Bushwalk Australia

Ok I can hardly believe this one either except for the fact that I am experiencing it first hand. I had never heard of this until yesterday.

Over easter we did a fabulous 4 day walk and as usual mixed some home-made trail mix (scroggin) for the trip. For the first time however I added Lucky brand Natural Seed Mix with Pine Nuts! Sounds good and it is just Pepitas, Sunflower kernels and pine nuts. Two days after pigging out on our scroggin on the trail I developed an AWFUL bitter taste in my mouth every time I ate or drank. Turns out there is a certain small round pine nut from China which over the last 20 years has been found to be the possible cause of this new syndrome called pine-mouth.

See the info here on the NSW Food Authority website….
http://www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/science/risk-framework-and-studies/food-risk-studies/pine-nuts-and-pine-mouth/#.U1X91VxshZg

Would be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this and thought it might be worth bringing to people's attention as I know lots of us make our own trail mix. And speaking from my experience pine-mouth is absolutely disgusting and awful and I've got a week before it clears up!!!

I ended up opening about three bottles of wine yesterday thinking they were all rubbish when in fact it was just those stupid pine nuts. Hopefully the wine will last until my mouth clears up.

Chrissy

Thats awful. Good help for being on a diet I reckon Gee you would have been good to have around over easter, all those spare eggs you didn't want to eat

Thankfully it seems it's only one species:

The cause of pine mouth has not been determined, but several researchers have indicated that a particular species and source of pine nut, Pinus armandii exported from the Shaanxi and Shanxi regions of China, may be responsible for causing the symptoms. This species of pine nut was previously only consumed locally and not widely exported for consumption as whole nuts.

walkon wrote:Good help for being on a diet I reckon. Gee you would have been good to have around over easter, all those spare eggs you didn't want to eat

lol
I am trying to look on the positive side i.e. should shed a kilo or two this week until the symptoms pass!

I once came across a UN food reference paper regarding this, i thought China had actually banned the export of that particular pine nut from those regions, seems its started up again... you get a weird metallic taste in your mouth... although its usually straight away...

I got this a couple of years ago - and can vouch has disgusting te taste is for a good week! I now check every bag and will only buy the elongated larger pine nuts - its the rounder snub nose ones that cause the problem - I thought it was urban myth till it happened to me!