good, I taste everything I will send to people).
So I began to do a little research..
It turns out that this is a very new development in the world of food, with the first cases being diagnosed in 2001 by the Belgian Poisons Center and having peaks and troughs in reported instances since. The general consensus seems to be that it is under-reported mostly due to the delay of 1-2 days before the symptoms kick in and the fact that not all people are affected (it seems that people have varying tolerances for it). There was a rather large spike in reported incidences around early 2009 which is attributed to a bad harvest in late 2008 creating a spike in prices.
Pine nuts are a gourmet item, gaining a high price (as high as $43,000 per metric ton in 2009 - $43 per kg) and is a crop that is very susceptible to poor harvests. Pine trees only bear crops roughly every two years (with variation depending on species) and pine trees take over 10 years before they bear seed, all of this means that the majority of pine trees are "wild" and are harvested from existing stands, and between this and the wholesalers tendency to mix species of pine nuts it means that it is an assortment of nuts that end up on your table and not the nuts of any species in particular.
There seems to be two different "types" of pine nut; those from European pines (Stone Pine, Pineas pinea etc) and Those from Asian Pines (like P.koraiensis, P.siberica and P.armandii) The European pine nuts seem to be more expensive (and are slower to produce) while the Asian pine nuts are cheaper and smaller in size. In total there are 129 recognised species of pine nut producing trees 20 of which are considered edible by the World Health Organisation.
Through the collection and analysis of many samples over 12 years, epidemiologists believe that they have isolated the species of pine responsible for causing "pine mouth" to the species P.armandii and in particular one of five types called Armand pine (aka Chinese White Pine and Huashan Pine) which is a thick shelled pine originating in the Shaanxi and Shanxi regions in China.
This particular pine does not have a history as a food plant but is instead grown for its value as timber for building construction, and it is only due to poor harvests combined with increasing demand that it has entered into the food chain at at.
Every piece of information that I can find indicated that eating these pine nuts does no permanent damage and most people report recovery from the symptoms after 1-2 weeks (longer times are attributed to continued eating of the nuts), but I can tell you that it isn't very pleasant, in addition to the bitter aftertaste from food, there is a continual metallic feeling along the sides of my tongue, I have digestive reflux, and my stomach is very unsettled.
Btw, when I tried roasting Pandanus (interestingly it is another variety of pine tree) fruit I actually got quite a few of these sypmtoms, which is something that I probably need to keep in mind next time that I am foraging for native/wild foods.
I really can't wait for this to pass.
Thanks for reading.
Additional information can be found here.
