pinenuts from china

[sharonjones]

my mum wrote this in her blog today after buying pinenuts from Tesco (their own brand ones)


For the past week I’ve had a foul bitter taste at the back of my mouth. Fearing some horrible disease or even tongue cancer I Googled and found thousands and thousands of forum posts from all around the world. It’s known as ‘Pine Mouth’ and is caused by pine nuts. The general consensus is that it’s pine nuts from China. Ours did indeed come from China. Some people say the nuts must have been rancid, ours weren’t. Given China’s awful reputation for adding dangerous, poisonous chemicals to everything it’s likely to be the same with their pine nuts.

We bought the pine nuts a week ago and it’s since then that I’ve had the disgusting bitter taste. It doesn’t always happen at the time of eating, but creeps up on you some time after so you don’t know what caused it. All food tastes horrible, nasty and bitter and no amount of tooth brushing helps so you are left with the bitter taste all the time. Some say the taste dissipates after a few days, some say it takes weeks:-(

Anyway, we will never buy or eat pine nuts again, whatever their origin and will NEVER buy anything with ‘Produce of China’ on the label.

[Raw Rob]

That's a bit of an extreme reation! I've had the same issue with pine nuts, and personally I don't think I've ever had a pine nut that wasn't rancid to some extent.

Then I discovered Siberian cedar nuts. They're very similar to pine nuts but a bit more of a wild variety (they're a bit smaller), not rancid and taste delicious. We cedar nuts grown in Mongolia on our website now: cedar nuts (http://www.funkyraw.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=233).

Rob

[margaret ann]

We had the cedar nuts recently, I thought they were lovely. Bit pricey!

[Debbie Took]

Just to say that I've been buying organic pine nuts from China (mostly Infinity) for years and I've never had that reaction. (And I'm 100% raw).

And, true, all nuts are rancid 'to some extent', but only to the extent that any plant food deteriorates once it's picked. Significant rancidity can always be detected by taste and smell.

Not wanting to diminish your mother's experience, but wondering if the pine nuts were organic? And perhaps this particular batch had been stored for too long?

I've had cedar nuts, and, to me, they taste virtually identical to pine nuts (as they would...), and no fresher, in that I mean both are fine.

[sharonjones]

mums pine nuts were purchased from Tesco only the weekend before eating them. could be that they had been knocking around in warehouses for some time ;) mum does not buy organic.