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I simply cannot imagine picking an unidentified piece of fruit from the ground and eating it. There are berries in the northeast that look much like cranberrie
by whiddershins 10y ago
I simply cannot imagine picking an unidentified piece of fruit from the ground and eating it.
There are berries in the northeast that look much like cranberries, but as a kid I was told they are deadly poisonous. Regardless of the accuracy of that warning, the basic concept should hold: if you don't know what it is, don't assume it is safe.
- ryanackley 10y agoThis. It just baffles me that a reasonably intelligent person would eat unknown fruit found in the wild in a foreign country.
- Semiapies 10y agoLife is weird, and sometimes natural selection fires a warning shot...
- hansjorg 10y agoIf everybody had been as cautious as you two, nothing much would've happened.
- sosborn 10y ago> If everybody had been as cautious as you two, nothing much would've happened. The time for eating unidentified fruit is when you are dying of starvation.
- autarch 10y agoThere is a protocol for sampling unknown foods that I suspect aboriginal humans might have developed ad hoc. http://www.wikihow.com/Test-if-a-Plant-Is-Edible http://www.wikihow.com/Test-if-a-Plant-Is-Edible
- 13of40 10y agoFrom the link: "Eat 1/4 cup of the same kind of plant part prepared the same way." My father spent the last ten years of his career as an ethnobotanist (having previously been a government archaeologist) and his advice was increase the amount by doubling it with each subsequent test. Going from one piece of a leaf to 1/4 cup is a little bit too much of a leap, IMHO.
- hansjorg 10y agoI've seen military manuals with basically the same procedure recommended. I wonder if there are some commonly known dangerous plants that would've slipped through these cracks.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- foobarbecue 10y agoPotato seeds slipped through the cracks for centuries! http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-...
- barsonme 10y agoAlso feeding it to animals. Might be a tad bit more inhumane and you could run into an issue with some animals that are able to eat poisonous food without issue, but sure is a lot nicer than accidentally dying yourself, I suppose.
- cyberferret 10y ago> If everybody had been as cautious as you two, nothing much would've happened. No, actually they would have probably improved human knowledge after conducting the autopsy on your body and examined what you had carelessly ingested... ;) j/k
- mrestko 10y agoSounds like alcohol might have been involved.
- r00fus 10y agoFrom TFA: "Perhaps few adults (especially a medically qualified one) would be foolish enough to try eating an unknown fruit found on a foreign beach, but children would be highly likely to do so, especially when they find it to smell and taste sweet, resembling a ripe plum." It's really more of an advisory.
- mattaltieri 10y agoGrowing up in the NorthEast, I can say I've eaten many random berries, from the ones that grow on forsythia to the pimento looking ones that grow on shrubbery. I think I've been pretty lucky; however, I did always avoid (wild) mushrooms...
- mkehrt 10y agoI'm pretty sure I was told those pimento ones were poisonous as a kid.
- mrgreenfur 10y agoMe to. Haven't thought about it in ages. Does anyone know what they are and if they're poisonous ?
- mattaltieri 10y agoIt looks like they're these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxus_baccata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxus_baccata Looks like the berries are technically edible, minus the seeds...
- kurttheviking 10y agoI agree with this sentiment as a well-informed adult. As the proud owner of a 1.5-year old son who will attempt to eat absolutely anything, I am glad to have read this so I know what to aggressively and proactively remove from his field of vision.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoThis is why I've learned how to identify wild plants. I've been surprised on a few occasions by people unable to identify plums and cherries growing wild. But if you can't identify wild plants you shouldn't eat them. Wild mushrooms are harder to identify. Other than the few I can readily identify on sight, I use an identification guide. There have been several cases of people (almost always from the Far East) inadvertently dying after eating death caps (Amanita phalloides) which I've read taste delicious but are fatal, and can take days to kill: http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/second-mushroom-victim-critical-in-london-hospital-22387.aspx http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/second-mushroom-victim-critical-i... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/two-die-from-death-cap-mushrooms/3757764 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/two-die-from-death-cap... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-08/woman-dies-after-eating-death-cap-mushrooms/4061254 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-08/woman-dies-after-eatin... They mistake them for paddy straw mushrooms (Volvariella volvacea) which look identical and are used in Chinese and Thai cuisine. They can be distinguished by spore colour but a better way is to check it came out of a tin before eating them.
- colanderman 10y agoI think the problem is less so identifying plums and cherries and more so identifying that they are not something which looks like a plum or cherry but is poisonous. I know what common fruits look like; I don't know which fruits don't have poisonous doppelgangers in my region.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoabc.net.au links - are you in Australia? I live in Tasmania and have been meaning to find an edible field guide to mushrooms or some such. Mushrooms here in Launceston are frequently popping out of the ground in my front and backyard and on the grass verges by the road, and if you walk anyway in the national parks and state forests you're up to your knees in mushrooms. Would love to know if any of them are edible.
- DonaldFisk 10y agoI'm in England, but there are death caps in Australia, which unfortunately were introduced along with oak trees. You need an identification guide for your area (Tasmania, or perhaps all of Australia). Unless you can safely identify the species, you cannot be sure it is safe to eat, and should discard it. Identification is usually done using a dichotomous key, which involves checking for the presence or absence of a characteristic (which involves understanding some jargon), then another, until you're down to genus level. Then you check visually to identify the species. It's a bit like an expert system, except printed in a book. In some countries in continental Europe, you can take wild mushrooms to a pharmacist for identification.
- Houshalter 10y agoIt didn't say that they ate it, just tasted a sample of it. That's a little safer. There are many poisonous plants, but usually you need to eat an nontrivial amount for it to be lethal. And most poisonous plants (but not all!) will taste bitter, an evolutionary adaption to protect us from this. That said it's still stupid, if you aren't starving, to risk this.
- 13of40 10y agoYou probably shouldn't even pick up fruit you can identify. My wife and I visited Puna in Hawaii, and she kept eating mangos from under trees. Later that year, I saw this article [1] where a guy caught a nasty case of "rat lungworm disease" [2] from working on an organic farm in the same area. To quote the article, "Something as simple as eating an unwashed strawberry may have been how Reinert contracted the disease." [1] http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/02/17/mn-man-determined-to-come-back-from-rat-lungworm-disease/ http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/02/17/mn-man-determined-t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiostrongylus_cantonensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiostrongylus_cantonensis
- 205guy 10y agoRat lungworm comes from the slime from snails (maybe slugs too). Presumably you peeled the mangos and didn't eat any exposed flesh which would have been overripe and discolored. It's the unwashed raw produce in Hawaii that has a risk of rat lungworm in Hawaii. And the snails, but presumably you didn't eat any snails either, though they are large and edible when properly cooked. However, the skin of mangos contain trace amounts of a toxin similar to that in poison ivy/oak, and some people can react to it in their skins--though not life threatening. There are some things in Hawaii which can kill you. If the article author had taken the same bite from the be-still fruit (Cascabela thevetia), she'd most likely be dead. A couple of others too: castor bean (ricin) and black-eye Susan beans (can't remember the exact name). They're all plants that were imported as ornamentals and are now spreading invasively. Edited to add: some native plants can be dangerous as well: all parts of the taro plant must be cooked to get rid of oxalic acid cristals which will severely irritate your mouth and throat. The author of the original article is truly a Darwin Award seeker, something about tropical vacations make people leave their brains at home--they take the tropical paradise meme far too literally. Though I guess we now have an accurate medical paper on the effects of the manchineel.
- 205guy 10y agoErrata: it's calcium oxalate crystals in taro and related plants that cause irritation and rashes, not oxalic acid.
- markbnj 10y ago>> I simply cannot imagine picking an unidentified piece of fruit from the ground and eating it. I absolutely share your astonishment. It seems reckless beyond all justification, especially given that this incident occurred in a land foreign to the author. I'd like to give the author props for having the courage to write about it, but something about the "warning to the world" tone at the end makes me suspicious that he or she doesn't know most people wouldn't do this.