A Slow Death

What is the most dangerous plant? Well, it depends on how you define dangerous.

Last week, the Meat Mafia podcast created a couple of reels to advertise the release of their interview with me. In one of them, they spliced a few sound bites of me talking about the dangers of plants like spinach and it received a lot of traffic – both positive and negative. In just a few short days this 30 second reel received 1,708 likes, 888 shares, and 267 comments.

Some of the comments include:

Armchair biologists commenting on how mushrooms aren’t a plant.

• oscarandgremlin: Mushrooms aren’t plants
• enlightenedill: Mushrooms are not plants it’s a fungus and it doesn’t come from or produce seed
• elmario3k: I can’t trust a man that doesn’t know mushrooms are not plants… like stop the BS

Some optimists that believe a higher power has it all figured out:

• Resilience_is_art: Nothing that is Natural is Dangerous…Everything is designed to be, not everything is designed to be eaten in certain quantities… God knows what he was doing…

A bunch of supportive comments where people who have experienced oxalate related health issues share words of support or shared their stories.

• cammi.eklund: 100%!!!!! I ate spinach daily for a full year and I literally though(t) I was going to die. Still suffering the consequences.
• newearthreiki: Spinach hurts my guts sooo hard, within hours I feel the effects
• low_oxalate_inspiration: This is exactly how I ended up juicing my way to hell, wish I would’ve known this about spinach and other toxic “superfoods” long ago
• jeffwayne86: That’s sooo true because it happened to me

Some comedians

• t.flagler: Imagine being a grown man and scared of Popeyes favorite meal
• halteres_man: Give me spanakopita or give me death
• forfeht__:And then next thing you know Spinach is breaking intah yah home. Robbing yah blind. Boom bing boom, Spinach is having an affair with yah wife. Not it has fully assumed your identitity. And then yah left broke on the sidewalk with nothing but a clean colon.
• And, my personal favorite,
• texasantiquarian: Spinach is dangerous to my enemies because it helps be fight to the finach

A ton of negative comments from people who obviously didn’t take the time to listen to the entire podcast and decided to attack me based on a several second clip, taken out of context and cut to create click bait like:

• Sandmann9001: It’s awesome how every idiot has become an expert on nutrition
• Amin.alamin.privat: Average podcast idiot
• bryanpinta: Horseshit. Utter horseshit
• cavelightfilms: People listen to this guy?
• wyllsmith: Why do people listen to clowns like this?

And, a handful of comments that were exactly what I was responding to (and they would have realized had they listened to the podcast)

• edwarddyssel: This guy just said something that kills you over 10 years is more dangerous than something that kills you instantly.
• jack_moody.tx: Something that affects you years later is more dangerous than something that can cause kidney failure within an hour?

Yes! Exactly!

A google search for “dangerous plants” returns tons of posts from sites such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Center for Disease Control, and BBC Wildlife Magazine. Some sites concentrate on plants that can result in dermatological issues such as Giant Hogweed, Poison Ivy, and Stinging Nettle. Others are concerned with plants that cause severe harm or death like Poison Hemlock, Water Hemlock, Deadly Nightshade, Castor Bean and Oleander. What do all of these dangerous plants have in common? The effects of touching or ingesting these plants is sudden. But, that isn’t the only way to consider the dangers of plants.

In the interview with the Meat Mafia podcast I shared a new way to think about the dangers of plants in our diets. If you start with a standard definition of dangerous “able or likely to cause harm or injury” you will notice there is no mention of how long it takes to feel the effects of the harm. In fact, I believe at a population level we might be thinking about it the wrong way. 

The truth

During the interview, I relayed the account of an incident that occurred while conducting a foraging tour for a group of high school students last fall. During the foray we identified a poisonous mushroom, Jack-O-Lantern (Omphalotus illudens), in the woods and stopped to talk about it in the larger context of even deadlier poisonous mushrooms. As soon as I finished describing how some mushrooms are so dangerous that they can result in organ failure and death, one of the students asked me if I would consider poisonous mushrooms to be the most dangerous plants in the world.

To her surprise, I quickly responded “no.”

yes, I know mushrooms are not plants

As you noticed above, mushrooms are not plants (officially they are fungi), but that isn’t the reason I said no. My rationale, which I laid out to this group of students and also in the podcast interview, was focused on something even more significant. It is true a very poisonous mushroom is incredibly dangerous to the person who eats it, BUT simultaneously it is incredibly safe to everyone else in the community.

All who witness the victim’s nausea, vomiting, dizziness, pain, suffering, organ shutdown and eventual death can make the connection between the consumption of the mushroom and the symptoms that followed hours later.

As a result, none of them would make the same mistake and eat that mushroom – ever! To everyone else in the community that particular mushroom no longer poses a threat. If no one consumes it, it is not dangerous. 

Conversely, what I consider the biggest danger to humans are plants that contain toxins which very slowly impact our health at a rate that is virtually undetectable over a considerably long period of time. The span between initial consumption of plants such as spinach and the presentation of related toxicity symptoms is where the real danger lies. This gap is so large that it makes it almost impossible to associate the food you have been eating regularly for years and the effects of long term consumption. Plants that slowly impact us over time are incredibly dangerous to both the person consuming them as well as the rest of the community who are also in danger of including them in their diets.

Not part of the anti-plant agenda

This blog is not part of any anti-plant agenda. When processed and consumed properly I believe many plants can provide relatively safe nutrition. And, some plants simply taste good and have fantastic aromas and textures. Deriving pleasure from eating is absolutely part of the larger equation that results in genuine human nourishment and plants can play a role. However, we need to be vigilant.

How to eat plants

Including plants in our diets safely requires thinking and planning and understanding.

• There are some plants that we should never eat.
• Some plants we need to eat in moderation.
• And, almost all plants need to be processed properly to achieve maximum safety and bioavailability for our human digestive system.

Can we eat plants?

The good news is that our ancestors have figured this all out and this knowledge remains in many indigenous societies. Traditional approaches to food incorporate processing strategies such as sprouting, soaking, nixtamalizing, fermenting and cooking alongside select ingredients. These traditional approaches make food safer and the nutrients in the plants more bioavailable.

This is exactly why through the Eastern Shore Food Lab we conduct ethnographic fieldwork with indigenous groups and, through the Modern Stone Age Kitchen translate that information into real food to nourish the community.