Pine Mouth

So yesterday I developed this very strange malady: a horrid taste in my mouth. It started out of the blue, after my mid-afternoon snack of banana bread. It tasted bitter and sour, like I had just gargled with grapefruit seed extract. I’d brushed my teeth that day, hadn’t eaten anything bizarre, and was otherwise feeling fine. 

The bitter taste abated but then picked up again after dinner. By this time I was getting paranoid. Jared recently broke our water purifier so we’ve been drinking Chicago’s finest tap water while Amazon takes its sweet time sending us the new purifier. So suddenly I started wondering, what if I’ve been consuming LEAD? Worse, what if I’ve been serving poison-water to my SON?

I’m not typically a paranoid conspiracy theorist or a hypochondriac, but darnit if the rancid taste made me a bit cranky. I did some research on the Internet, scouring medical websites for clues to the cause of icky-mouth. (Why do these sites even exist? How do they help people when their best answer is, “It’s probably nothing but could be diabetes or cancer.” Basically, don’t worry but you might die. Swell!)

I eventually stumbled across a web forum in which someone was complaining about my exact symptoms: bitter/sour taste at the back of the tongue that seems to get worse after eating. The culprit? 

Pine nuts. 

Pine nuts! If I were in a movie, my face would be bathed in light and the scene would flash back to clips from the last three days: me merrily and cluelessly sprinkling pine nuts on salads, adding them to pasta, grabbing small handfuls from the fridge as a snack. Anyway, I confirmed the theory on Wikipedia, right there under the subheader “Risks of Eating Pine Nuts” (dah dah dummmm). 

The eating of pine nuts can cause serious taste disturbances, developing 1-3 days after consumption and lasting for days or weeks. [Fantastic.] A bitter, metallic taste is described. In general, a minority of pine nuts on the market present this problem. Though very unpleasant, there does not seem to be a real health concern.

This phenomenon was first described in a scientific paper in 2001. Since the article, experiences of the phenomenon have been reported by hundreds of people worldwide (US, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Iceland, Germany, and many more). [Reported? To whom? Seriously, who is doing this mysterious "reporting of pine-nut mouth"? Is there a hotline?]

Several other sites confirmed the growing problem of “pine mouth” and a study of the phenomenon has even been published by a medical journal. No one seems to be able to figure out why this happens to certain people and what causes it, but there seems to be one common link between the pine-mouth-causing nuts: China. Big surprise there! (Yet another reminder to read labels and avoid food from China.) Regardless of the cause, everyone seems to agree that pine mouth produces a foul, metallic taste can last weeks and make practically all food and drink unpalatable. 

So I guess I won’t be dying from diabetes or cancer or lead poisoning, at least not any time soon. But unfortunately, everything I eat will taste like I just sucked on a penny. If nothing else, I guess it’s a good summer diet program.