Beware the pine nut.

K

Kay Bixler

Kay Bixler
Apparently Chinese pine nuts can cause serious palate problems to some people. It happened to me and it is real and it sucks. After eating some pine nuts my palate was totally fucked for nearly two weeks. Everything tasted bitter and metallic and my sense of smell was gone. It eventually subsided with the help of saline nasal spray and Listerine but wow, you do not want to mess with stuff. It's been dubbed "pine mouth" by the Internet and no one seems to know what it is about the nuts that causes some people to have a reaction. I didn't realize the pine nuts were from China when I purchased them but now I check everything for country of origin. Trader Joe's has even begun putting warning labels on their crappy Chinese pine nuts. They should just stop selling them.

This has been a public service announcement.
 
I believe they harvest the wrong species.

I check country of origin for everything and I don't buy Chinese unless it is a dire emergency.
 
This actually got a lot of press 5-6 years ago. I've made a conscious effort to avoid Chinese pine nuts, since. Unfortunately, given how cheap they are, it's tough to have any pesto anywhere these days that haven't been made with them.

Sorry you learned the hard way.
 
Here's two quick reads:

1. Telegraph
- Syndrome first noted in 2001
- problem traceable to mixed shipments of the good Pinus koraiensis with the bad Pinus armandii

2. Research
- because every joke is better when you fully explain it
 
I love pine nuts. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving one year I got some to use in the dressing, and sampled a few. The next morning the syndrome set in, couldn't taste anything except that metallic bitterness, and I was cooking most of the holiday dishes. I couldn't even tell whether everything was properly salted, and had to rely on my guests to guide me as I was cooking. Disaster avoided, of course--what if I hadn't tasted and poisoned everyone's palate with the pine nuts in the dressing.
 
The whole Ghost Horse thing was really good. Stranger than fiction.

I have no opinion on pine nuts other than they are good when they don't fuck with you palate.
 
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