I cooked dinner for my friends last week, Tuesday. We had sushi, polenta hake and a lovely salad. Usually I put toasted almonds in my salad but on my last visit to the store, I found they had pine nuts (which are very rare in the countryside). So I decided to use them instead - I loooove pine nuts. The following day I cooked waterblommetjie stew for me and my husband...and he complained that I put something bitter in the stew....The complaining did not stop...because the bitterness stayed! This was last week Thursday.
My Husband made salad for us on Saturday eve - using the same pine nuts.
Yesterday, sunday, we were on our way to Swaziland with friends...I havn't eaten anything yet and we bought coffee alon the way. After drink the coffee...my mouth taste sooo bitter - its hard to explain - IT WAS AWEFULL! The taste lingered and din't go away! When I mentioned this to everybody in the car, David, a friend who also joined us for dinner on Tuesday, said he was suffering from the same symptoms since Wednesday!
I phoned my other 3 friends who attended the dinner - they did not experience our symptoms.
We eat salad almost everyday and we never experienced anything like this. The only thing I did different was adding the pine nuts. I googled "bitter taste pine nuts" and found out that we were suffering from PINE MOUTH....
The first case of pine mouth was documented in 2001. Since then more and more people have reported this strange phenomenoun.
It turns out there could be one of two explanations or it could be both:
The first is that the nuts were oxidized and not fit for consumption. The nuts in some cases were tested and found to be oxidised. After inspecting the packaging of the pine nuts I bought...I saw that it was waaaay over the sell by date! So it could be that this was the cause in our incident. I am going to ask a friend to test them for me - I will confirm if they were oxidised on the blog.
In many of the other cases the nuts were imported from China. They are still doing research to confirm if this phenomenoun could be caused by a certain species. I do not know where my nuts originat from....but I will contact the suppliers and try to find out. It could either just be a certain species that causes a reaction or it could be that the nuts/trees are treated with something that causes pine mouth.
I do not think it is likely - because they have tested supicious nuts and found NO traces of any chemicals.
They also have not found any fungal contamination.
Eating oxidised pine nuts can lead to taste disturbances. The symptoms are a bitter, mettalic taste in ones mouth that starts 1-3 days after consuming pine nuts. It can last from days - weeks. There are no treatment....you just have to wait for the taste to disappear.
Everything you eat taste awefull to the point where you just don't eat! Maybe I'll loose some weight! :)
DO not fear nuts! :) It is not an ALLERGIC reaction. Just make sure they are fresh when you purchase them! You don't want your dinner to leave a bitter taste in your friends mouth :)
The only strange thing is that the culpable pine nuts does not affect everybody!?
Have you ever experienced this?
