Is it possible to eat a toxic amount of culinary herbs/spices?
Is it possible to eat a toxic amount of culinary herbs/spices?
Either all at once, or over a lifetime?
38 comments
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Nutmeg can be relatively fast toxic , but it's soo much that the spice taste of it would be terrible overwhelming any food.
But it can relatively easily kill your kidneys.
So never overdo it.
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Heard it can get you high but line between death and high is so thin it's not worth it.
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Tamil proverb says
அளவுக்கடந்தால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ்சு
It's emphasizing that even the most potent, life-giving elixir can become poisonous if taken in excess.
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Actually a lot of spices contain unsafe levels of heavy metals, so you definitely could hurt yourself with them
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You can easily kill yourself with a water overdose (and it's actually fairly common),so yes.
Nutmeg was already mentioned - high doses can easily kill someone, sadly even without hallucinations simply by killing off ones liver and dying an agonizing death a few days later. The same goes for cinnamon, but with a much lower dose.
There are a few more, but I don't want to give people too many ideas.
To make it short: Yes, possible,but it's mostly a very slow death over multiple days that fucks you up really bad and is a horrible way to go.
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"The poison is the dose" is a saying for a reason.
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Nutmeg is poisonous in high doses and can lead to hallucinations, seizures, and other complications.
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The "Anarchist's Cookbook" covered this 😂
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How much are we talking? Are there any documented suicides by nutmeg?
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It's funny because I am cooking with nutmeg, and was saying that. A quick search tells me that you can have hallucination from 15g of nutmeg.
However, with the strong taste, sounds like a good netty bad poison
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Everything is toxic if you eat too much of it
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Even water!
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Yep
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... except cannabis, presuming you don't have a genetic disposition to schizophrenia. Nearly no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Compare that to alcohol (or, indeed, water). In fact, the only reason I say "nearly" is just in case; its safety has been known for a long time.
This is in fact one of the core reasons why I finally stopped being a straightedge and accepted taking it. (Though smoking is still a no-no and the worst way to experience anything, basically.)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herbs_with_known_adverse_effects
The list itself says it is incomplete and I immediately thought of a couple items not listed that have known toxicity issues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perilla_frutescens#Traditional_medicine,_phytochemicals,_and_toxicity
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I mean, as humans, toxicity isn't a deterrent, it's a selling feature!
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Yeah, the reason we like booze is because it's toxic and fucks up our brains.
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All at once, absolutely, but it's going to take a LOT of most things.
Theoretically, anything is poisonous if you have enough of it. We even get oxygen poisoning by breathing air that is too rich in oxygen for too long.
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Cinnamon can cause permanent damage in high doses.
Other than that and the others mentioned here, probably just old, rotting ones would be bad.
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How high?
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It appears to be 0.1mg/kg of body weight too avoid coumarin overdose (which is much stronger in Cassia than ceylon cinnamon), which is toxic to the liver: https://ovidsp.dc2.ovid.com/ovid-new-a/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&PAGE=fulltext&D=ovft&AN=01445481-201002000-00007&NEWS=N&CSC=Y&CHANNEL=PubMed
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Licorice is not that common a spice any more, partially because it's toxic at pretty obtainable levels, though people who like the flavor still typically won't accidentally consume a dangerous amount.
38 comments