Why do pine nuts cause bad taste in your mouth for weeks?
The reason why we make pesto with walnuts instead of the more traditional pine nuts is because walnuts are probably 20 times more polyphenols and healthy, but also because of the mystical phenomenon known as PMS. It’s not that PMS. Pine mouth syndrome is characterized by what has become my favorite word of the week: Cacogeusia, which means a bad mouth taste. You can get cacoges from heavy metal toxicity, seafood toxins, certain malnutrition and neuropathy, or the wrong type of pine nut. “Some cases exist in a roughly similar manner, commonly referred to as the “pine mouth”: a sustained metal or bitterness 1-3 days after intake of pine nuts that lasts up to 2 weeks. ”
As explained in Video Pinemouth Syndrome, long-term bitterness from certain pine nuts has been reported, and it doesn’t matter whether the pine nuts are born or cooked. Could the cause be an unidentified toxin present in some types of non-edible pine nuts? In fact, “of the more than 100 species of the genus Pine, 30 (only 30 species) are considered edible by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.”
Researchers analyzed samples of pine nuts from sick consumers and found that in fact they contained nuts from white Chinese pine trees, which are not reported to be edible. The tree is usually used only for wood. In my video you can see pictures of hard-to-eat pine nuts below and at 1:36.
More photos can be seen here and at 1:40.
But I don’t know that it’s a Chinese white pine nut until I put it on test. The researchers fed the study participants between 6 and 8 Chinese white pine nuts. Most people have never heard of Pine Mouth Syndrome and have all developed symptoms. We don’t know exactly what is in the nuts that cause such a strange reaction. We know we’re away from such types of pine nuts.
So, what kind of pine nuts do you have on American shelves? Clearly, all types “including those related to the mouth of the pine.” In my video you can see more examples below and at 2:19.
Naturally, hundreds of PM cases have been reported in the US. In my video, as seen here and at 2:30, most of the nuts involved were reported to be labelled “mostly from Asia, or in most cases from China.”
The European Union has requested that China cease sending toxic nuts to them, which began in 2011. “This export restrictions have also caused global export restrictions for these species to the United States,” as shown in 2:47, as shown in 2012.
However, rare cases still occur, as evidenced by an active Facebook group titled “Damn You, Pine Nuts.” The main reason I made this video is to relieve fear if this happens to you. “There is no proven treatment for PMS. The only treatment is to stop taking any nuts involved and wait for the symptoms to fade.” Thankfully, Pinemouth syndrome appears benign and disappears on its own.
