Mostly I blog about tea and chocolate. But when something surprising or interesting happens in the food world, then I want the world to know. In this instance, my whole world tasted bitter thanks to a little bag of Trader Joe’s pine nuts.
I had heard via NPR that pine nuts imported from China (from the cones of Pinus Armandii) could cause “pine mouth” — a condition wherein about two days after eating the nuts everything starts to taste bitter. Everything.
I love pine nuts and this seemed like an interesting experience, so I wanted to try it. But I couldn’t find pine nuts that admitted to being from China. The other varieties I tried didn’t produce this effect — even a mushy, tasteless bag from Turkey that I thought MUST have come from this species of tree proved useless.
Enter Trader Joe’s pine nuts. The packaging stated that the nuts came from either Korea or Russia. No change at first. A couple of days passed and I had totally forgotten about my little experiment when I noticed my lunchtime apple had an annoyingly bitter taste. I assumed the apple was bad and started to eat my other apple. Yuck! Then the penny dropped. In the evening, I ate a chocolate-dipped strawberry that my husband had freshly made. I could only taste the sweetness for a fraction of a second before the bitterness came charging through, swamping everything. Amazing.
At present, there’s no scientific explanation for the bittrnerness, only that these trees have not been a part of our food train until the last few years. Hopefully the nuts are not harmful, but it’s been an interesting afternoon! According to NPR the effect should die away by the end of the week.
Update: it took from Tuesday until Saturday — 5 days — for the effect to wear off. I noticed also that the sweeter the item, the stronger the bitter aftertaste.
Did you have this effect with Trader Joe’s pine nuts? Other brands? Leave a comment.
