A family legend has been passed down through the years: Don’t eat persimmons with lobster or crab! If you do, it becomes poisonous!
Is there any truth to this sordid familial fable of caution or is my mom crazy?
No truth. Food is usually chemically pretty bland, so combining foods just doesn’t create anything that can kill you.
I don’t think there are any genuine binary poisons known (that is to say, two substances which are each safe separately, but become toxic in combination). At most, there are some minor toxins which become more dangerous when combined, but which are still somewhat dangerous separately.
Could the warning be a garbled reference to a seasonal thing, like the thing about not eating (or is it only eating? I never remember.) clams in any month with an “R” in its name? Are persimmons normally only available during seasons when crab and lobster are risky due to bacterial growth or some such?
No, it was oysters, which aren’t actually poisonous in months with an R in them, but are more likely to spoil.
The idea that a combination of foods could be poisonous has been around a long time. People thought Zachary Taylor died because he ate cherries with milk, for instance.
It seems that the question in the OP has been answered, so I have a question of my own for YogSosoth…
Is this a popular food combination where you live? Because it never in a million years would have occurred to me to put persimmons and shellfish together…an I missing something?
I heard cherries and milk, I think via a great-grandparent. It’s probably an Italian thing.
Perhaps the problem is eating persimmons and lobster and then sleeping in a closed room with an electric fan on.
It’s not a food combo per say, just a warning never to eat some of those shellfish and then have a persimmon for dessert. We never cooked the two together
Ah yes, the legend of the fan. Growing up, it was almost a sin to ever have the window open or the fan on during the night. It was supposed to 100% lead to arthritis and paralyze that side of your face that the wind was blowing on
No, no, no what the OP meant was if you’re having a lobster or a crab as your dinner guest. Is it safe to serve persimmons and eat them togther. In other words it’d be like if I, Markxxx invided a crab over and serverd persimmons and we both ate them together.
The answer is NO. Both crabs and lobsters have pinchers and do not use forks so you’d wind up getting pinched. Therefore it’s not safe to eat persimmons when you and a lobster or crab are eating together.
The only potential problem with persimmons is that they’re high in Vitamin A. It is possible to get too much Vitamin A, although I think for most people it’s hard to overdo it with foods like persimmons. Lobster isn’t likely to provide you any extra Vitamin A, though, unless you’re eating the eyes.
I can’t imagine popping in a non-ripe American persimmon in your mouth with anything. You will pucker involuntarily and choke.
I never heard of persimmons being served with lobsters and crabs though. If you study ethnic warnings though, you will learn that there are plenty of seemingly innocent ways to die.
WAG: One ancestor choked to death while eating this, and over the years, through word of mouth, this has transformed into poisoning. The origin of the story has been lost, but the attraction of repeating it hasn’t.
This belilef comes from a rumor about the death of Zachary Taylor. He died after supposedly eating cherries and drinking a pitcher of milk.
I’ve long assumed that was eating a lot of raw food and maybe bad milk.
I bought a food processor once with a juicer attachment. The instruction booklet it came with gave warnings about mixing certain combinations of juices because they could have “undesired effects”. Apparently it is not a good idea to combine onion juice with prune juice. Whodathunkit?
It is not impossible that certain food combos could cause other undesirable (but not fatal) issues such as gas, nausea, loose bowels, etc.
As long as we’re hijacking. . . Prune are dried plums, right? So WTF is prune juice anyway?
No, I’m not playing Seinfeldian wordgames, I really want to know. How does one juice a dried fruit?!?
There is a widely held belief in Thailand that eating durian and drinking whiskey can cause death. This appears to be from the Thai-Chinese tradition of assigning foods qualities of “hotness” or “coldness.” The idea being that one should not consume too much of a hot or cold food, but balance things out with some of each. Both whiskey and durian are considered to be extremely hot in character and thus eating both would make one too hot and cause death. Even some local doctors will tell you this (although not good ones).
However, generations of durian-eating Thai alcoholics really give the lie to this.
They probably died from eating the durian. That is the most disgusting “food” I’ve ever eaten