Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/29/british-travelers-exotic-fruit-tasting-leaves-face-blistered-and-burning.html
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Yep. Happened to me once. I bit into a cashew apple and got blisters all over my lips and cheeks. Not fun, but nothing a bit of vaseline couldn’t fix. Sounds like this poor guy got it a lot worse than me.
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Did a link to the original source get dropped?
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He should have watched more Star Trek.
Seriously though, it sounds horrible to go through that.
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I have never heard cashew apple, it does make sense, but I grew up calling them marañones.
My mom is allergic to them, highly, highly allergic. She doesn’t know what they taste like, because a drop of the juice on her lip was enough to make her swell up and it affected her breathing. I did not witness this, as I was not yet born. She is also allergic (but not as severely) to mangos.
We lived in Central America, where they grow wild. When they would process the seeds into cashews, the old fashioned way of burning, she had to leave town completely for weeks. But, commercially processed cashews give her zero trouble.
I, however, am not allergic, and I find marañones to be among the most delicious fruits I have ever tasted.
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User’s avatar checks out. 
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Yeah, not every fruit is fruitilicious. In Mexico, without getting exotic, they have citrus fruits that will dissolve styrofoam cups.
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It’s probably anacardic acid, which is found in both cashews and in mangoes. Related to urushiol, the nasty stuff in poison ivy. Did your mom ever encounter Pelargonium geraniums? Evidently they contain the same chemical.
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when i was looking to relocate to Belize, some years ago, i was introduced to cashew (caju) apple wine. it was tart, tasted like cider vinegar and - i seem to recall - potent!
did you ever hear of such? there was a shop in Orange Town that sold it, and they had a little stand on the roadside where you could taste some, while they beckoned you inside to buy bottles of the stuff.
i never touched the actual fruit, myself, and was unaware of the anacardic acid content! might have caused me to miss this peculiar “potent potable”.
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while we’re on the subject of “don’t touch that exotic fruit”, let me leave this here regarding a deadly apple-like fruit tree that grows here in the keys:
you don’t even want to stand near this tree! blistering rash just from brushing against any part of it and the apples will kill you dead!
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It things like this and almonds, which are poisonous until processed, that I wonder what motivated man to figure out how to eat it safely, and also, how messing that process was.
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- drug addicts in forced-labor ‘rehabilitation’ camps are engaged in the production and processing, and “those who refuse to work are beaten with truncheons, given electric shocks, locked in isolation, deprived of food and water, and obliged to work even longer hours”. Why might they refuse to work? Because the anacardic acid present in the fruit that cashew nuts grow from is caustic, and burns the skin. All this for “a few dollars a month”—all to ensure the lowest export prices possible to supermarkets in the West.*
Crap. Cashews gettin’ cancelled was not on my bingo card this year.
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It’s part of the poet Elizabeth Bishop’s story, and her love life:
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Here’s a radical suggestion: if you are outside your country and you see fruit growing, maybe ask the locals if it’s safe to each first. If you see them eating it, you MIGHT be safe (looking at you chili plant), but you’ll be a lot safer than eating the plants the locals are not touching
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I only ever had the fruit fresh, or in an agua fresca.
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Where’s the fun in that?? Sometimes you win and sometimes you get blisters and burns.
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Olives are another example.
I planted a small olive tree last year. I was excited when it produced 12 fruits. I waited until they were ripely purple, then I picked and tried to eat one. So bitter, so nasty! I left the rest of them for the birds. The birds left them for the sky.
It turns out you have to pickle olives in brine for weeks to make them edible. I suppose people experimented until they got that right.
Then there are the manufactured foods such as cheese, and natto. Clearly these were discovered because a community was desperately hungry in the middle of winter. They got up their last container of milk or beans, and found it had spoiled. They decided to try it anyway, because the alternative was a slow death. And luckily it turned out to be delicious. (YMMV)
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Is that the same stuff that’s in Japanese urushi lacquer? And also apparently used to lacquer living monks from the inside?
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So how do you eat them, if they’re apparently full of xenomorph blood?
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