From the Vault: Dangerous Foods III

your throat because they're still writhing around that sort of thing. Uh. Yeah, this one, this one was another fun one. Uh. I don't know if this completed the trilogy or not at this as we were according this new intro. I don't think we've decided whether we're going to attempt a part four yet. Are there enough Dangerous Foods left that we

can talk about without really stretching it? Yeah, I'm I'm hoping what will happen is that we'll hear from listeners that will ride in in response to these two Vault episodes and say, oh, actually, here are some things you should cover, and then we'll cover them. That'll take some of the work and effort out of the whole the whole enterprise. Right, Hey, you out there do our job for us, all right. Well, on that note, let's dig in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, And here in the United States is the week of one of our weirdest national holidays, Thanksgiving, the celebration of eating, well, yes, eating, and and family and sort of imperfect recollections of US history as well as of course Mr Sentence Theater three thousand.

That's that's what I associated with the Turkey Day Marathon. Now, I think Thanksgiving is a weird holiday, especially for listeners outside the United States who probably have heard of it. But you know you don't have in your own country. Well, if you have it in Canada, you have it at a different time of a year too, So really, I didn't even know that Canadian Thanksgiving is so slightly different

than America. My ignorance has no bounds, But no Thanksgiving is weird because I don't know, if you see it this way, most holidays involve feasting as a feature of the holiday, But Thanksgiving is the only holiday that is about feasting. It seems like that is the content of the holiday. Yeah, or at least the feasting aspect of it has become so bloated that it eclipses everything else, right, and and then likewise we become so bloated we eclipse

everything else as well. It's a tradition, and in the spirit of continuing traditions, we're actually continuing a stuff to blow your mind tradition here today with the third episode in our Dangerous Food series, which is a sort of cheeky look at foods that can actually have some negative consequences if consumed under certain circumstances or uh, not consumed in the right way, not prepared in the right way,

but also with an eye towards avoiding food panic. Right, Yeah, Like, one of the important things to stress here is that if you eat just about any food the wrong way, uh, some bad stuff can happen. Yeah. Eating is sort of like a really incredibly complicated chemistry experiment that you do with your own life and your own health as the like as the potential outcomes of the experiment, certainly when you eat another organism, you're going to encounter its unique biochemistry.

So with with an animal that might be it's you know, venomous glands or or you know, yucky viscera or whatever it was eating. Correct, Yeah, pollution that it's that is entered into its system. But also just about any spice and so many different uh plants that we consume. You also have to take into account what sort of uh chemical weapons do they have as part of their biology that we will be taking into ours. I don't know, maybe you eat organisms. I I advocated an entirely synthetic

diet composed entirely of molecules fabricated in a lab. Or what's the what's the soil and stuff? Right? Is that made from organisms? Or is that just a complete, a complete fabrication. You know, I'd actually have to assume that almost anything you could eat is in some way derived from an organism, even if it was never a living plant or animal, it's a thing made from some kind

of plant or animal source. Yeah, we're not quite yet at that Star Trek level of just push a few buttons on a machine and it'll spit out an artificial similacrum of of what you want to eat. Right, this hamburger was not made from rocks. It might have been made from plants, but not from rocks. So I see people in the office drinking soilent, and it makes me think that we might be there, that this might just be, you know, a complete fabrication. It's brought here on a spaceship.

I guess. Obviously the answer is that we should do a ten Hart series on soilent. Probably that's what the people want. So if I'm just kidding folks, please don't run away. Yeah, I mean, unless you're soilent and you want to advertise on our show, then I guess yes, Um, we'll see. But hey, well, we're gonna make a lot of enemies in uh in big big food nagrobusiness today. So maybe once we've forever closed the door on getting a sponsorship from Jolly ranchers or whatever, we can open

ourselves up to the to the evil soilent dollars. That's right. So, as usual in this series, our goal here is not to say oh at unusual foods or to cast as xenophobic scorn on other culinary customs. Rather, these traditions are fascinating and the risks associating associated with certain dishes. I think they force us to re examine the foods that

we eat on a day to day basis. Yeah, they force you to think about it in the terms I brought up earlier, the fact that your diet, all the food and drink you consume, is this ongoing chemistry experiment with your body's health on the line. And most of the time we really, I mean, we're we're playing kind

of fast and loose with this experiment. I mean we we experiment on things because they taste good or because they make you feel a certain way, not so much because we've usually done deep research and exactly what the chemical effects of them are once they enter our metabolism. That's uh, that's something we find out, you know, decades down the line in some cases, right, and you read about in the British Medical Journal exactly. We'll take a

few fourays into that journal today. But first, for for our first course in this multi course feast of potentially dangerous foods, I think we should have dessert. Well, yeah, let's let's do it. Let's start with dessert. Everything is kind of super rich at Thanksgiving dinner anyway, So I've always thought it doesn't matter what order you're taking it in, right right, I mean, the sweet potato casserole is as sweet as the dessert, and it served with the turkey.

So you know what's the difference. Are a sweet potato cast role? Guy? It's a when I was a kid. Yes, now I find it a bit too sweet. Yeah, I can't. I can't do it. I can't deal with it. Okay, Well I'll check you on another sweet food here, black liquorice thumbs up, thumbs down. You've got thoughts, the black liquorice, the candy like the black Twizzler. Yeah, the wax of Belisle is that what they call it? Though this is in the Demon Belisle. I think somebody calls in the

in the Wizard's Compendium. I I never had an appreciation for candy licorice, black licorice as a as a child, I always prefer the ultimately kind of equally grotesque twizzler candy, the red Twizzler, you know, Oh yeah, it's just straight up sugary. Doesn't have the kind of herbal bouquet of licorice. Yeah. So the wax of Belisle is I think widely considered a disgusting abomination. I can't so I'm weird because it's often put in this family with other very similar or

flavors like annis and finnel and things like that. But I like those flavors and I don't like black licorice, And I'm not sure exactly what the difference is. Obviously they've got some kind of flavor and aroma overlap, but there's something about the black liquorice candy that just repels me in a way that these other flavors don't. Well. I mean, in one hand, you can say, like the candy version of anything runs the risk of being grotesque if at least you know to adult palettes or are

certainly I mean. The other thing you have to keep in mind, too, is like when at what point in human history you're eating liquorice. Are you eating liquorice when it's one of the few choices for sweet candy, or if you are you eating or you eating it in the age of Snickers and Jolly Ranchers and what have you, where you have kind of like the crack cocaine of sugar available and you don't have to turn to some of these more traditional ways of getting your fix. I

hadn't thought about it like that. But of course, another aspect of liquorice will discuss in a minute is that it's not just consumed for the taste. People of long thought that I had some kind of medicinal, nutritional, or therapeutic value. I think that's debatable. Um, but yeah, we can get to that in a minute. So I mentioned it's widely abhorred, but it's also widely beloved. There are

people who really really love black liquorice. So uh. To get us into thinking about the possible effects of black liquorice on the body, I want to start with a gym from one of my favorite genres of old news articles to dig up, which is the Vault of strange food recalls. So in red Vines, you know the candy company they make. Oh yes, yeah, they're kind of them, like the B movie of Twizzlers. That's my opinion of them. Anyway. It's funny you mentioned movies because I think of them

exclusively as a candy people buy in movie theaters. Oh yeah, that's where I would always encounter because used to eating red Twizzlers at the movie. That was my thing, Like that was that was the food that I would have food quote unquote that I would get, and sometimes they wouldn't have twizzlers in you before to have red vines, And yeah, in my experience, if you go in expecting twizzards and you get red vines, it's just not going

to be a satisfying experience. So you sit down to see Highlander to the Quickening on opening night, you've got your red vines, and you're a little bit disappointed. Yeah, because it's just not quite what you wanted. Yeah. Well, so in twelve, that company, they issued a recall of black licorice quote twists, I guess those are the twisty the chords, the whips because the California Department of Public Health tested some bags and found they contained elevated levels

of drum roll lead. Oh that's not supposed to be there, No, probably not so. Guidelines at the time stated that children and pregnant women should not be exposed to more than six micrograms of lead a day. And then the bags they tested, a single serving could contain more than thirteen micrograms have lead. Uh, and who eats just a single serving of anything? If you're at the movie theater, you bought that bag. You're gonna eat that whole bag. Uh And if so, if you're just hanging out pounding bag

after bag of licorice twists, that lead can really add up. Now. Fortunately, I think this seemed to be like an incidental contaminant in some bags of candy. Not a problem with liquorice in principle, but there are more fundamental issues with the liquorice that might make you want to really think twice about potential licorice binges. Will introduce you to the plant, and then we'll come back to those things that might

give you second thoughts. Yeah, the liquors plant itself is rather interesting, and uh, you know, I want to come back for a second to what we were talking earlier about the flavor of liquorice. So certainly, as a child, I did not care for the licorice flavor. As I have progressed, hopefully progressed as an adult, I have acquired a certain appreciation for liquorice flavoring in certain things if

it's mild enough. So there are there are a number of alcoholic beverages that have a liquorice flavor, and it varies. There are some traditional middle Eastern licorice flavored drinks. Uh, And I find those usually to be a bit too strong in that flavor from me. Likewise, there's the whole realm of Jagermeister and whatnot, which is also something I never developed a taste for. But in a well balanced cocktail you often have a liquorice flavor that, if it's

balanced right works. Yeah. It has this kind of um, nice sweet but bitter herbal note. Uh. I think it's usually considered like an appartif like it sort of increases the appetite, maybe stimulates the production of bile or the polast seems like it would. Yeah. Yeah, And and again if it's it's it's balanced properly, I find that it works. So I turned to one of my favorite cocktail books,

Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist, which is essentially a botany book. Uh. That's all about alcoholic beverages and different spirits and beer and wine, etcetera. It's killer. Yeah, it's it's a it's a wonderful book. I'm always pulling it out the shelf just to look up, you know, whatever I happen to be consuming. But she points out that there are a number of botanical sources that produce just the liquorice flavor itself, and these include a knees star, a knees knees high stop,

Finnel high stop, and sweet seally. So there are many sources for the flavor itself, many quite unrelated to each other. But what they have in common is is this substance. This actually this molecule, the liquorice flavor molecule that's known as an ethol. And it's soluble in alcohol but not in water. So and it separates from the alcohol when water is added, causing a milky or green cloudiness which you may have noticed if you've ever had a certain

alcoholic beverages that have a a liquorice spirit in them. Oh, well, you certainly see that in for example, Absence, which we talked about in the in the last episode where we where we talked about Amy Stewart and the Drunken Botanist Sails episode. Yeah, like you see that when it emulsifies

in the water, reads this cloudy luche. Now, the liquorice plant itself, Glyceriza glabra is a small Southern European perennial and it's actually a type of bean according to Stewart, that reaches two to three feet in height and it doesn't form a vine the p family. Yeah, and the root is the part that we harvest, and this is what contains the anthol as well as a natural sweetener.

And the natural sweetener is glycerizon or glycerizic acid. So one of the funny things is I think that the word licorice itself in English is a sort of way down the flow of the of the language game corruption of glyceriza, right, licorice glyceriza? Would it would it be more appropriate you think for that, like just sort of the taste sensation if we call it glicorice, you know,

like licorice sounds like just a little too sumptuous. But if it was a go licorice, then that that that that more sums up my response to a really hard like rish flavor. Now that's an interesting psychology question. Why are some consonant sounds less appetizing than others? The hard g does not usually make my appetite leap up. Yeah, yeah, unless it's sufficiently fringe sounding, I think. But and then

it then it maybe has lack up on the situation. Yeah. Well, anyway, so so we're talking about the plant, uh, glyceriza, and you said that the the licorice extract comes from the root. That's true. You take the roots of this plant, not the peas, not the beans in the pod, but the roots, and you grind the roots up, you boil them, and you produce this licorice juice, which you can then cram into all kinds of recipes, licorice candy. Licorice is widely

used in tobacco products. Do you know that, Yeah, I was really Stewart mentions this that it's used to sort of mask the flavor of the of the cigarette or what have you. Yeah, and this is, uh, that's funny that they would need to mask the flavor flavor country mask at all. But then also liquor flavorings are used to mask other flavors, for example, in medicines to cover the taste of the active compounds, which can often be bitter otherwise unpleasant tasting. Um. And somebody out there, I'm

sure makes like artisanal liquorice mayonnaise. They're they're weird liquorice products all over the place. For example, did you know in in places in Northern Europe, like in Finland, salty liquorice is a thing. Well, it's hard for me to imagine that, but I'm going to keep an open mind and and say that I could. I could see where that could be good. Yeah, okay, So where does the

liquorice danger come in? Assuming your liquorice has not been contaminated with lead in A pair of doctor is named James Chamberlain and Igor A. Balnik published a case study in the Western Journal of Medicine, and here's what went down in their case. This previously healthy, sixty four year old man shows up at a Salt Lake City, v A hospital. He reports to them that he's had trouble breathing after exertion. The he's got shortness of breath when

lying down, and he's got general fatigue. Now, if you are a medical professional out there and you're listening to that, you might be thinking like, okay, there could be signs of congestive heart failure. Right. Tests showed that he was suffering from pulmonary edema. This is a condition when fluid collects in your lungs, making it hard to breathe. And

usually the reason this happens is congestive heart failure. But this man had no real signs of having a history of heart problems, and in the days leading up to the hospital visit, the man didn't report any changes to his behavior or diet, except one he'd been on a licorice bench. Over the past three days, he had eaten by himself a total of four packages of black licorice. Hershey, Twizzlers. This is about one thousand, twenty grams or about two

point two four pounds of black licorice over three days. Well, you know, I I can't relate to the black Twizzlers on this, but uh, I can relate as far as red Twizzlers go. U. I said that I don't really eat Twizzlers much anymore, but occasionally I will give into the temptation. So you're lying. Yeah, I guess I was lying to myself, really, because there was a time in the past couple of years where somebody brought a bunch of Twizzlers to the Dungeons and Dragons game and I

kind of forgot that. I had a blood test the next day from my doctor's exam, and I ended up flunking my glucose glucose test because of all the twizzlers I'd eaten the night before and I had to like retake it later on after a you know, sane um consumption of sugar. So I feel him on the twizzler bench, That's what I'm saying. Do you think he ate two

point two four pounds? Uh? You know, I I really don't want to do the math on that because I'm afraid about I might find well anyway, So, once they knew that he had eaten all this liquorice, the doctors were able to say, oh, okay, we think we can pinpoint the problem. It's the licorice overdose. And so they treated him and they kept him in the hospital for a couple of days, and his symptoms disappeared. The pulmonaria demo went away. They did a new uh chest X ray.

You could see his lungs were all cleared up, and he was fine. And he came back several months later checked in, had had no more problems of a similar nature. It appeared to just be the liquorice. The authors of this case study report that it's rare for a liquorice binge to lead to fluid collecting in the lungs, though they were able to find a few other cases of

it in the literature. Only one other case was not associated with comorbid conditions, but excess consumption of liquorice has been linked to negative health effects such as hard a rhythmias and hypertension. So what's going on here, Well, the explanation seems to be that when a lot of black liquorice comes into the body, it sort of sets off a chemical chain reaction starting in your metabolism that makes

a crucial nutrient leave the body. So natural liquorice contains an ingredient as we mentioned before, called glycerizon or glycerizic acid, and when it gets metabolized, it eventually leads to the renal system, especially the kidneys, purging potassium from the body. And one other side effect is that it tends to lead to increased sodium retention in the body, so your body retains more sodium purges potassium. Medically, that's not good.

A potassium deficiency in the blood is known as hypokalemia, and hypokalemia is bad news for your muscles, including your heart, because the simple version is that your body uses potassium to regulate the electrochemical communication between nerves and muscle cells. Potassium is just very important for electro light balance in your body. And if your electrolyte balance is off and you're not getting enough potassium, your cells can't communicate properly.

So will a little bit of licorice hurt me? You're probably one if you're one of those people who does not believe in the wax of belile but believes in the you know, the black manner from heaven. Uh, will a little bit hurt you? I'd say no, probably not, but you should be careful. You shouldn't overdo it. United States FDA has said if you consume more than forty grams of licorice a day for two weeks or more, you can start to get dangerously low levels of potassium.

And forty grams that's not a whole lot. Yeah, certainly, certainly that you wouldn't want to binge on it, but that that's that's I would say, go light on the liquorice, would be that. The take home from this, Yeah, don't don't binge on it, and probably probably shouldn't eat it every day, even if you only eat a little. Right, there's a whole world of candies out there. You don't have to just go all in on the liquorice. But

there is some good news. So if you are a liquorice fan, not all candies or products labeled licorice actually contain natural liquorice extract the stuff that poses the risk. Right. We we mentioned all the various other places you can get the liquorice flavoring. Yeah, so a lot of things that are labeled licorice or actually just products flavored with something like annus oil or other things that contain these similar herbal compounds that taste like licorice, but they don't

pose the same risk from the glycerizic acid. So you can research your products on your own, try to find out what goes in them, and make your decisions accordingly. Now, on one hand, we don't like to be alarmist. We don't like to say, you know, oh this food scary, it's gonna hurt you. But some scientists recently have taken a fairly harsh view of whether people should really be

consuming natural liquorice extract. One study I found by Hesham r omar at All, published in Therapeutic Advances and into Chronology and Metabolism, had made the following statements quote despite its apparent use in a few clinical scenarios, the daily consumption of liquorice is never justified because it's benefits are

minor compared to the adverse outcomes of chronic consumption. And then they also say, quote increased awareness among the public is required through TV commercials, newspapers, internet sites, magazines, and product labels regarding the upper limb bit of ingestion and health hazards associated with excess intake. So run out onto the streets and and just yell at people like it's the like it's the closing moments of invasion of the

body snatchers, and and say don't eat the liquorice. I mean, if you wanted to start a pernicious rumor to get the job done, you could just suggest that licorice is people. Now. I like what you've mentioned earlier about the like annis and star Annis being an ingredient some of the flavoring, because ultimately that sounds classier, right, I mean, that's that

has more of a culinary feel to it. I feel like if someone were to say, hey, do you want some liquorice candy or would you like some star Annis oil infused, you know, hard candy. I would say, oh, we'll give me some of that, give me some of some of the second option, because that sounds like a nice craft candy. I totally see what you're saying there. That makes me think that partially my aversion to licorice candy is is like a learned thing or something like that.

Because if somebody says, do you want some black liquorice, I'm like, get out of my house. If somebody's like, would you like some Star and East candy, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'll try it. Yeah, all right, now I have just a couple more things about liquorice to throw in here. So back in two thousand nine, chemist in Taiwan found that an ingredient in liquorice blocked the absorption of cyclosporing, a drug that helps prevent organ rejection in transplant patients.

Huh so this is this, This was rather interesting, but I should I should definitely drive home that the prospect of liquorice complicating organ transplants. That was a new idea at the time, but it was hardly the only substance that was known to uh that to complicate transplants. So a lot of things can mess with that, right, including things like onions, ginger, ginko. There's just a name a few soians. That's that's that's what I read. That's a

big hit man. Yeah, I mean people, I would love to hear from anyone out there who has received an oregan transplanters had to sort of alter their their diet or lifestyle to accommodate that. But but but yeah, I don't want to make it sound like liquorice is the only thing that can unbalance the scenario. On the upside, I also ran across a two thousand ten study that was published in the journal Leucocyte Biology, and they reported that liquorice route might just word off a rare and

deadly infection that can stem from severe burns. So, in this study, scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch and Shiner's Hospital found that that glues arise and boosted the damaged skins production of proteins UH called anti microbial peptides. So you know, there's so that's one week. At some points we can put up on the scoreboard for liquorice UH in safeguarding our health. Alright, so we don't want to scare you off liquorice entirely, but make your liquorice

decisions intelligently. Be an intelligent consumer of the wax of Belisle. All right, are we done talking about candy? Should we go onto something more interest? Yeah, we should have something we could need some protein, that's what we need, Joe. Okay, let's take a quick break and when we come back we will discuss the meat of the amphibioid. All Right, we're back. So, Joe, have you ever eaten frog legs? Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this because I like

to think of myself as an adventurous eater. But no, I don't think I've had the frog legs. Well I have, I have not had them recently, but I have had fried frog legs in the past. What do you think I remember liking them, But it was kind of at at an age where I liked anything that was fried up in a skullet. So I don't I don't know. I imagine, you know, everything fried is essentially good. It hits several key areas for for our taste, you know.

So I imagine there's some really delicious frog legs out there, but I have not necessarily tried them. Now, I hate to invoke the cliche, but did it taste like, you know what, like like chicken? Right? Yeah, I guess I mean every that I mean it's it's the cliche. But I have found that a lot of non non chicken, non beef, non pork meats do kind of taste like chicken. I guess that's like our easiest analog for uh you know,

a variety of amphibians and reptiles. Like I felt like that was the same way when I had what alligator wants in New Orleans. But but it's a similar scenario to where first of all, if it's fried up, that kind of maskle out of the flavor, and if you're primed to think it tastes like chicken, then are we just looking for those connections in the flavor profile. Maybe it's not that it tastes much like chicken, but we just don't have that many other meats to compare it to. Yeah,

it could be. So this next selection does take us to the world of frogs, and specifically it takes us to the African nation of uh Namibia. Not to be confused with the non existent nation of Nambia, which has been in the news recently. Uh you'll find it. You'll find it on the northwest border of South Africa on the Atlantic Ocean. It's home to about two point one million people. They're five major ethnic groups and the dominant religion is Christian and it's UH and uh it owes

this to its colonial history. Now, as far as cuisine goes, UH millet and maize or staple foods, accompanied by indigenous vegetables beef, lam mutton, fish. But like many cultures around the world, they also enjoy a little frog from time to time. Which I was looking into this and I found it a little surprising. I didn't know much about like global food customs with frogs. Uh a lot of people. I think you think of French cuisine, you may think

of Cantonese cuisine. These are both areas where frogs are often considered delicacies. But you encounter them in just all over the world. Like people have long realized that when there are frogs around, there's a good chance you can eat their legs, their meaty legs. I wonder to what extent the regions cultivation of frog as a food item is correlated with the extent to which frogs are an invasive pest in the area and not invasive to past. Yeah,

well we'll see that in this example. I also couldn't help. But wonder do we see less frog legs being consumed maybe in the US based on the Muppet movie because we had Doc Hoppers French fried frog legs restaurant, and there, of course trying to kill kermit. Yeah, or and or make him sell out his species. That's an unspeakable crime. Yeah, it is. You can't eat sentient frogs that sing, indeed,

not with pipes like that. Now in uh now, maybe the giant African bullfrog is the Amphibian delicacy of choice. Pixa cephalis ad spursus ad spurs is a k A giant pixie frog. Yeah. It's also known locally as ifuma or in the plural oma fuma. And what makes it interesting is that Namibian traditions call for more of the frog to be eaten than is common in a lot

of other cultures. So not just the legs, right, it's more of a it's more in keeping with how other cultures would eat and you know American culture too would eat a fish or chicken. You know, you would essentially gut the creature and then use the remnants cook that up. So I was reading from a book for this Indigenous Knowledge of Namibia edited by Casilla see Chin Simbu. And

it's not just Namibians that that enjoy this frog. The frog is widely distributed throughout southern and eastern Africa, and the Nassinga people of eastern Zambia they consume it whole as well, and they call it quote kanyama kalaisi fupa the animal without bones. Now they do have bones, but one of the apparely interesting things about cooked frog meat is that it separates very easily from the bones. So

these are these frogs, the giant African bullfrog. They're plentiful in the rainy season, so they're just everywhere that it kind of gets into that pest area. It's like, there are frogs all over the ice. Should we not try and eat them, which seem to be the natural human inclination at least make a stock, right, Yeah, And the thing is that they're they're relatively easy to catch and can catch them by hand. Often they're caught by children. They can inflict a nasty bite if you're not careful.

And I've read that this is the only example of an amphibian that can cause uh, this is how it was phrased in this paper. Is looking at actual mechanical trauma. So, uh, the other bite can be a little bit nasty if you, you know, you don't know how to to to catch one. I've never thought about that. Are there no other frogs that can really bite you good? Yeah, I was trying to think about. I mean, I grew up in in rural Tennessee and we were always catching frogs and stuff,

and I don't remember ever being bit by one. So the only mechanical attack I can think of I've ever witnessed a frog inflicting is pooping on you, which they do quite a lot. Yeah, I guess that's just it's more of like a chemical base attack though, right there. But yeah, generally the frogs defenses are running away or being grows uh, or or of course having actual toxins. But in terms of like actually causing a physically painful bite, yeah,

this may be the only only example. So what they do is they catch the frogs they you know, they corral them, and when it comes time to cook them. They clean them, they gut them. They removed the viscera as well as the tongue, which is especially frowned upon, the upper jaw, and the palate, all of which is considered inedible. The fat is either left in or it's removed to cook separately, depending on the specific culinary tradition.

Then the frogs are boiled in the similar you might boil other meats such as fish uh, though they sometimes throw in medicinal plants, and it's thought that this decreases the chances of osh queta keta, which I've also seen written as osce uh catacatta. And this is what happens to you, This is what can happen to your body if you eat the frogs too early. So it was also it's also worth knowing there was a long stand tradition not to spice the frogs or to fry them,

because it would make them look unappealing. They seem to prefer the frogs to look as much like a frog as possible, not sliced up, not spiced, and not fried. I found that interesting. Well, I think that is an interesting idea in uh in culinary traditions around the world. I mean you see that as a major division in

the way American food is served today. There's sort of like the do you want to have the food completely d natured and appear as a product where you can't recognize the animal or the plant it came from, or do you want to sort of like see it as close to as it would look when it was alive as possible. Yeah, I think shrimp or a fine example

of this. I was thinking about this the other night because I was out with my family and uh, we ordered a shrimp dish and the shrimp came out with their heads on and everything, which which it kind of has two different messages. Like if you don't want to think of the shrimp as an animal, then I can

see where that could be unpleasant to gaze upon. But if you want to think of the shrimp as not only an animal, but a fresh animal that you're getting pretty you know, pretty early in the supply chain, then the head can be a way too to be sure of that. You know, if you feel more like this is fresh shrimp if it still has legs and a head and its shell, as opposed to just kind of like a a pink comma that you have that you've you bought on a massive platter at a grocery store.

I mean, I think I've said this on the show before, but I often think one of the appeals of breaded fried foods is not just the taste that it's you know, oily and crunchy and textually pleasing and all that, but that, especially to children, it sort of masks the nature of the animal that the food comes from. And so when you have breaded fried food products, it has it somehow tames what you're eating. Does that make sense? No? No,

I agree. I've been through through a lot of this with my son because he he you know, pretty early on, decided that he did not want to eat meats unless

they were like shrimp, oysters, crabs. He's essentially a pscytarian um and and he has absolutely no problem eating like he'll look at a live crab and talk about how much he wants to eat it, you know, but that that he has you know, thus thus far, you know, refused to eat you know, poultry, um, and certainly cows and pigs, and we you know try and we try

and honor that as much as possible. Um. But in this particular case, I can't help, but suspect I couldn't find any sources that really spoke to this, but I wonder if they're their Their insistence on the frog looking like a frog has to do with avoiding the the sickness that can ensue if you eat it when it's too young. Yes, uh so, let me go get into ocean, get it. Get a little bit um. What comes of eating juvenile frogs or eating them too early in the season.

The symptoms here are a lot like skistosomiasis, which is caused by a parasitic flat worm that's found in freshwater snails. So yeah, it's yeah, not pleasant. The symptoms here are acute inflammation, pain while urinating bloody urine, and even temporary kidney failure. Yike. So why why does the why does the young frog like? What does the youngness of the frog have to do with this? This seems to be a question that we don't have a firm answer for yet, or at least I was not able to find it.

If anyone else out there has a firm answer, I would love to hear it. But basically, everyone knows that there are certain steps you can take to avoid it. You don't harvest too early when the frogs are not mature enough. Specifically, you don't harvest visually immature frogs, frogs that haven't croaked yet uh, and or frogs before the third rainfall. And there's also this added step of cooking them with medicinal ingredients, cooking them with medis in the woods, uh,

specifically to help mitigate the effects. Is it known if that's actually effective. It doesn't seem to be known. Likewise, so when when people uh end up growing sick with the ocean kata kata, they'll seek medical intervention. And it's also ensured whether this really helps or it's just something that kind of has to go away on its own. Uh. So again, there's not a lot of information out there in the particulars here, but there are a few theories

as to what's going on. When you look for answers on this for starters, you'll find a number of kind of just article list articles out there. They just say that, okay, it's it's a poison. Uh there's some sort of poison in the frog. Um. I'm not sure if I'm is convinced about that, because clearly it's it's it's only a problem with the immature frogs. Right, I've seen it speculated that it might be a bacterial infection caused by the

younger frogs. Uh. But I also keep coming back to this idea that it's some sort of a parasite like seems to be the area where the symptoms line up um closely. I've also read a paper that said that cases of international travelers becoming sick after consuming raw fish or quote unusual meats such as bull frog meat, that they would likely result in a diagnosis of nathosomiasis. This is an infection caused by a nematode. Uh. And it's I mean, it seems like a decent like broad clinical analysis,

but I looked at the symptoms. The symptoms don't really line up there. Uh, it doesn't the whole you know, painful urination, bloody urine, and uh, contemporary kidney failure. So the jury seems to remain out on what exactly causes the illness. But to me, this sounds like another one of these cases where if you eat the food prepared the right way, the way you know, the local people who developed this cuisine know how to prepare it, you're

probably gonna be all right. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't seem like I didn't find any articles that were saying, oh, this is this is this is really a danger, this is a public health risk, which is also why you're not seeing a lot of studies into it. It's not like someone's in the field saying, we have to we have to help, you know, we we've got to solve this problem, because no, like local culinary traditions already have

the problem solved. If you if you just know which frogs to eat and which ones not to eat, and or how to properly prepare them. But I think I wonder about the whole again, about the whole. Don't fry them, don't chop them up. That might be because if you were buying them from a food seller, which apparently, uh, you know, these are prepared in the home, but also

sometimes they are sold. It does make sense that you might want to be able to look at the frog you're about to eat and know for certain that it was not an immature specimen. If that's going to make a difference in your health, that makes sense to me. All Right, I'm going to take us back to the plant world. Robert, Okay, Yeah, we've had enough meat here for the time being, or if you want more meat,

you could just say, maybe it's time for the chili course. Yes, okay, So time to look at a case study in the British Medical Journal from n teen eighty by Normandy Noah at All that reviews some curious cases of food poisoning with a with a common factor between them. So the first case study mentioned in this report sounds like about

as bleak an evening as you could ask for. In nineteen seventy six, you got seventeen schoolboys, all about seventeen years old, on holiday, chaper owned by three of their teachers, staying in a hostel. It gets bleaker. They come back for dinner one night and they're supposed to have some roast chicken. But the chicken was quote found to be unfit to eat. And that's all it says. I love the gaps in these case reports you could just leave up to the imagination. Was it unfit to eat because

it smelled like a dumpster? Was it unfit to eat because it was cooked to leather? Yea? How how far into the meal did they get before this was the pronouncement? Right? So anyway, chickens unfit to eat? So instead they threw together an alternative supper made for um the following ingredients. They had a salad, They had hard boiled eggs, cooked potatoes, and raw red kidney beans that have been soaking in a saucepan since the night before. Okay, sounds pretty good. Huh. Well,

I'm I'm I'm instantly suspicious of that last dish. I'm curious, Robert, when you make beans in your house, I assume you make beans. Oh yeah, yeah, we we do. We do bean dishes from time to time. Yeah. Do you generally do you just like go to a can, open a can, or do you soak them from dried and cook them from them? We we've done both. I guess we tend to do. We tend to do the can thing more often. But like in the past, people have gifted us, like

some really nice what is it rancho gordo beans? Dried beans you have to go through the whole rigmarole of soaking them and so forth. You. I never did dried beans for a long time. Always whenever I was making beans, just used can beans. But hey, cooks out there at home. If you're the same way, if you if you haven't tried rind beans, I think they're way better. I would agree, And I would say that it's always a you can

tell a lot by particularly like a Mexican restaurant. I feel when you taste their their beans, just like the black beans and the refried beans, like you can you can taste the difference. Uh, if they're giving this much attention to the bean dish, then it probably botes well for the rest of the menu. Yeah. And and good beans are good stuff. I think they often get thought of as like part of you know, something to sort

of fill part of the plate. But but good beans are really good and if you if you give them the right kind of care, you soak them, you cook them long enough, and they become nice and tender. You know, cooking from dried beans is the way to go. But back to the case studies, so they did not follow these instructions. They did go from dried beans, but they didn't cook them. They just used these soaked uncooked beans. The case study says these soaked uncooked beans were quote

not popular. Only nine of the seventeen boys ate a significant quantity of them. About an hour to an hour and a half after eating. Interstage left, the evil gods of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Nine of the boys got sick, two had to be admitted to the hospital, and one had to be given an IVY infusion while in the hospital.

Fortunately none of them died. They all recovered, and the doctors studying what caused the outbreak were unable to find evidence of microbial pathogens like E. Coli or salmonella that you'd normally see if that was the cause. Uh, And they weren't able to find evidence of any chemical contaminants to explain what made the boys sick. And after you combine this case with other observations, it starts to become clear that something about undercooked kidney beans itself was the problem,

because other patients had been documented with similar histories. Eating raw, soaked or lightly cooked red kidney beans has this history of bringing forth the nausea, the vomiting, the copious diarrhea. So what's going on there? Well, the kidney bean is a variety of the common being Phaseolus vulgaris. It's the same species as pinto beans, navy beans, and so forth,

just a different strain produced by the genetic engineering of agriculture. Well, the uncooked beans, the authors found include toxins such as quote hema glutenins, trips and inhibitors, a goiter, erogen, and cyanogenic glycosides. And they're right, quote that the hema gluten ins where the cause of the vomiting and the diarrhea appears likely. So hema glutenin is a lectin. Electin is a type of protein that binds to sugar molecules, and

you'll find them in beans. What effect does it have on the body, Well, it's it's sort of there in the name, right, hema gluten in. It causes red blood cells, the hematic cells to a glutinate to clump together, and it's so it clumps to the red blood cells. Kind of gross. Other substances also have hemaglutenin properties. For example, one reason the influence of virus can be so effective is that it has these proteins that work is hemogluten

ins in the blood. And the authors of the study note that in cases when raw red and white kidney beans have been fed to rats as eight percent of their diet by mass, the rats tended to die within three days. But when the hemagluten ins from red kidney means were isolated and fed to the rats, the rats also lost weight and died. So even if you just took the hemagluten ins out and gave that to the rats,

that seemed to have the same effect. And the authors also note that the extreme toxin ric in, which is found in castor beans, and we've talked about before that that is also a hemagluten in. So the active toxins and raw red kidney beans appear to be destroyed pretty easily by sufficient heat heating. Just boil the beans, which would seem you know, reather straightforward like cook your beans, yeah yeah, And other studies have confirmed the role of

raw undercook kidney beans and food poisoning outbreaks. Um, the bottom line is, if you boil your beans for a while, they'll be fine. Obviously you don't want to eat them raw. But here's actually the real danger, the thing that might get you if you're not some kind of weird person who wants to eat raw red kidney beans, low temperature

cooking could be a danger. So if, for example, you put your beans in the slow cooker and you put it on the low setting and you give them a couple hours, it's possible that they will never reach the internal temperature required to destroy the toxic lectins that could make you six. So cook them thoroughly, cook them to the boiling point high temperature. And uh and of course, if you're using canned beans, those are already boiled, so

they'll be fine. But if you want to treat yourself to the delights of of well cooked beans from the dried state, boil them well. With with increased taste comes increased responsibility. Right. Yeah, I was actually invited to, uh, you know, an amateur chili cookoff recently, and now I've now I'm hesitating, But at the same time, I'm like most of the people participating, they're probably gonna use canned beans, right, or if they're gonna use dry beans, then they're gonna

know what's up. They're gonna know how to approach the dish. Well, I mean, i'd say surely they'll they'll boil them that I would be shocked if somebody makes a chili and like ads ads soaked beans right before serving it without boiling them or something. That would be a really last minute you know, they just that they didn't have time to actually kick it. Yeah, alright, So we we've had we've had three dishes. So far, We've had our liquorice,

We've we've had our bullfrog, we've had our beans. Nobody has died jet or at least we haven't specifically reference to study that included a fatality. No. I feel like a lot of the foods that will kill you we already knocked out in previous dangerous foods episodes. I mean, most of the time, if something will kill you reliably enough for people to write about it, it's not a common food, right, Yeah, And there's not like a very common and accepted way to avoid Uh, that's sort of

that sort of death. So mainly I guess we're talking about stuff that will make you sick. But hey, what about stuff that will make you see into the future. Oh, that sounds good. Let's take one more commercial break, and when we come back, we will have some hallucinogenic fish than Alright, we're back, Robert. Do you want to talk

about fish madness? Sure, it sounds delightful. I want to look at a couple of case studies from a two thousand six paper in the Journal Clinical Toxicology by Luke to Harrow and Philip Palmier, And here are the cases. So In April nineteen, a healthy forty year old man was on vacation in the French Riviera in con and one night, after eating a dinner of delicious baked sea bream. Actually I can't comment on how delicious it was. I assume it was delicious. Yeah, I mean, considering where he's

eating it, right, it must be a very classy dish. Sure. Yeah, so baked seabream. He starts to feel weak and then nauseated, and he starts to vomit during the night. And the next day he tries to drive himself home, you know, getting back home from the vacation, but he encountered a problem. On the way home. His car was surrounded by quote giant Arthur pods. Oh my, so this is not just mild hallucination here where everything's a little wavy, like he's

seeing giant insects. No, he's not seeing like tracers and you know, like light auras around things. No, he's seeing

giant Arthur pods surrounding his vehicle, full naked line. Okay, And so of course these giant Arthur pods were preventing him from driving home, and he went on to experience terrifying hallucinations involving quote aggressive and screaming animals, agitated and confused, he somehow arrived at a hospital emergency room, and once there, though he was in the state of stress and excitation,

he really didn't show any physical abnormalities. They couldn't find anything wrong with his body other than the fact that he was freaking out and stressed out and distressed. So the hospital kept him for a couple of days and after about thirty six hours his hallucinations had disappeared. Another case March two thousand two, and to really healthy otherwise, ninety year old man bought some sea bream from a local fisherman at a place called santra Pez, again in

the French Riviera. He took it home, he cleaned it, he prepared it, and he ate it. About two hours after his meal, he started hearing strange noises. He heard humans screaming all around him, and he heard the sound of shrieking birds. And he experienced these hallucinations and had terrible nightmares for about two or three days and then it all went away. Now, initially he didn't report the symptoms because he was afraid it was the onset of

a permanent mental illness. And side note, if you're experiencing unexpected hallucinations, whatever you think the cause might be, it is better to tell somebody and try to get help. Yeah, I don't just say I guess that had some weird fish right now, because that's that's exactly what Ebenezer Scrooge would do, right, just blaming on the potato that you

could be a bit of cheese. Yeah. But anyway, after all this was over, he remembered hearing from someone at the fish market that the sea bream, the fish he had eaten, had been owned to cause hallucinations in the past, and on that basis he called poison control in Marseille. So in both cases, the fish the men had eaten was this species of sea bream called Sarpa salpa, also known as the Salima porgy or the goldline. And I think this is because it has these little yellow gold stripes.

Nothing to do with that company that hawks gold on TV. The authors of this paper note that these are not the only cases of hallucinogenic fish poisoning known uh and the by the way, the scientific term for hallucinogenic fish poisoning I hope I do this right is Ichthyolino tox is um, and it's widespread throughout tropical regions of the Indian and Pacific Ocean, sometimes in the Mediterranean. Widespread but not necessarily common, so you see it all over the place,

but it does appear to be rare. It's not something like if you go to the tropics you can just expect to get fish madness um. Other fish implicated in similar hallucinogenic poisonings would include things like the cea chub, the common mullet, the convicts urgin fish, and the coral grouper. The convict surgeon fish does sound a little suspect. Yeah, it is pretty good. They've got a whole list. There are other ones too, mentioned in the paper. Those were

I thought the best names. Uh So here are the common symptoms you get with theo Alino toxic is um. Within the first few minutes to two hours after eating the fish, patients usually report symptoms similar to drunkenness, like they've got a loss of balance and coordination and quote generalized malaise, discomfort, uh sometimes a sore throat, sometimes heartburn can occur at this phase, and then comes the second phase.

This is usually a couple of hours after eating the fish, you get the central nervous system effects, and these would include delirium, visual and auditory hallucinations, usually reported as frightening and weirdly enough, the author's note this, they very often seem to involve animals. That's weird that there would be like specific content common to the hallucination. It's almost like it's like a a ghost that's been summoned to punish

the carnivore. Yeah. Uh, terrifying nightmares, depression, the feeling that you're about to die, quote with reactive tachycardia and hyperventilation, so feelings that that death is coming make people have elevated heart rhythms and hyperventilation. And then quote transient behavioral disturbances. Uh, this sounds just kind of like odd, dangerous and erratic behavior. And this is one of the things you can treat.

You can treat this with drugs like benzodiazepine or neuraleptics in order to prevent the patient from hurting themselves or others. But I don't know, this conjures into mind these bizarre scenario where it's like somebody's got the fish madness and it's like just leave him be son, he's got the fish madness. It's got to run its course, and we just tie him down and make sure he doesn't doesn't

hurt himself. But anyway, sometimes not always, there is gastro intestinal distress, nausea, abdom o pain, diarrhea, and at the time of this paper there was no known antidote. I looked for for recent research looking for an antidote, and I was unable to find one. So it looks like something that cannot be cured. You can just treat the symptoms and wait for it to go away on its own. Now, I mentioned that despite being widespread, the cases of poisoning

of this kind are rare. Hallucinogenic fish poisoning occurs and only a fraction of the cases of consuming these fish, and toxicity seems to vary depending on a bunch of factors, like when the fish was caught, though there are some conflicting claims about like which season it is most dangerous, and especially how it's prepared. According to a popular anecdote, the risk of poisoning goes way up if you don't immediately gut the fish after capture, or if you cook

and serve the head with the rest of the body. Okay, so we see similar practices as with the bullfrog, where like and it was with with As with a lot of animals that we eat, there are things you just need to get rid immediately in order to make it now. Unlike the red kidney beans, cooking does not seem to help. Bad fish trips have been reported not just when the fish is eaten raw, but when it's been boiled, steamed, fried. This is one where the denaturing process of breading and

frying will not necessarily save you. Now, the good news is it generally does not appear to be fatal, but obviously could be dangerous if a dosed person can't get medical attention, or you're trying to drive your car through a herd of giant Arthur pods. On the other hand, you have to wonder if you can trip on fish heads, is anybody doing it on purpose? The answer so I'm not sure about this. The authors of this two thousand six paper report that the answer is yes, that people

have been reported to do it recreationally. Um. They say that Arabic speaking populations apparently called this fish the fish that makes dreams. Uh. They claim that it has been used recreationally as far back as the Roman Empire, though I could not find corroborating evidence of this. All references to this fact seem to just point back to the

claim in this paper. Well, and then also I would wonder if it what if it has been used that long, I mean recreationally or you could say shamanistically, right, because that seems to be the pattern we take. Yeah, they're probably people that that turned to one another and say, hey, eat this fish. Who it happens, But it also seems likely that someone would say, hey, uh, something magical happens

when you eat this fish. Let's talk about it. Yeah. Absolutely, So I don't doubt at all that it's possible this is the case, but I do I am kind of suspicious just because I can't find independent verification of evidence of this. So I wonder I'm not sure about that fact um. But they also claimed that it's been used recreationally more recently in Polynesia, and that another hallucinogenic fish,

the sir mullet or malloid o dick. This samue insis is traditionally known among some of the people's of the Hawaiian Islands as quote the chief of ghosts now here's the question what causes the poisoning. It's hard to know

for sure. The author's note that one complicating factor is that some cases of Theolino toxy um seem to be confused with a totally different kind of fish poisoning called sigatara, And this is a condition that happens when you eat some tropical reef fish that have been contaminated with the

species of microalgae, a dinoflagellate called gambier Discus toxicus. And people with cigara experienced nausea, vomiting, and neurologic disturbances, so sounds kind of similar, but not disturbances to the central nervous system as with the hallucinogenic fish, and not the brain so much as the peripheral nervous system, for example, tingling of the fingers and toes, or illogical touch sensations like people say that the feelings of hot and cold

are reversed for them um. So cigatara could be viewed as more serious than nick theo Alino tox is um, since some patients actually die from sigtara, and if they survive, symptoms can last for months or even years. But one similarity between hallucinogenic fish poisoning and sigtara is that scientists have speculated that the toxins that cause the hallucinations may also come from algae consumed by the fish, which contaminates

the fish's meat with these psychoactive compounds. Just to mention, one study by Khaled belasued at All from two thousand and twelve published in in Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology. They did some research on prepared extracts from Sarpa salpa, the sea bream, and they took extracts from the liver, the brain, and the muscle. And what they found was that the liver extract in particular was cytotoxic, meaning toxic

two cells to human cells. And the source of this was they believed that in their research they showed that the toxic effects were traceable too elements in the fish's diet, specifically quote toxic dinoflagellates which live in epiphyte on Potadenia

oceanica leaves. Now, epiphyte means a plant that grows on another plant, right, So the Postadenia oceanica is a type of sea grass that lives in the Mediterranean so the fish graze on the sea grass, and the sea grass is a host for this little organism which produces the toxins. The toxins accumulate in the liver of the fish, and the liver can poison a human who eats it. All right, I have one final selection here. It is It is

another meat. It's a rather unique meat. And I will warn everyone that that that people will die on this one, but probably not that many people. So the dish in question is san naxi, which is a Korean delicacy, uh. And the chef prepares it by slicing the tentacles off of a small live octopus lives live octopus, yes, And then these tentacles are are seasoned. They're tossed in sesame oil and served with various sauces, you know, generally like

a chili sauce or something. And then the dish is brought to the table while it's everything is still moving and writhing around. It's a love crafty and feast. It's a it's chewy, but it's also crawley as the tentacles continue to move around on the plate with their little suction cups. So it has to say the least, it has a unique texture, invite and it invites extreme opinions. Wait, this makes me think, is this a thing to be to be chewed like or a thing to just be

sort of shot like an oyster? Maybe do not shoot like an oyster? Is the is the take on that I that I got from from reading about it? Uh? Yeah, you're gonna want to chew this up. Now I mentioned the extreme opinions. This is one of those dishes where if you're hearing this, you might be saying, yeah, I'll give that a shot. That sounds like it's like sushi

that moves. Other people might say, well that that that sounds absolutely disgusting, and it does seem to They do seem to target restaurants, deuced team to target tourists for this very reason, like people who want something exciting and I'm in exotic, right, it's something I imagine a lot of people take pictures of them elves eating right. And one of the reasons is because his reputation it said that if you that it is a dish that can potentially choke you. Uh. And and there is some reason

reasoning behind this. Uh. The most important thing is that if you do have it have this dish, you need to chew it up, because the idea here is that if you don't chew it up enough, the suction cups on the tentacles will remain intact enough to stick to the roof of your mouth or the inside of your throat, potentially choking you. So I'm reminded of, you know, from Hell's heart. I stab at the You know you've captured me, you've killed me, You've served me. But maybe I get

this one last chance to choke you. I mentioned the sesame oil. I've also read that the sesame oil helps prevent the suckers from attaching as you eat it. But again, you're gonna want to chew this up. Writer Matt Gross discussed the dish in his two thousand eight New York Times article A Quest into the Gustatory Heart of Soul, and he shared the following. The most surprising thing about

sun Nacci it tasted good, clean, and meaty. Once I'd gotten over the discombobulation that comes from eating something that most definitely does not want to be eaten, I was chop sticking tentacles into my mouth as if they were octopopcorn.

Octopopcorn and uh Interestingly enough, I found a news article from two thousand twelve in which a man was accused of murdering his girlfriend, and he claimed that he didn't kill her, but she simply choked to death on an order of sun nachi in their hotel room, So take that for what it's worth. I couldn't find any coverage that followed up on that to see who was actually telling the truth there. But again, this is a dish

that elects strong opinions. Now, I myself, I've chosen to abstain from eating octopus, so the idea isn't super appealing to me, But I do love sushi and Korean food, so I can imagine how one might enjoy it. Now. Octopier, of course amazing organisms, and they boast a number of different defenses against predators. They have camouflage, ink, threatening displays, high speed jet propulsion, escape, and venom. But it would seem that in some cases, you know, their their final

defense is their choke a bill. Now, I wonder would that be an actual adaptation. I guess it possibly could be, like in the same way that a uh an animal could have toxins that would be poisonous. Basically, to discourage other animals from eating it. You could have some kind of mechanical action of your flesh that punishes an animal that eats you and discourages predation. Well, yeah, I mean there there are adaptations that discourage, you know, being eaten. Obviously,

I guess it. It's hard to really nail down the octopus on this right, because it has so many other robust defensive mechanisms. Uh, But we do have examples that have come to light where let's say, a dolphin has attempted to eat an octopus and it has choked on it. But of course that can be said of a lot of different foods. I mean a lot of human foods are you know, you if it goes down wrong, you

can choke, and if you choke, you can die. However, there is one example of an animal that does seem to have a choking the predator adaptation, and that is of course the hagfish, which, if you've ever seen footage of these, these things are amazing, this kind of faceless, joyless um slug fish creature, and when threatened, they squeeze out this gill choking slime, just this thick viscus, uh lube like material and uh and and this appears to be one of its adaptations is that if something tries

to eat it, they're just gonna get a mouthful and perhaps gills full of slime that could choke them out. Defend yourself by being disgusting. Yeah, the hag fish has it, has it down to a fine science. Now, speaking of choking. In previous episodes, we've discussed, you know a lot of times how Western culture is given to panic about poisoning and danger from unfamiliar foods from other cuisines, but that when you look up, the number is actually the most harmful.

Food poisoning outbreaks in the United States tend to come from things that are considered to be very ordinary American products, not exotic foods. Uh. One of the big ones is let us another leafy greens and a bag, but also meats, cheeses, prepared packaged foods like peanut butter. And it turns out the same principle holds true not just for food poisoning

by pathogens and contaminants, but for choking risk. A study in reviewed the foods that most children choked on between two thousand one and two thousand nine, and the primary culprit was, of course, not octopus. Uh, not any kind of ethnic cuisine from anywhere in the world. It was

hard candy. Yeah, that would make sense because you know, there are other highly chokable foods, such as say, grapes, where with the young kids, you're always being reminded, will make sure you slice those grapes in half, you know, Uh, you can do that with grapes. Hard candy is that's a taller order. Yeah. So in this period from two thousand one to two thousand nine, more than sixteen thousand children showed up in e ers choking on hard candy.

That means that's about fifteen percent of all child emergency room visits due to choking were caused by hard candy. So, other than the fact that they're disgusting, this is another good reason nobody should ever buy Jolly Rancher. Yeah, pick up the nice, stuable black twizzlers instead, Far better for you, Right, I don't even know those might not even be made with the real liquorice extract. Yeah, I'm not sure. Well, but you had that that one study where they specifically

said that was several years back. That's true, so the recipe may have changed. Yeah, I don't know. More research is required, don't don't, don't take our word for it on the the actual liquorice content. If you're Candy Well, Robert, I hope you feel satisfied by this feast today. Yeah, yeah, I feel like this was a dangerous feast we made. We made it through. We learned a little bit about other cultures and other culinary traditions, and yeah, and hopefully

we learned a little bit of about ourselves. You know, by by focusing in on, you know, seemingly exotic food that can choke, you were forced to realize, Oh yeah, most of our food can choke us. It doesn't have to be writhing and around and of suction cups on it to pose a potential danger. Yeah all right, Well, hey, we'd love to hear from anyone out there who has tried these various dishes. Have you had the African bullfrog? Have have you had uh, writhing tentacles in a in

a soul restaurant? Have you had hallucinogenic fish poisoning? I guess we'll probably hear from a lot of people if we ask if you've had red kidney beans. But but but please out there, cook those beans. Yes, have you had these things? And then have you suffered any of the symptoms that we've discussed? And hey, we're it's open season for comments on black liquor issue. What do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you have weird feelings about it? Let us know. Yeah, it's it's a

polarizing snack in the new respects. Hey, get in touch with us all the normal ways. Heading over to stuff Doable your mind dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes and videos and blog post links out to our various social media accounts as well, So just Twitter, Tumbler, Facebook, and Instagram, and on Facebook, be sure to check out our discussion module. That's a group where you can you

can join up and chat with other listeners. And if you want to get in touch with this directly, as always, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for moralness and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Love