Notes from Maine - 2022/07/03
I accidentally ate some mango skin the other day. It wasn’t terrible—a little bitter. I had a little panic attack because I remembered something about mango skin being poisonous. It’s not. The skin of some mangoes, especially near the stem, can have urushiol. That’s the compound in poison ivy that give most people rashes.
So, of course, then I had to look up poison ivy. It turns out that 85% of Americans are allergic to poison ivy, leaving about 15% of us who don’t demonstrate any symptoms. My whole family has a pretty bad reaction to poison ivy. My brother, as a kid, used to get sick if anyone in the neighborhood burned it on their leaf pile. I’ve never had it. My sister gets it pretty bad, but she loves mango, so I guess she has learned to handle them properly?
I remember the first time I had cilantro as an adult. Some people say that it tastes like soap, and other people find it delicious. I’m in both camps. It absolutely tastes like soap, and I love it. Not because of the soap association, but in spite of it I guess.
I will turn down raw mushrooms, raw spinach, and raw broccoli most of the time. I like them cooked, but the raw versions can be unsettling on my stomach. The spinach thing has an explanation, I think. Raw spinach has a lot of oxalic acid that can make it difficult to digest for some people (me). Cooking it will remove some of the acid, so that’s what I do. I just read that the oxalates will block your body’s ability to absorb the iron and calcium from spinach. I have to find a way to get more iron—recent blood tests show that I’m anemic.
Our bodies are such complex systems, it’s amazing that we survive any length of time at all. I bet there are things that I ingest every day that were invented in my lifetime. Something in my toothpaste, or maybe something sprayed on my apples to keep them fresh was developed, tested, and then approved in the last fifty years. This organic machine that we depend on, and only have a rudimentary understanding of, depends solely on what we put into it. Anything new should have to go through decades, or centuries of testing before we decide it’s safe, right?
Now I sound like a science denier. I’m not. I just wonder what people are going to think in two-hundred years, if any are still around.
“The surgeon general warned today that saliva causes stomach cancer. But apparently only when swallowed in small amounts over a long period of time.”
—George Carlin
Febreze was introduced in 1996. Maybe we’ll find out that after about thirty years of exposure, people build up enough of it in their body and then they spontaneously turn into a jellyfish or something. Google says that Beta-cyclodextrin (ingredient in Febreze) is naturally occurring, but I wonder how often people came across it before Febreze entered the market. Maybe it was everywhere? I don’t know. It started showing up in my garbage bags about ten years ago, and my trash has never smelled better.
Despite all efforts to eliminate smoking, promote the use of sun screen, and reduce exposure to carcinogens, cancer rates are still rising. My slipshod research suggests that the increase is due to an aging population, obesity, and eventual effects of exposure to harmful substances. But, there are also fun facts like:
“In addition, research indicates that from 1973 to 2015, certain subtypes of cancer — specifically carcinoma of the kidney — have risen in adolescents and young adults in the U.S., with an overall cancer rate increase of 29.6% in this age group.”
Fun, right? Mortality from cancer is decreasing, and there are always new treatment options in development, so I guess it’s a net positive. It’s a beautiful day today and I’m inside thinking about things that will kill me. I suppose it’s time to close the laptop, have some mango (not the skin!), and go enjoy the sunshine.
