Bitter Complaint

Monday morning I awoke with a bitter metallic taste in my mouth. I brushed my teeth for the full two minutes, raked my tongue, gargled and rinsed with mouthwash. I poured some milk on my Cheerios and dug into bitter cereal. At lunch I took one bite out of my sandwich, decided that it was spoiled and tossed it. I wondered if I had been poisoned.

By this morning things were no better. After my bitter meal I went to the intertubes to google "bitter taste in mouth." Some nutbag thought that she had gotten hers from consumption of pinenuts. How silly, I thought. After I had gotten about six more versions of the same story from various sites I remembered that there were pine nuts in the pesto I had eaten Saturday afternoon. My wife, who had also eaten the pine nutty pesto, also complained of a bitter mouth.

A bit more intertubing: notes from all over and even a published scientific study. Nobody knew what ingredient of the pine nuts might be responsible. Not all pine nuts seemed equally suspect. Suspicions pointed to Chinese pine nuts, and maybe just one species of them, smaller than our usual domestic ones.

Most people's experience seemed similar: the bitter taste only developed a couple of days after actual consumption. It was strongest when you ate something else, especially something without much native taste, like bread. It did ruin wine though.

Whatever ingredient is responsible, it must take a couple of days metabolic processing to show its face. The symptoms are said to go away after a week or three, and no known serious health effects have been noted.

Weird.

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