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Andrew Telzak got a great deal on pine nuts at an Asian market in Catonsville and whipped up a batch of pesto for friends. It tasted great. But for days afterward, nothing else did.
"I started getting this weird taste, kind of a metallic taste, in the back of my tongue," said Telzak, 23, a North Baltimore resident who works for the city health department. "Everything was tasting real bitter."
Some of his guests had the same experience. One of them Googled "everything tastes bitter" and came across "pine mouth," a mysterious taste dysfunction associated with pine nuts that can last for weeks.
On foodie Web sites and blogs, legions of self-diagnosed pine-mouth sufferers have concluded that Asian pine nuts, as opposed to more expensive European varieties, are to blame.
While one nut importer has dismissed the claims as "an Internet sensation," the Food and Drug Administration is investigating. One importer has dropped a particular type of Asian pine nut in response to concerns. And Costco, which sells Asian pine nuts, says it has taken the matter seriously enough to consult the FDA and university researchers.
"The universities we've asked have all kind of gone, 'Humph. We know it's there, and we don't know why either,' " said Craig Wilson, assistant vice president of food safety at Costco's Issaquah, Wash., headquarters. "The FDA's bewildered. They're as bewildered as anybody else."
The FDA has received about two dozen complaints about pine nuts in recent months, said Stephanie Kwisnek, an FDA press officer.
"Many of the complainants report an 'aftertaste' associated with the product but no illness," she said via e-mail. "The agency is looking into these complaints. Should the FDA find a public health hazard, then we will advise consumers accordingly."
The "nut" at the center of this mystery is not technically a nut at all, but the seed of various pine trees. Used since ancient times in Mediterranean and Asian cuisines, pine nuts add creamy texture to classic pestos and crunch to high-end salads.
If pine nuts were a problem, why wouldn't the ancient Romans have yanked them from their honey-and-sheep's-milk tarts before the things caught on?
One possible explanation is that pine nuts aren't what they used to be. A generation ago in the United States, pine nuts were a relatively obscure ethnic-gourmet item imported from Spain and Portugal. Today, they appear on the shelves of ordinary supermarkets and on the menus of restaurants as unexotic as T.G.I. Friday's. The U.S. imports 25 million pounds of pine nuts a year, 90 percent of them from China.
Jim Phipps is the man who helped bring pine nuts to the masses and, perhaps, pine mouth to a seemingly small, but bitter, minority of eaters.
"I was the person who first introduced Chinese pine nuts to the U.S. market," said Phipps, who 35 years ago launched China Products Northwest with his older brother. "It was one of the first of five U.S. companies to begin trade with China, right after Nixon opened the door."
Now president of Red River Foods Inc. in Richmond, Va., Phipps continues to import Chinese pine nuts. He first heard reports of pine mouth a few years ago and had the nuts tested for heavy metals, salmonella, yeast and mold. Everything turned up clear, he said.
He has pretty much concluded the phenomenon is simply an "Internet sensation."
"If it's real, maybe [only] some people have a reaction to it," he said. "Maybe they tend to eat it with something else that makes the reaction take place."
There is no shortage of people claiming to have been afflicted by what Food and Wine recently described as "The Pine Nut Menace." The phenomenon has been noted in forums ranging from Epicurious and Chowhound to the European Journal of Emergency Medicine. Researchers at a Belgian poison center investigated seven cases but found no explanation, according to that journal article, titled, "Taste disturbances after pine nut ingestion."
Accounts on Internet foodie sites tend to be as bitter as the reported aftertaste.
"Costco knows about this ... but they won't admit that to you," writes one Chowhound poster. "I have been in touch with Costco's liability law firm. ... I want them to either pull the product off the shelves or label it with a warning label. And we should be compensated for our suffering."
Wilson, the Costco food safety official, said the company does not know what to make of the phenomenon but does not think it poses a health risk. Its stores continue to sell the nuts.
"I started getting this weird taste, kind of a metallic taste, in the back of my tongue," said Telzak, 23, a North Baltimore resident who works for the city health department. "Everything was tasting real bitter."
Some of his guests had the same experience. One of them Googled "everything tastes bitter" and came across "pine mouth," a mysterious taste dysfunction associated with pine nuts that can last for weeks.
On foodie Web sites and blogs, legions of self-diagnosed pine-mouth sufferers have concluded that Asian pine nuts, as opposed to more expensive European varieties, are to blame.
While one nut importer has dismissed the claims as "an Internet sensation," the Food and Drug Administration is investigating. One importer has dropped a particular type of Asian pine nut in response to concerns. And Costco, which sells Asian pine nuts, says it has taken the matter seriously enough to consult the FDA and university researchers.
"The universities we've asked have all kind of gone, 'Humph. We know it's there, and we don't know why either,' " said Craig Wilson, assistant vice president of food safety at Costco's Issaquah, Wash., headquarters. "The FDA's bewildered. They're as bewildered as anybody else."
The FDA has received about two dozen complaints about pine nuts in recent months, said Stephanie Kwisnek, an FDA press officer.
"Many of the complainants report an 'aftertaste' associated with the product but no illness," she said via e-mail. "The agency is looking into these complaints. Should the FDA find a public health hazard, then we will advise consumers accordingly."
The "nut" at the center of this mystery is not technically a nut at all, but the seed of various pine trees. Used since ancient times in Mediterranean and Asian cuisines, pine nuts add creamy texture to classic pestos and crunch to high-end salads.
If pine nuts were a problem, why wouldn't the ancient Romans have yanked them from their honey-and-sheep's-milk tarts before the things caught on?
One possible explanation is that pine nuts aren't what they used to be. A generation ago in the United States, pine nuts were a relatively obscure ethnic-gourmet item imported from Spain and Portugal. Today, they appear on the shelves of ordinary supermarkets and on the menus of restaurants as unexotic as T.G.I. Friday's. The U.S. imports 25 million pounds of pine nuts a year, 90 percent of them from China.
Jim Phipps is the man who helped bring pine nuts to the masses and, perhaps, pine mouth to a seemingly small, but bitter, minority of eaters.
"I was the person who first introduced Chinese pine nuts to the U.S. market," said Phipps, who 35 years ago launched China Products Northwest with his older brother. "It was one of the first of five U.S. companies to begin trade with China, right after Nixon opened the door."
Now president of Red River Foods Inc. in Richmond, Va., Phipps continues to import Chinese pine nuts. He first heard reports of pine mouth a few years ago and had the nuts tested for heavy metals, salmonella, yeast and mold. Everything turned up clear, he said.
He has pretty much concluded the phenomenon is simply an "Internet sensation."
"If it's real, maybe [only] some people have a reaction to it," he said. "Maybe they tend to eat it with something else that makes the reaction take place."
There is no shortage of people claiming to have been afflicted by what Food and Wine recently described as "The Pine Nut Menace." The phenomenon has been noted in forums ranging from Epicurious and Chowhound to the European Journal of Emergency Medicine. Researchers at a Belgian poison center investigated seven cases but found no explanation, according to that journal article, titled, "Taste disturbances after pine nut ingestion."
Accounts on Internet foodie sites tend to be as bitter as the reported aftertaste.
"Costco knows about this ... but they won't admit that to you," writes one Chowhound poster. "I have been in touch with Costco's liability law firm. ... I want them to either pull the product off the shelves or label it with a warning label. And we should be compensated for our suffering."
Wilson, the Costco food safety official, said the company does not know what to make of the phenomenon but does not think it poses a health risk. Its stores continue to sell the nuts.
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Wow... This bitter taste has been driving me nuts! (no pun intended)... I love pine nuts and eat them all the time, I do recall having bitter taste problems in the past but never put it together with the pine nuts because it doesn't always happen. It must be a particular kind of nut as stated in this article because it was just a few days ago that I ate a couple of handfuls of pine nuts as a snack (got them from Trader Joe's), never put two and two together because the bitter taste didn't hit right then. I am eternally grateful to have found the connection, now I just have to wait for this taste to go away.... Oh, and find pine nuts that don't cause this problem.
samkach (11/08/2009, 7:58 PM )