Don’t forget to Download Toon Blast 🚀 for free and receive 3 hours of unlimited lives and 100 free coins by clicking here: tinyurl.com/HowToCookThat1 PS: yes, I jumbled in vivo & vitro 🤪 We corrected it in the subtitles before we uploaded, oh well 😂
Looks like someone did do a human trial to test the toxicity of cyanide in foods: "Bioavailability of cyanide after consumption of a single meal of foods containing high levels of cyanogenic glycosides: a crossover study in humans" ( pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25708890/ ). I found it reassuring, but I'm no food scientist! I have a toddler at home and looked at a bunch of lables after watching your video, and flax seed is everywhere! bread, crackers, nut butter, etc. So, I'm a bit concerned about it. If you have time to read that article over, I'd appreciate any thoughts! : ) thanks!
@@XXCoder Yep. Rational Wiki covers this very thoroughly - there are many things that are natural that will absolutely kill you, give you cancer in all kinds of nasty places, and even worse. And there are plenty of artificial things that are immensely beneficial and save millions of lives every year.
getting killed by something you didn't notice till it was too late; like sitting on a spider, stepping on an otherwise shy snake or picking up a shell... is how the fauna gets us aussies. Personally would take that over being torn limb from limb out in the american bush by a bear, cougar or wolves. And I know you yanks have issues with sharks eating your divers and surfers too so don't bother with that gotcha.
@@roche320 In this instance, yes, but if one decides to throw it 'on a baribie', blue-ringed octopus is equally as poisonous. It doesn't really matter how that nasty poison/venom gets into you...
@@spoddie When I was real little I had a transformer truck that you stuck your hand in and one of our cats was hissing at it. Turned out there was a brown snake inside wrapped around the bar you hold lol
As someone with a learning disability, the way you explain things in such detail but so simply is really really appreciated. I always love watching you videos
Yes! I am so sad, I use it in baking all the time and the breads as well as crackers I buy contain so many flax seeds. And I like the „nutty“ taste. Swapping it out for sure now! 😅
You can still use it for hair care. Its great for making hair smooth and silky, which is great for me because I have an aloe allergy and everybody uses aloe juice in everything : /
Yeah but at what stage are you going to be making a recipe that contains 70-160g of ground flaxseed .. the health benefits outweigh the risk .. also if this is the first you've heard of it, it's not an issue
My favorite HTCT videos are the ones where Anne really displays the fact that she’s a food SCIENTIST. She’s not just a lady that makes cute cakes, she’s an actual scientist, and it really shows in videos like this.
I’m not interested in cooking at all, but her debunking/investigative videos are the best ones out there. She knows what she’s talking about and, crucially, explains it so clearly that even someone like me can understand it. When she demonstrated the various sugars and how they interact through the medium of stop-motion Lego bricks I was hooked.
@@lancelindlelee7256 - Likewise. I don't watch any plain cooking on RUclips. I watch this channel for the debunks and the fun quirky gadget-testing episodes.
Quick correction at 13:53 and a few seconds later, "in vitro" studies are done in test tubes and beakers (in "glass"), while "in vivo" is done on animal models. Great video as always Ann!
I had to fight my mother about eating apricot seeds because she was taking 50+ a day to try and beat cancer. I was having nightmares that she'd die of cyanide poisoning before the chemo even had a chance to work. Thankfully after she saw the studies i found and how genuinely freaked out she had made me (25 year old at the time) she agreed to stop. She's now four years in remission. Still mad at whatever youtuber she saw that promoted the stupid seed though.
I married into a family that believes things like this, including the apricot pit thing. Very stressful for me, a person who grew up with a scientist/medical researcher dad and a healthcare worker mom. Very glad your mom is in remission. May she live a long healthy life.
Interesting bit of info on fugu (pufferfish); the toxicity appears to come from their diet, rather than the fish itself. A few places in Japan have begun farming fugu and raising them on a controlled diet, which eliminated the toxicity. So if you're going to try fugu, stick with the certified non-toxic farmed fish, and avoid wild-caught.
@@nandayane No? Chefs literally need a licence to identify the poisonous and edible parts, and cut out only the edible parts to serve. Parts that have even a little toxin are considered inedible
@@randot6675I think they are referring to the mouth and lip numbing aspect. Also a lot of people enjoy the thrill of the risk oddly enough. Not my cup of tea haha.
As a Pacific Islander, as soon as you said “taro flour” I was like “Of course!” Taro has to be prepared a certain way, such as through fermentation, to remove the toxicity. There’s a reason we eat poi and not just taro flour porridge!
I'm sure they're deliberately taking advantage of that confusion, because you'll note it is in fact *tara* flour, the product of an obscure and completely unrelated plant :P
The fact that the Daily Harvest people are trying to 'pass the buck,' as they say, to their suppliers is really shady. People who create these various wholistic, organic, non-GMO trend foods need to actually hire food scientists to tell them what the heck they are doing. You can't be like "Oh, this ingredient seems good - and it doesn't have any of the negative-buzzword ingredients we avoid, so ... let's throw it in." They are at fault here AS WELL AS the supplier.
I’m surprised a food subscription box service hadn’t already poisoned someone given how many of them are shipping things like raw meat and vegetables which spoil easily
We don't know the full relationship. This could be a supplier they've worked with for years trusted. The supplier might typically be the one vetting ingredients for safety and legality as a service alongside the goods.
An interesting thing about Fugu is how it's disposed of as well. It has to be placed in a lock box for collection and is taken away to be incinerated. This is because people who were searching for waste food would eat it and get sick or die.
Wow! Tara is widely used in my country (Perú) as a “tea” but it is not don’t meant to be drank, instead it is used as a “mouthwash” to numb the pain of a sore throat or amigdalitis. It tastes pretty bitter!
I used to work at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and I remember one case - a man had been fishing in Port Philip Bay and caught a pufferfish. He googled how to cut it up, did so, and ended up in ICU. Mind blowing that anyone can be so reckless.
Different pufferfish species have different amounts of tetrodotoxin. There's one off the east coast of the United States that has very little, so you can eat it without special butchering and and treat some mild numbness in the lips as part of the taste experience.
@@diablominero Um, I don't care. You really want to risk guessing you have the ONE correct pufferfish and then hope that it really doesn't have enough tetrodotoxin to kill you?
13:56 Only one correction, "in vivo" means in a living organism, while "in vitro" means in glass. I think you mixed them up. Other than that astounding and informative video as always!!!!
Another RUclipsr posted a keto recipe that contains 156 grams of milled flaxseed the same day this video was posted. Victoria's Keto Kitchen. It's meant to be a flour so hopefully whoever makes it won't eat the whole loaf of bread in one day. I watched as many people in the comments pointed out the danger of that and most pointed her to watch this video. All but one of those comments were hidden or deleted by the content creator. I logged in on my other account and my very polite comment on it was also hidden. I'm glad this info is getting out there, even if some try to hide it. I hope more people see this.
@@starlightlilly7203do you have a peer reviewed study to back that up? One of the things that’s important and that Ann teaches us is that it’s really important to look at what the science says and not just what hearsay tells us
@@starlightlilly7203 "Dry heat could not reduce cyanide contents effectively and only reduced around 10% of the cyanide contents in flaxseeds following oven-heating for 15 minutes."
@@ava_lavender ‘if you bake ground flaxseeds on their own, only 20 percent of the compounds are wiped out in even an hour at 350 degrees. Baking them whole wipes out 80 percent, though, and baking them in bread or muffins eliminates 100 percent.’ It is the moisture content that helps to destroy the cyanide forming compounds. Boiling is the safest option overall. But as I said earlier, I wouldn’t tempt fate
Regarding the topic of easting crushed flax seed in Sweden, local food authorities say that adult can eat up to 1 tablespoon a day, _if_ the seeds have been heated with liquids - like in porridge or bread. Apparently, it is then less toxic. Children should still not eat them at all.
Oh that's interesting! The way it's used in Poland is usually as remedy and you pour hot water over a tablespoon of seeds and leave them for a few hours to 'swell' and then consume. I guess that checks all three recommendations (whole seeds, hot liquid, 1 tblsp max) and is why it's generally accepted and fairly popular here and it has been for ages - people don't get sick from that.
My mother used to eat a spoonful of ground flaxseeds in her breakfast yoghurt, along with oat bran & brewers yeast. We never heard that too much could be toxic. (She lived to 93.)
Thank you for explaining that ground flax seeds can lead to poisoning. I learned this one the hard way years ago. I was trying to get into meal prep and more healthy habits and I decided to pre-ground flax seeds so they'll be available on the fly in a jar with my other spices. Turns out it turns sour extremely fast and it becomes even more toxic as it decays. Ground flax seeds found in shops are processed and washed so you can keep it a bit longer in your cupboard without poisoning yourself, but making it at home can poison you if you don't use it straight away, even in average doses. I was sick all night, and luckily, it wasn't too bad, but I've kept away from flax seeds in my home-cooking ever since. Not a single RUclipsr or cooking blogger I was following back then ever made a warning about being careful with ground flax seeds, so it's really nice to hear you mention it.
The last point, yes! I feel like a dodged a bullet when I forgot I had a ground flax seed bag I used back when I was on my health craze. SO many people recommended adding ground flax seeds to different vegan or vegetarian recipes and it's scary to think that there were times I was close to the limit of what I could safely eat.
Doing some research on the flaxseeds: it looks like cyanide isn't actually a problem as long as you approach it properly. Supposedly, heat and moisture breaks it down, so if you bake it into a muffin or bread there isn't any risk, but if you want to eat flax powder you need to boil it for a while first.
Ya I read that there are specifications on the process they have to use to get ground flax that makes it safe. I kinda wish she would do another vid explaining cause ground flax does help those of us w pcos.
Thank you OP. For the flaxseed crackers used to make, the recipe called for the flaxsseeds to have boiling water poured over them & steeped for 15 mins. Then the seasonings & other seeds added before being rolled thin & baked. So that makes sense boiling water is used on the flaxseed first. What about a decade ago promotions to eat raw flaxseed oil to increase Omega levels? I could never stomach it & had a bottle in the fridge for ages. Thank goodness we never did use it.
The flaxseed meal one is something that surprised me on the potency. I bought a bag of flaxseed meal for gluten-free baking since psyllium husk can be relatively expensive. However inexplicably stopped using it as I was feeling rather ill; at least I know the reasons now, and that my deduction was correct.
You can just add xanthum gum to gluten free flour for gluten free baking. It's a little more expensive than standard flour, but not too bad for gluten free and very easy as a substitute. The main difference really is that doughs tend to be much stickier and less stretchy.
@@hannahk1306 We have been using xanthum gum, but I was wondering about options to improve elasticity with the end product. Which led me into giving flaxseed meal a few attempts; while the end result appeared to be somewhat better, the repercussions aren't worth it at all.
@@hannahk1306 If your baked good turns out sticky when using xanthan gum, you're adding too much of it! I've been gluten free for 5 years and my whole family is amazed at how I can manage to take gluten free recipes and make them basically indistinguishable from wheat flour recipes. It takes a lot of testing to find the right flour blend & amount of xanthan gum for each type of recipe (cookies, cakes, breads, scones, etc will all need different amounts since they're all meant to be different textures!), but it's definitely doable with enough experimentation. edit: reread your comment after replying and yes, you're right, the doughs end up wetter in gluten free recipes
@@morgan0 100% agree! I had no idea there was cyanide in flax seeds and I used to grind and add a tablespoon or two to my yogurt quite regularly. It was my favourite thing to add and I was told that it was healthy. A dosage warning would have been much appreciated!
Hi Ann! Love your content! Quick correction from a plant science PhD student: in vivo is within a living organism and in vitro is within the glass. You had them switched 😊
I was kinda shocked when she said that, cause the translation is so obvious right, almost the same words, letter per letter (in vitro - em vidro/in vivo - em vivo)! Then I remembered she is not speaking portuguese or any other latin language haha 😆 "Glass" and "alive" don't resemble these scientific expressions in the least, so you guys just decorate them all (:
Tara gum is in fact made from the seeds, but from a specific part only: the endosperm-the storage unit for the germ (embryonic part). This is the same for guar gum, locust bean/carob gum, fenugreek gum, cassia gum etc. About 80% of the endosperm/gum products is a carbohydrate polymer called galactomannan which provides an initial kick of energy to the germ in nature and causes the thickening effect we use them for :) The flours are usually made by grinding the whole seeds or even pods, so contain many more components. The gums are a multi-billion dollar industry, used as you know in foods but also cosmetics, personal care products, and even oil drilling! Final fun fact, locust bean gum has been identified as a paint binder used in a Roman Egyptian mummy shroud from nearly 2000 years ago 😮
So the supplier saw that the rest of the parts get thrown away, thought he could make some money by turning trash into treasure and selling it to some health nut suckers and ended up poisoning people... Yup, that checks out.
I find it crazy how daily harvest's supplier just suggested they use an untested, unfamiliar ingredient and daily harvest said yes. That's like being offered a strange drink by a stranger and drinking it immediately.
Yeah.. Frankly, it really doesn't matter what their supplier "told" them. If you're a commercial food producer and you decide to use an ingredient you've never used before, and you're not aware of it being commonly used elsewhere, and you don't _explicitly verify yourself_ that it is both _legal and safe_ for use in that application, that should be considered *criminally negligent* behavior, IMHO. That whole company should, frankly, be prohibited from ever selling anything in the US again. They're clearly just not competent enough to be up to the task. (They'll almost certainly just get a slap on the wrist, though...)
@@foogod4237 Honestly, I'm kind of with them on this one. Sure it's obvious in hindsight, but who's ever heard of something like this happening before? What company goes to the trouble of sourcing a food additive that's not even legal when they already have a huge selection of known-legitimate products? And then quietly recommend it to clients like it's got a small but steady market, none of the hype that usually surrounds health scams? Call it the Tallarico Effect (being so easy to google you assume someone would've caught them), but it's not gross negligence to fall for it, it's human nature.
And the best part is that they probably won't face any consequences for that. Those kinds of egregious cases should have companies facing massive fines, enough for them to either take consumer safety seriously or go out of business. The only hope are lawsuits. Those will likely be settled out of court, but I hope the case will be compelling enough that they'll lose a couple hundred million on that.
@@foogod4237I hate that this is how the U.S. "works." Everyday activities are a constant risk for regular people here. And for someone like me who is disabled the risks are just skyhigh and we're constantly told both to 1) suck it up and stop complaining and 2) just die already and quit wasting "other people's" resources. When we're supposed to be entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How many people do you think ordered that food because they are disabled and needed healthy food they didn't have to cook?
This talk about apple seeds reminds me of what happened to my coworkers friend. 6 years ago they would sell apricot seeds as snacks at trainstations, promoting it as a healthy snack. So this person, who was hungry, bought a bag and started chucking them down like peanuts. Then on the train he started getting sick, so sick that he couldn't talk anymore and they took him to the hospital by ambulance. The thing that saved his life was the fact that the ER staff managed to find the bag of apricot seeds in his coat jacket, because they had no idea what was going on with him. Shortly after the sale of this product got banned from trainstations, because only with tiny letters had there been a vague description that you were only allowed to eat a few seeds a day, it didn't mention that eating more (or like this man did, he ate half the bag) could result in death.
The tara flour incident is one of the scariest to me. An ingredient you thought was harmless and we haven't recognized as toxic causing that many people such severe poisoning symptoms... just when they were trying to be healthy and eat something plant-based... it's horrible.
Not everything natural is safe, snake venom is also natural. What could scare me are the long term effects of some stuff we didn't study well, these would pass unnoticed.
@@mamupelu565 You just agreed with OP's point. The "natural/plant-based" thing wasn't the focus, it was the fact that this ingredient was there, not studied well so we had no idea it was dangerous. We (understandably) trust food makers to only put safe stuff in their food, and while contamination can happen from time to time, it's scary to know that one random ingredient could be the culprit. Even if I was the sort to scrutinize ingredient labels, I don't know every ingredient out there!
I'm glad you covered the Lentil Crumbles, I remember at the time it happened lots of the 'drama' youtube channels were making differrent assumtions for what caused it. I remember seeing comments that the wrong mushrooms must have been used, or other ingredients hadn't been cooked properly. Although it is rather concerning they added an ingredient they hadn't heard of before without actually checking it.
the theory about it not being cooked properly came from the company itself, because at first they tried to downplay it as people getting stomachaches from not cooking their lentils enough. no mention of the multiple people who had to get their gallbladders removed.
When you switched from talking about tetrodotoxin to a story about picking up a shell my first thought was "OH NO DID SHE PICK UP A CONE SNAIL" and I'm honestly quite glad to hear it was 'only' a blue-ringed octopus. Bullet dodged either way!
@@laartje24 Octopodes is also correct, but rarely used. If someone tries to "correct" anyone for saying octopuses I hit them right back with "octoPODES you dingus, it's Greek not Latin"
The fugu one wasn’t unsurprising to see here but I studied abroad in Japan this summer and twice my PI took us to a full course fugu dinner (meaning they make use of every part that they can, giving you small servings of Fugu cooked different ways) and so I discussed with my PI a lot about Fugu as a dish in japan and how they minimize overall risk with Fugu with scientific approaches. He’s not an expert on it but he told me the poison is related to their diet, so farm grown Fugu aren’t dangerous BUT it creates its own problems because apparently farm-grown Fugu Liver tastes the best and so there’s market for people to buy Fugu liver but then there’s cases of people selling normal Fugu liver (which is where the most concentrated toxin is!!) and then that can kill someone extremely quickly.
I was somewhat disappointed to see that not mentioned at all in this video. Farm-raised fugu pose no danger, because the poison only comes about from their diet out in the wild. This has been nailed down to the point that you can even buy (raw) fugu sashimi in some supermarkets in Japan.
@@macyler How interesting! That said, I think it links to Ann's wider point; if you are eating a dish prepared by someone else (and unless you know fully the details of the underlying components) you are relying on the good will, skill and disclosure of the people preparing it for you. If that's a concern, it's a concern that could be mediated by (for example) only eating fugu from specific locations, I suppose?
@@zwerko as toxic as youtube is because there are some idiots on here. tiktok shows you what you like to see, their algorithm is more advanced than any other social media. if the platform is toxic for you, you're the problem
The Tara flour one called my attention because of how similar the plant looked, I am from Venezuela and we don't have it but trees from that genus have even marked our vocubulary because they produce pods with inedible seeds and useless shells that every growing season just litter the place, where we have the tendency to say "echar vaina" (meaning "to throw/drop pods") to refer to bothering someone intentionally such as snickering. I find it interesting you can make a flour out of those things, and of course, it's toxic, echen esa vaina a la basura.
It's not toxic and I'm very sad to see all those negative comments about this situation here. Tara seed flour in fact E417 and considered safe in the EU till this day. Tara gum is the juice out of these seeds and isn't any less or more toxic.
@@JCel I looked it up before commenting this but not too deep, the Tara flour seems to be bad in large quantities and not edible when consumed raw, maybe I made my comment a little too harsh in the end. Did not imply the gum was toxic, I got it clear that it wasn't.
E417 is the gum the polysaccharide extracted from the seed coat). The protein appears to be the (waste) product from that process...or perhaps a further-purified fraction from the waste. Whether it might have a use in animal feed, who knows; certain birds and non human mammals can tolerate many foods that are lethal to people. But for someone to see "protein" and assume it's a safe and approved people food, Just because something else from the same plant is edible? That's incredibly (lethally) careless.
Please do a video on the dangers of drinking raw milk! Theres been a HUGE trend online recently where people are falsely claiming that pasteurized and homogenized milk is bad for you and tou should drink raw unprocessed milk and people and their children are getting extremely sick from the raw milk
I grew up on raw milk straight from the farm as did most people in small villages back in the 70s and 80s in the UK, for some reason I found myself becoming ill more often after we moved and started drinking pasteurised milk. Even now when I go to visit my sister in the village we grew up in I ask my brother-in-law to get some straight from the tank as he works on a farm, I much prefer the richer, creamy, taste of it.
Raw milk is not inherently dangerous. It is the presence of the bacteria that is the issue. I know plenty of farming families that drink raw cow or goat milk. But I would not want to see it become commercially available for the masses.
People really do be regressing and drinking unpasteurized milk 😅 Addendum: the risks outweigh the benefits when it comes to drinking raw milk. Hence, pasteurization. And that's why in some places it's illegal to sell raw milk. These tiktoks, fb shorts, yt shorts say that there are "more nutrients" in raw milk and that simply isnt true at all. But I also understand that there is a small-industry interested in cheesemaking which sometimes needs raw milk. Still, this comes with a process of its own (salting, fermenting, cooking) that makes it relatively safe.
@@sallyphilpin4939We always boiled milk from the farm. No one drinks it straight from the cow. Unless there's a different definition of raw milk, if you grew up on a farm, I assume, you boiled it too. We boiled it, used the cream for tea, made yorghurt with the rest, etc. The boiling process kills pretty much everything.
In middle school, our science teacher had us "dissect" apples to kind of ease us into dissections with something that wasn't gross. He had us break open the seeds so we could see the cotyledons, and then encouraged us to taste them because "they weren't poisonous." Obviously, just eating one seed wasn't going to hurt us, even if we were still kids, but it still amuses me to this day that he was actively encouraging us to eat cyanide.
Oh, don’t worry. Newly qualified teachers are probably telling students that, if they swallow whole apple seeds, a tree will grow out of their heads because modern science.
Thank you so much for the info on the Daily Harvest thing. I remember when it happened, reading random people's accounts on reddit detailing tragic awful things. Limbs being amputated, stuff like that. I think about it from time to time and have googled it a few times but couldn't find any updates. I assumed it was contamination but it's totally insane to learn that it's because they used an untested ingredient. The incompetence of Daily Harvest is genuinely insane. Just trusting their supplier like that. Awful. Thank you for bringing this up, it's something that's been vaguely on my mind ever since it happened, it's both relieving and depressing to hear it's just corporate incompetence lol.
British chemist Miles Power actually did an entire series on amygdalin and its sister chemical laetrile because people promote that stuff as "vitamin B17" and a cancer cure. It's also in peach and apricot stones. Didn't actually know about flax seeds though, that's kinda scary since you can buy them in health food stores and supermarkets here.
You can buy apricot seeds in health food stores too (depending on the country). They taste quite good because amygdalin releases benzaldehyde slowly. (benzaldehyde taste bitter in high concentration, but very good at low concentrations)
I realize this is just anecdotal, but I've been eating "bitter almonds" for 7 years with no ill effects. After my brother was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and died at age 50, I started seeing a urologist. After 6 months of eating the seeds, my PSA levels reversed. My doctor said that he's never seen a reversal in a man of my age and wanted to know what I was doing. When I told him, he said that they had learned about it in med school. It wasn't considered dangerous or poisonous, it was an old treatment for cancer before they started radiating us and using chemotherapy. He advised me to continue eating the seeds. My 83 year old father doesn't believe in natural preventatives and treatments and is currently undergoing traditional cancer treatment. He told me that he could smell something in it that smelled like the apricot seeds I eat and wanted to know if I knew what it was. I absolutely do not believe that apricot seeds, apple seeds, etc will poison or harm us. As they say, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and the few seeds included in that fruit are good for us. The problems begin when people take it to the extreme. After all if you drink too much water too fast, you can die, but a normal amount of water is necessary for life. IMO, the western diet is extremely unhealthy. Other cultures have been eating fruit seeds for centuries and still do. Over the past 100 years, it's been villainized in the west and removed from our diets. Keeping us unhealthy is good for business and keeps us coming back to buy their "treatments" and "cures".
I’m kind of surprised, and a bit dubious, about the flax seeds as well. An awful lot of vegans use ground flax in place of eggs and a lot of people use it as a fibre supplement or thickener for smoothies I used to eat around a 1/3 cup some days. Not every day because I’m not so great at sticking to things but certainly sometimes multiple days in a row. So I’ll look into it some more before I decide what to do with the bags of flax in my cupboard
i love "how to cook that." ann and dave give us the safety information we need without fearmongering or scary clickbait. we as consumers of media are under a deluge of health and safety warnings that vary from potential to misleading to very real and it's not always easy to understand the difference. i'm glad htct goes the extra mile to give us the facts how the experts arrived at those facts.
I think the "tiktok" in the tittle is kinda a clickbait. The whole video doesn’t mention anything about tiktok, even some clips seemed to be from youtube. I think since many youtube users think of Tiktok as being full of " stupid" people and videos, making a video with Tiktok on the thumbnail would make people more inclined to click.
Can you talk about the “raw milk” trend of TikTok? I keep seeing a lot of “health” influencers promoting it, saying it’s healthier since it isn’t pasteurized, but that couldn’t be further from the truth 😭
I wouldn't call it "healthier" but if the hygiene has been excellent (clean cows, clean equipment and cleaning with effective products often enough) and cooled asap it's not dangerous. Or unhealthy. Listeria and yersenia and biggest threats and neither one are no joke. It's prettt much similar that you shouldn't be eating raw dough if you've used eggs because risk of salmonella. Or always have your eggs boiled hard/fried fully. It's why you should clean everything properly when cooking poultry and not chop anything elsew where you chop your bird meat. And salmonella only dies in +70c temp. It doesn't die in freezer.
Immunologically active proteins are passed through mammary excretions (aka milk). That is why there are huge differences between breastfed and formula babies. Pasteurization denatures all of those proteins. So from a *nutrient* standpoint, they are equivalent. But from an immunological standpoint, raw milk may have some biologically active properties. What those are, however, we don't really understand well.
My dad grew up in a farm and the used to tell us that they weren't allowed to drink milk freshly from the cow, they had to boil it at least to clean up some of the bacteria.
I need to send this to my nephews, who believe to anything on the internet. Thank you for this videos. You saved their kitchen, lives, and their mother sanity with each of those
When you mentioned a pretty shell I was first worried it was a cone snail, which is even more dangerous than a blue ringed octopus! I’m so glad you’re ok!
Yeah I teach my kids not to pick up any shells now. A local guy pocketed some shells his kids handed him. A few hours later he was at home when he felt something squishy against his leg. He was wearing swim shorts with the mesh. He pulled his pants off and shook them out and a small blue ring octopus plopped out. One was also in another shell in his pocket lol. Textile cones are scary too.
Flax and chia seeds are an important source of omega 3, especially to us vegans. I might be wrong but when I last checked the EU and Finnish recommendation was 2 tbs of seeds per day, which should be a safe amount. Usually EU is strict about possibly dangerous things and my dietian recommended this amount so I'm going to stick with it :).
Month late but Ann specifically said they were dangerous when milled or ground, so I'm guessing the 2tbs is WHOLE seeds. She stated that whole seeds get digested and aren't harmful the same way.
I was looking for such a comment! Fish itself is not toxic, it's its diet which makes it so. If you know what it eats, and it doesn't eat anything bad, it's just a bland-tasting fish.
Technically, "linseed oil" is flaxseed oil that has processed with stabilizing chemicals, primarily for use as paint or varnish. If you see that on a food ingredient list, there's something wrong, either with the food or the person writing the list.
@@EphemeralTao I didn't say 'oil'. For example 'soy and linseed' bread has whole flaxseeds in it. I live in Australia, maybe it's different than where you are.
I had a friend who also casually handled a blue-ring octopus, he didn't realize how toxic it was. He said his mom SCREAMED when she saw he had and it slapped it away from his hand. What a scary close-call indeed! 😳
Her depiction of how you would go about working out how much cyanide is in apple pips was very good, it's always nice to show the process of how scientists learn things.
I know this isn't the point of the video at all, but at 8:55 the video is taken from the village I used to work in in Nagano, Japan. In fact, my doctor's office was right down the road and I passed by this building once a month to go to the pharmacy. It's such a delight to see something so familiar in a completely unrelated video!
I used to tell my students, "'All natural,' doesn't always mean, 'All good for you.' Take a look at dirt. Dirt is 'all natural.' Eating dirt isn't 'all good for you.'" Here are more examples of that. Thanks for the tip on the apple seeds.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the editing on Ann's videos? Her cut scenes are often home made, and did you see the fun way the QR code came up?
The cyanogenic compounds in flax seeds are broken down by heat if there is water present, so boiling flax seeds or baking them in something like muffins will get rid of the cyanide.
This was so informative- I’ve been waiting for an update on the Daily Harvest outbreak. It’s absolutely crazy to me that they put this product they had never heard of into their food without even checking on their own to see if it was safe for consumption. The whole thing put me off ever ordering from an online food company again, especially after I read about the grey areas of food regulation in the US. Thanks for another great video!
You think that's bad, it's pretty common practice for food companies to put ingredients into their batch that will form MSG during production, but they don't put MSG on the label because "we didn't technically put it in." They do very much know it will be in the finished food, that's the whole point. So for anyone allergic to it, or wanting to avoid it, you have to watch for weird ingredients like hydrolyzed pea protein and whatnot. It's really bad with fake/alternative cheese products especially.
@@tirsden MSG is in tons of foods naturally, and there's no such thing as an MSG allergy,. The hate it gets is mostly racist bullshit from the 60s. For example, it was originally called 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome'. Since then studies have consistently shown no negative effects unless the person knew they were eating MSG and already believed they had a sensitivity.
@@tirsdenSad that they have to avoid putting MSG on the packaging though, because the belief that it will cause headaches to non-allergic people is a myth perpetuated through someone who ate a bunch of salt + fat and blamed it on the MSG.
The weird thing is that Tara flour has been in countless products for years without anything like that ever happening. So there had to be another problem.
@@zalba5710 I understand Tara gum has been used for a long time - made from part of the seed and likely in relatively small quantities. Tara flour from the whole seed looks to be the issue.
Amazing video as always, at 6:07 I think it was meant to be Tetrodotoxin and not tetrododoxin. Also, I have obtained a license to serve fugu many years ago being an avid angler in Japan, however just like many other fishermen who also have the license almost none of us will ever serve fugu. Even with the proper knowledge and skills we still find it not worth it, as unlike the chefs at specialized restaurants, most people with licenses dont have 10s of thousands of serving experiences. Edit: Some major reasons why most people with licenses still do not eat fugu in Japan. 1) First only a few species are edible while other spieces have poisonous skin as well as much more blood in their flesh making it harder to bleed out. 2) Second is due to uncertainty of other toxins such as Ciguatera fish poisoning. While proper Fugu fishermen would catch Fugu that are already known to be safe and then the fish would also go through multiple layers of inspection, commonly caught puffer/globe fish can't have reliable food sources and envronments. Fugu as seen from its major beaked mouth is an omnivorous fish and some times feeds on poisonous shellfish and crustaceans. Thus, while being the same fish, if caught in different areas could potentially be poisonous. 3) The last and most important risk is the rise of hybrid species due to climate change. Recently with temperatures of the waters changing, the habitats of various fish are more greatly overlapping. This has caused some Fugus to cross breed causing dangerous and very deceiving hybrids that may look like one spiecies while having the properties of another.
I am so thankful that Ann has such a huge platform to not only address specific issues but to also demonstrate the level of research required to come to a scientific conclusion on something.
Every time that toxic food is in discussion I think about Maniçoba(ma -nee-so-ba), which is a brazilian food from indigenous people, made with Cassava leaves and had to be cooked for 7 days, because the leaf has a high concentration of Hydrogen Cyanide that can literally kill you if not eated properly.
Yes I was always baffled by all the maniçoba being eaten in Belem! How did they figure out how long it had to be cooked? Did someone die after it had only been cooked for 2 hours, so they tried again at 4, 6, 8, 10 hours? Did they just keep trying until someone didn’t die? 😱
I must admit when you started talking about the apple seeds being poisonous, I was thinking I could include it in my murder mystery but sadly I don't think my would-be victim would accidentally ingest that many apples unless I dumped them in an apple juicer or a vat of juice... Kudos on the video, which is, as always, entertaining and educational. Thank you!
That would have been a way to go, though! Could you imagine the coroners figuring out that the victim died because they ingested too many apple seeds all at once? 😂 Good luck on your writing!
Well, now you can have someone eating enough raw flaxseed flour in some sort of fridge set crumble instead. Give me a delicious enough sweet treat and I could probably eat 70-160 grams of ground flaxseed in one sitting. Now the question - ignorant baker, or deliberate murder?
It's always deliberate and never just one murder. But it's body disposal I struggle with. If the police ever saw my browser history I'd be in hot water for sure. Thank you for your lovely comment! @@britishraptor7703
Ann, I think I could listen to you explain anything. The way you talk and how you explain things is so easily understandable and pleasant to listen to. You are one of the jewels of the Internet. Keep up your excellent work!
So interesting about the flax seeds. My sister uses ground flax seeds as a vegan egg replacement in baking. 1 table spoon of flax with 3 tablespoons of water is 1 egg, so she often uses about 3 table spoons of flax in baking. I might mention this video to her, I’m sure there’s plenty of other replacements she could use.
That doesn't even sound like it would even work tbh. Tell her to use the same ratio but with chia seeds, they create mucilage it it's super healthy and works to replace eggs in vegan food. The main downside is that you need to soak the seeds for a few hours to activate them, but you can keep a container of bloomed chia seeds in the fridge for a few days to a week. 1 tbsp bloomed chia seeds = 1 egg.
She could try psyllium husk instead, 1 teaspoon psyllium + 1 tablespoon liquid per egg. Creates a very goopy, gluten-like structure, so it's also a good way to add structural lift for gluten-free baked goods.
She's not. Flax seeds are totally fine. She got her amounts wrong. Many agencies recommend them for their health benefits. The Unnatural Vegan just did a video debunking this.
@@AngryBoozer It isn't just that she got the amounts wrong, even though she way off. Multiple food agencies also recommend flax seeds as part of a healthy diet. There are no documented cases of someone dying from poisoning due to eating flax seeds. It's been tested in clinical trials in amounts far above what any person would normally eat in a day, and they didn't even find problems then. By the way, her own vegan chocolate cake recipe calls for six tablespoons of ground flax seeds. If she's so concerned, maybe she should choose a different replacement in that recipe. The fact that she presents herself as an authority and hasn't corrected this yet is atrocious.
Interesting about the Flaxseed - also called Linseed. I have never seen warnings about excessive consumption on packaging. It seems cooking reduces toxicity, although I am not sure if this applies just to boiling or to dry roasting as well.
I've heard, both first and second hand, a surprising number of reports of close-call encounters with the blue ringed octopus over the last few years or so. Apparently, it's fairly slow to anger and it's a good thing too as a single bite results in virtually guaranteed death! SO glad your encounter was just such a "friendly" one, Ann! Great information! I learned a lot, as always! Thanks!
"Apparently, it's fairly slow to anger" Yep - you can see hundreds of videos on RUclips, tiktok and co of people showing the cute little blue octopus they found.
@@ABaumstumpf To be fair, those people are usually tourists who are unaware of the danger. There's so many dangerous things in the oceans that you don't learn about in school unless you live near one. I had no idea that lethal jellyfish even existed (I knew they could sting you but not that they could kill an adult) until one day RUclips recommended a video to me titled "the most lethal jellyfish in the world"
@@nowandaround312 That is why when you travel you normally should first read up on your destination, and why travel-agencies normally give you brochures that detail the dangers. And australia is a meme for a reason.
@@ABaumstumpf I agree, but there's so many dangerous things in Australia it's hard to learn about all of them in a short period of time and remember everything. It's still dumb to pick up a jellyfish even if you aren't aware that it can kill you but I think it's different than people who *knowingly* risk their life for views
I heard about the lentil bite situation, was wondering what happened there since I believe at first the brand tried to blame it on people not cooking the lentils thoroughly enough. It's really interesting to know what actually happened!
Not cooking the lentils thoroughly enough! LMAO! A response that was okayed by a panicking legal department perhaps? Or some rogue social media manager? I mean, it's not an awesome thing to try, but I've never heard of lentils causing liver failure on their own, goodness gracious!
When she said a small octopus and covered in sand in her HAND, I had a feeling she was going to discover the blue rings 😂 Glad you're okay! That really was a close call! I once picked up a pretty and unusual looking bug and let it climb over my arms as I took it home to identify it.... found out it was an assassin bug! It wouldn't have killed me, but I totally wouldn't have had a good day if that little guy felt threatened in the least...😂 So my rule of thumb, if you cannot positively identify it, do not handle it. Better to be safe than sorry and in unimaginable pain.
This actually happens so often without us even knowing. But most of these animals know instinctively what is a threat and what isn’t and humans aren’t generally threatening. As long as the animal isn’t being harmed, they won’t hurt you but obviously people still shouldn’t handle animals that they aren’t sure about. As for the blue ringed octopus, most octopus species are very intelligent and likely know that they won’t be harmed in a human’s hand. Their toxins are mostly used for hunting purposes as well and a human is not prey for one of those animals.
Hey Ann, not sure where people normally contact you for requests, but I have one. Not sure if you've ever heard of companies like Bokksu and Sakuraco, but they're snack boxes from Japan that send you a variety of Japanese snacks. One of the classic items for both is their white chocolate infused freeze dried strawberries. They're delicious but the company charges around 3 dollars PER strawberry. I've tried to do some research on this and couldn't find any info on how these are made. I'd love to give making them myself a try but I have no idea how they could possibly make these. It's hard to describe how they are to someone who hasn't had one but it's like they replaced part of the strawberry with chocolate but it's still a strawberry somehow. You're the only person I could think of who could figure it out. Would love to solve this mystery!
@@HowToCookThat Definitely worth trying! They're so different from the ones that are just chocolate coated. Interested to hear your thoughts on how they do this.
I wonder if they might impregnate the freeze dried strawberry with melted chocolate under vacuum to draw the chocolate up into all the air pockets? That's how we impregnate very porous materials with resin in the lab for analysis. You could probably also do it just by soaking the strawberry in the chocolate but that would be harder to guarantee an even an consistent infusion.
@@HowToCookThat It may not be feasible, but it's an interesting thought: you could also buy a home freeze dryer and make them yourself. Then you could also do a video on the science of freeze drying, which would be both fun and informative for us. I mean, you could do a video on freeze drying without the machine, but I think it would be more fun if you also made "astronaut ice cream" and freeze dried fruit while explaining the science behind it.
The flax seed note is very interesting to me because it’s used frequently as an egg replacement in baking. It uses 1 tbsp ground flax to 2.5-3 tbsp water per egg. This is then put into an entire batch of whatever baked good, and baked for the full length of time for whatever recipe. You obviously aren’t eating an entire batch of cookies or whatever in a single day. So I wonder if this one is a matter of small doses, or if baking does something, or both? This has been a staple of baking for me for years, and I had never heard about this. It’s definitely something I’d like to know more about
Ann, everytime you talk about studies related to whatever topic you always give essential context to them like the methods used, dates, if it was peer reviewed and I really need you to know that every time I love you a little bit more. You've done it so often at this point that I love you enough to want you as a bridesmaid at my wedding (if and when that happens, im very single lol) and I hope you have read at least one of the many comments I left on various videos saying I love you because it's true and I do ❤ Have a great week, Ann!
Here in Finland we have guidelines about flax (you can have up to 2 tablespoons per day) but it's more because of the potential heavy metal load and not toxicity. In fact, you shouldn't eat too much of any kinds of seeds because they accumulate heavy metals and over time it could cause health problems. The main concerning ingredient in flax seed is linamarin which is broken down during cooking so as long as you are not eating fistfuls of flax seed raw you're going to be fine. It is a very commonly used ingredient here so I think if it was as toxic as Ann claims here there would certainly have been reports of people falling ill but I have never heard of anything like that. Or maybe there are different strains used in other places that have higher toxicity?
@@MeredithDomzalski Thanks for the tip, just watched that video. I really wish Ann had done some more research here, I generally love her videos but saying something untrue with a straight face like this makes me lose trust in her. Hoping she will do another video and correct the mistakes in this one...
Wow, the lentils story is incredible! I remember when the first reports of symptoms started showing up online, and the subsequent recall. I hadn't heard any follow-up news about it though, so really appreciate you talking about it here.
I had just finished eating a waffle with ground flaxseed, when I watched this video. I am throwing away my ground flaxseed. Thank you for letting me know that something I thought was good for me, was really harmful. Have a wonderful day ❣️
I really wish there was a clarification about raw vs heated ground flax seeds. I about panicked because my oatmeal uses ground flax. I love your videos, but I'm glad I trusted my gut to learn more about ground flax because something didn't sit right this time.
As someone who did not enjoy chemistry in school, I very much enjoy and appreciate your videos. They're a way to gain knowledge in a very informative way. Thank you!
YES! Early morning Video to eat breakfast with! I'll never understand why people think "Natural equal Healthy." There are endless Natural grown plants that will kill you very quickly if you eat it lol
7:36 THIS! My dad was collecting shells near Philip Island and ran out of hand space so he was putting them in his trunks (whilst snorkeling). He handed my mum up a shell and she said there was a baby octopus and handed the shell back to my dad. By then the octopus was fairly pissed off and was flashing blue- yup it wasn’t a baby but a nice sized blue-ringed octopus. Dad was very, very lucky not to put that shell near his family jewels.
I feel like it’s notable that you neglected to mention that only raw flaxseed contains this toxin, and flaxseed that has been baked, toasted, boiled etc. is perfectly safe. While adding the meal to a smoothie may not be a good idea, the way many vegans use it as an egg replacer in baked goods is perfectly safe and nutritious
It is perfectly safe raw in normal quantities as well. People may experience some issues after eating 100g of freshly ground raw flax seeds in one sitting, but there has never been a case of cyanide poisoning by eating flax seeds. This is fearmongering.
Your experience with the blue-ringed octopus and the story of that venomous spider in your kitchen really makes me wonder how Australians even live to be adults.
By sheer luck. When I was a 5 year old I was bullying a spider with a stick, it was full chasing me and I was barefoot. I specifically remember it's face being red and looking very gnarly and my parents growing up etc had no idea what it could have been. As an adult I found out it was a red headed mouse spider, they're so venomous that they use funnel web antivenom. Straight up could have fuckin died, F
@@finch600 I just looked up that spider. It’s 3,5 cm long. I think that’s a very big spider (I’m not from Australia). Adult Australians really are a wonder. My experience from central Europe that matches that the most would be the time a poisonous plant grew in our backyard and I accidentally touched it and got a small rash that lasted a few days.
Well, Arizonans have less deadly but still deadly critters and we make it to adulthood by not putting our hands where we can't see them, leaving critters alone, knowing what to do if we do get bit/stung and doing so right away, and treating venomous and non-venomous critters alike (and any plant or inanimate object that might be one or hiding one) with a healthy amount of caution and respect. Freaking out because of fear will only make you do stupid things that get you hurt. Having the presence of mind to back away from it slowly or put a cup/jar/bucket over it with a rock or book on top to contain it basically neutralizes the threat. As a child you learn to get an adult if you see a critter. As an adult you either have learned how to handle the situation, or who you get to handle the problem for you (like I will totally relocate spiders and scorpions, but if a rattlesnake got into my house, the cats and I are going in the car, and the snake owns the house until the fire department can remove it because I don't have the training, and my cats are stupid enough to mess with it). I lived here for like 33 years before I ever got stung by a scorpion (the deadliest in North America... I was fine), and it was my own fault for breaking my rules for avoiding scorpions (check wood/cardboard/brush with a blacklight, wear gloves and thick long sleeves when handling piles of those things, only handle them by day, poke them with long sticks to scare the scorpions away before you handle them...). I have made it 36 years and still haven't been bit by any venomous spiders, stung by any bees (did get stung by one wasp when i was little, and a lot of ants but I was messing with the ants), and while I have been unexpectedly uncomfortably close to wild rattlesnakes on quite a few occasions, I was never in any danger as I was still far enough away and they were calm. I haven't even seen a wild gila monster (venomous lizard) or coral snake. When I was nanny for a toddler, I used my plushy spider and a scorpion in resin I had and a toy snake, and photos of them, and taught her that if she saw a spider, snake, or scorpion, to stay away because they would get very scared and might bite her and make her sick and owie, and tell me or another adult about it so we could move it somewhere safe for it to live. I was informed about every single jumping spider, of course, but she still mixed up dogs and cats so this was better. As she got older she learned that some got to stay, but others could hurt her. This taught her they weren't scary things, but scared ones, and we just had to give them space so we both could stay safe. She's a lot older now and afaik she isn't afraid of them but she also doesn't mess with them and hasn't been bitten or stung. That's how you survive to adulthood here. Well, that and unless you are really really rural and can't get the right medical care in time, most deadly things are quite survivable... you will just have a really really awful time of it and may have lasting life-altering damage to your body after it. To end with a random fun fact: the deadliest venomous animal in North America by far is... the honey bee. Not because of toxicity, but because they are incredibly commonly encountered, so rates of stings are so much higher than bites/stings of other animals just from that commonness alone, and of those, just enough people happen to be allergic or in some other way more sensitive and just enough of those don't make it that the statistics alone make all others combined still almost a negligible number of deaths, and honey bees killing only rarely ending up as so many more _by comparison._ Afaik, deaths of Australians from venomous critters are also incredibly rare, even though theirs are so much more deadly than ours, just because most of those are in incredibly remote areas, and where the people are, there tends to be both education and medical care to prevent deaths from them. That and "deadlier" venom when both are deadly doesn't exactly mean much... either you have time to get treatment or you don't, toxicity isn't the main factor when either can kill you, but speed is.
Very informative! Thank you. I am now curious about chips and breads with flax seed in it. Maybe I will read the back of a package at the store and see if any of it says "ground flax seed". Are you able to comment on why people think consuming flax seed is beneficial to their health? Do we absorb anything from the whole seed? So many questions.
Ground flaxseed is rich in alpha-linolic acid and fiber. They're study fairly rich in protein. Flax is often fed to animals in every meal in their feed and cooking degrades amygdalin so I wouldn't worry about the amygdalin too much unless you're eating excessive quantities (like a cup or more at a time) raw or maybe if you're feeding it to small children. It's good that regulators are being proactive, but in the long history of it being consumed by people and animals, there's no documented case of cyanide poisoning. The greatest actually documented risk of flaxseed is choking if you eat it without enough water because it's so high in fiber.
Foods baked with ground flax seed are fine as the cooking process will eliminate the cyanide forming compounds, especially a high moisture thing like bread.
from the title I thought it'd be something like "oopsie woopsie your recipe didn't say to cook the kidney beans for quite long enough". The whole tara flour ordeal was pretty shocking
Hey Anne! You got the in vivo/ in vitro the wrong way around, in vivo (from Latin living) it’s inside an organism and in vitro (from Latin glass) it’s in a Petri dish/ test tube. Really similar words so it’s a simple accident but I thought I’d point it out ❤ love the video, I learned a lot! I had no idea about the flax seeds
Great video. If you ever do one of these again, would you consider talking about legumes? I was taught that cooking beans and peas and also some lentils, to be safe, requires lots of water and heat. When the legumes are cooked, you discard the water. But a lot of my vegan friends use aqua faba (the water residue after cooking legumes) as egg substitute. They even concentrate that brine to get better "eggy" results and then they make baked goods with it or mayo. Are they poisoning themselves?
Aquafaba is actually supposed to be very specifically the water from chickpeas as far as I know? Lentils and beans can be very hard on the digestive system, but chickpeas and green peas tend to be a little gentler. It sounds quite unfortunate if someone were to use eg. lentil rinsing juices for cooking 🤢
@@jasminv8653 I'm not so sure. I entered "how toxic are chickpeas?" and my first hit was "Health Risks and Benefits of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) Consumption" in pubmed .. going by the abstract, chickpeas sound quite toxic. I don't have full-text access to the entire review though. So I don't know, how much of that toxicity is retained in cooked chickpeas or their aqua faba. In my country, aqua faba is a term for all kinds of legume cooking water, as you can achieve the same "eggy" effect with nearly all of them. Tmk chickpea aqua faba is the most popular one, simply because it's the most neutral in taste.
Very interesting, I always thoroughly rinse away the stuff that's in canned beans and when I've used dried beans I soaked them overnight and discarded the soaking water & rinsed them as I was taught it was bad for people to ingest the bean water stuff
Very interesting! I'm super curious about the flax seed part as that is something highly used as a supplement in the equine field to help with horse's skin and hair. My horse and most others' that I know get it daily (mine has for like 15 years). Obviously they are much bigger than people but I'd like to see what reports are of any possible toxicity cases in equids.
Is it ground flaxseed or just whole? My instinct tells me that horses and other large herbivores may have some resistance or metabolize amygdalin differently since it would be something they could encounter as a normal component of their diet, but also given they'd again be consuming it whole in that case (whether apples or flaxseed or stone fruit) maybe not. I'm sure someone's done a study...
It's great that you're spreading the bad effects of this around, Ann. Especially with the Flax Seeds, it looked like doctors were even saying they were good. People usually trust doctors which could've been bad. Thanks, Ann!!
ground flaxseeds are a good source for omega-3, especially for people who dont eat eggs and fish, since its a nutrient essential for your wellbeing and the health of your cells. there are also other sources (like walnuts or flaxseed oil), so its better to vary your source of omega-3, but being deficient in omega-3 still has health consequences. it's about balance
This is the first I've heard of them being harmful! I just knew about the Omega-3s and fiber, and I figured ground was better for Omega-3s. I also remember hearing from a canine nutritionist that they were okay for dogs! I made dog treats with ground flaxseed! 😢 But never again, I trust Ann more! (And my dog doesn't seem to have been harmed)
Thank you for doing all this research and legwork to provide us with as much evidence and facts as possible! Really appreciate all the effort and time commitment you put into making these videos, and breaking it down into layman's terms so the general public who aren't food scientists (like me) can understand.
Don’t forget to Download Toon Blast 🚀 for free and receive 3 hours of unlimited lives and 100 free coins by clicking here: tinyurl.com/HowToCookThat1 PS: yes, I jumbled in vivo & vitro 🤪 We corrected it in the subtitles before we uploaded, oh well 😂
What about cherry pits. I heard that they contain cyanide also.
I think you switched the definitions of in vivo/in vitro
In vivo is the one performed on live animals, in vitro is the one performed on dishes
love the video. yeah I hate how people associate natural with good. Lead is natural. So are snake poison. I wouldn't use those in food.
Looks like someone did do a human trial to test the toxicity of cyanide in foods: "Bioavailability of cyanide after consumption of a single meal of foods containing high levels of cyanogenic glycosides: a crossover study in humans" ( pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25708890/ ). I found it reassuring, but I'm no food scientist! I have a toddler at home and looked at a bunch of lables after watching your video, and flax seed is everywhere! bread, crackers, nut butter, etc. So, I'm a bit concerned about it. If you have time to read that article over, I'd appreciate any thoughts! : ) thanks!
@@XXCoder Yep. Rational Wiki covers this very thoroughly - there are many things that are natural that will absolutely kill you, give you cancer in all kinds of nasty places, and even worse. And there are plenty of artificial things that are immensely beneficial and save millions of lives every year.
Being almost poisoned by a little bugger hiding in something you picked up is the most Aussie thing I've ever heard on this channel!
My cat brought in a Sydney funnel web once ...
Envenomated, actually, not poisoned.
getting killed by something you didn't notice till it was too late; like sitting on a spider, stepping on an otherwise shy snake or picking up a shell... is how the fauna gets us aussies. Personally would take that over being torn limb from limb out in the american bush by a bear, cougar or wolves. And I know you yanks have issues with sharks eating your divers and surfers too so don't bother with that gotcha.
@@roche320 In this instance, yes, but if one decides to throw it 'on a baribie', blue-ringed octopus is equally as poisonous. It doesn't really matter how that nasty poison/venom gets into you...
@@spoddie When I was real little I had a transformer truck that you stuck your hand in and one of our cats was hissing at it. Turned out there was a brown snake inside wrapped around the bar you hold lol
As someone with a learning disability, the way you explain things in such detail but so simply is really really appreciated. I always love watching you videos
I agree. English is not my first language but I'm always able to follow her, even though the topics themselves aren't always that easy
I second this
I have adhd and Anne is great at keeping my focus and explaining things in ways my brain can accept
That is such a wholesome comment! So glad you and others can learn here! 💕
I'm glad she helps you!!
She's pretty awesome tho
Samesies! :')
The flax seed one is really surprising to me. Ground flax seeds are a common egg replacement in vegan baking.
Yes! I am so sad, I use it in baking all the time and the breads as well as crackers I buy contain so many flax seeds. And I like the „nutty“ taste. Swapping it out for sure now! 😅
You can still use it for hair care. Its great for making hair smooth and silky, which is great for me because I have an aloe allergy and everybody uses aloe juice in everything : /
Yeah but at what stage are you going to be making a recipe that contains 70-160g of ground flaxseed .. the health benefits outweigh the risk .. also if this is the first you've heard of it, it's not an issue
@@TheXdarkfairy yes, and also what about the cocking-version? doesend the cinide die when heated? isnt it the same as with almonds?
Wait, now I have to finish the video 😳
The way my heart rate shot through the roof when Ann said she casually handled a blue ringed octopus. Really dodged a bullet with that one Ann!!
Yeah. Thank God it didn't bite her!
Moments like these serve as a reminder that Ann is, in fact, Australian.
Such an Australian anecdote. "Oh yeah and I almost got killed by a wild animal the other day, but in the end I was fine."
@@ambozz3726How any Australians stay alive and make it through childhood is still a mystery to me.
@@ruskasielu6261 If there was a bingo card, we'd have a new space to mark off. Aussie RUclips Bingo(no not that Bingo).
My favorite HTCT videos are the ones where Anne really displays the fact that she’s a food SCIENTIST. She’s not just a lady that makes cute cakes, she’s an actual scientist, and it really shows in videos like this.
I’m not interested in cooking at all, but her debunking/investigative videos are the best ones out there. She knows what she’s talking about and, crucially, explains it so clearly that even someone like me can understand it. When she demonstrated the various sugars and how they interact through the medium of stop-motion Lego bricks I was hooked.
When I share any of these videos, I make sure to give Anne's credentials!
It's most of what I watch on her channel.
@@lancelindlelee7256 - Likewise. I don't watch any plain cooking on RUclips. I watch this channel for the debunks and the fun quirky gadget-testing episodes.
"She’s not just a lady that makes cute cakes"
She's a CUTE lady that makes cute cakes.
Quick correction at 13:53 and a few seconds later, "in vitro" studies are done in test tubes and beakers (in "glass"), while "in vivo" is done on animal models. Great video as always Ann!
I had to fight my mother about eating apricot seeds because she was taking 50+ a day to try and beat cancer. I was having nightmares that she'd die of cyanide poisoning before the chemo even had a chance to work. Thankfully after she saw the studies i found and how genuinely freaked out she had made me (25 year old at the time) she agreed to stop.
She's now four years in remission. Still mad at whatever youtuber she saw that promoted the stupid seed though.
50+ a day is crazy wtf.
I'm glad she is in remission because aw hell naw!!! Those things are deadly!!!!
@w2cky400 yeah I had a heart attack when she told me.
I married into a family that believes things like this, including the apricot pit thing. Very stressful for me, a person who grew up with a scientist/medical researcher dad and a healthcare worker mom. Very glad your mom is in remission. May she live a long healthy life.
you are lucky you mother listens to you. i know that mine will do the exact oposite i tell her regardless of how many sources i find
Interesting bit of info on fugu (pufferfish); the toxicity appears to come from their diet, rather than the fish itself. A few places in Japan have begun farming fugu and raising them on a controlled diet, which eliminated the toxicity. So if you're going to try fugu, stick with the certified non-toxic farmed fish, and avoid wild-caught.
That is so interesting. Love your profile picture, BTW
Isn’t the point of fugu that it is a little toxic?
@@nandayane No? Chefs literally need a licence to identify the poisonous and edible parts, and cut out only the edible parts to serve. Parts that have even a little toxin are considered inedible
@@randot6675I think they are referring to the mouth and lip numbing aspect. Also a lot of people enjoy the thrill of the risk oddly enough. Not my cup of tea haha.
Like poison dart frogs!
As a Pacific Islander, as soon as you said “taro flour” I was like “Of course!” Taro has to be prepared a certain way, such as through fermentation, to remove the toxicity. There’s a reason we eat poi and not just taro flour porridge!
I'm sure they're deliberately taking advantage of that confusion, because you'll note it is in fact *tara* flour, the product of an obscure and completely unrelated plant :P
@@Tuxfanturnip My bad if that was on-screen, I listen while running errands! Thanks for the correction!
False
She is talking about TarA not TarO
"Prepared a certain way"? Sure, for example cooking.😎
The fact that the Daily Harvest people are trying to 'pass the buck,' as they say, to their suppliers is really shady.
People who create these various wholistic, organic, non-GMO trend foods need to actually hire food scientists to tell them what the heck they are doing. You can't be like "Oh, this ingredient seems good - and it doesn't have any of the negative-buzzword ingredients we avoid, so ... let's throw it in."
They are at fault here AS WELL AS the supplier.
I’m surprised a food subscription box service hadn’t already poisoned someone given how many of them are shipping things like raw meat and vegetables which spoil easily
10 hours??????
@@skymtz6739members get early access to videos
@@skymtz6739 patrons get videos earlier than others.
We don't know the full relationship. This could be a supplier they've worked with for years trusted. The supplier might typically be the one vetting ingredients for safety and legality as a service alongside the goods.
An interesting thing about Fugu is how it's disposed of as well. It has to be placed in a lock box for collection and is taken away to be incinerated. This is because people who were searching for waste food would eat it and get sick or die.
Think I'll stick to beer batter halibut instead.
interesting, so it gets the same treatment as some stuff at medical facilities do due to the danger.
It is extremely well regulated
@@katrinschirmer8018I mean...it is hazardous waste. Almost by definition.
in america, they'd leave it for homeless people to eat so they "solve the homeless problem"
Wow! Tara is widely used in my country (Perú) as a “tea” but it is not don’t meant to be drank, instead it is used as a “mouthwash” to numb the pain of a sore throat or amigdalitis. It tastes pretty bitter!
Haha what an odd ingredient to put in food!
Which part of the tree is used in the "tea"? I suppose it's leaves?
@@margoxathegamer9371 it’s the dried “fruit” seeds and all included
Huh
I used to work at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and I remember one case - a man had been fishing in Port Philip Bay and caught a pufferfish. He googled how to cut it up, did so, and ended up in ICU. Mind blowing that anyone can be so reckless.
Oh that is frightening! I wonder why people are so curious about eating puffer fish! 😳
@@HowToCookThatMe too! There are so many safe and interesting foods/ingredients out there to try. Why go after the dangerous ones?
Different pufferfish species have different amounts of tetrodotoxin. There's one off the east coast of the United States that has very little, so you can eat it without special butchering and and treat some mild numbness in the lips as part of the taste experience.
And thats the reason why it takes 3 years of training (with a 1/3 pass rate) to get the license to prepare fugu in the first place.
@@diablominero Um, I don't care. You really want to risk guessing you have the ONE correct pufferfish and then hope that it really doesn't have enough tetrodotoxin to kill you?
13:56 Only one correction, "in vivo" means in a living organism, while "in vitro" means in glass. I think you mixed them up. Other than that astounding and informative video as always!!!!
Scrolled down looking for this comment.
I was watching with closed captions, and the closed captions have corrections written in them.
@@anacsadder oh cool didn't know that!
Easy mistake that we all made in high school biology
I spotted that, too! Easy mistake to make, I think most of us lab scientists have done it at one point or another.
Another RUclipsr posted a keto recipe that contains 156 grams of milled flaxseed the same day this video was posted. Victoria's Keto Kitchen. It's meant to be a flour so hopefully whoever makes it won't eat the whole loaf of bread in one day. I watched as many people in the comments pointed out the danger of that and most pointed her to watch this video. All but one of those comments were hidden or deleted by the content creator. I logged in on my other account and my very polite comment on it was also hidden. I'm glad this info is getting out there, even if some try to hide it. I hope more people see this.
I believe the cyanide is destroyed during baking but I wouldn’t tempt fate
@@starlightlilly7203Thank you, that does make me feel better about the people who end up making that recipe. I will also not be tempting fate.
@@starlightlilly7203do you have a peer reviewed study to back that up? One of the things that’s important and that Ann teaches us is that it’s really important to look at what the science says and not just what hearsay tells us
@@starlightlilly7203 "Dry heat could not reduce cyanide contents effectively and only reduced around 10% of the cyanide contents in flaxseeds following oven-heating for 15 minutes."
@@ava_lavender ‘if you bake ground flaxseeds on their own, only 20 percent of the compounds are wiped out in even an hour at 350 degrees. Baking them whole wipes out 80 percent, though, and baking them in bread or muffins eliminates 100 percent.’ It is the moisture content that helps to destroy the cyanide forming compounds. Boiling is the safest option overall. But as I said earlier, I wouldn’t tempt fate
Regarding the topic of easting crushed flax seed in Sweden, local food authorities say that adult can eat up to 1 tablespoon a day, _if_ the seeds have been heated with liquids - like in porridge or bread. Apparently, it is then less toxic. Children should still not eat them at all.
Oh that's interesting!
The way it's used in Poland is usually as remedy and you pour hot water over a tablespoon of seeds and leave them for a few hours to 'swell' and then consume. I guess that checks all three recommendations (whole seeds, hot liquid, 1 tblsp max) and is why it's generally accepted and fairly popular here and it has been for ages - people don't get sick from that.
@@JuKii7If the seeds are whole it's safe, like how apple seeds are also safe if they're not crushed.
The way the overwhelming majority of consumers already use them
Not like people are eating them dry by the handful, like nuts or berries
@439801RS do know some people that like to add them to their yoghurt. So not all eat them cooked.
My mother used to eat a spoonful of ground flaxseeds in her breakfast yoghurt, along with oat bran & brewers yeast. We never heard that too much could be toxic. (She lived to 93.)
Thank you for explaining that ground flax seeds can lead to poisoning. I learned this one the hard way years ago. I was trying to get into meal prep and more healthy habits and I decided to pre-ground flax seeds so they'll be available on the fly in a jar with my other spices. Turns out it turns sour extremely fast and it becomes even more toxic as it decays. Ground flax seeds found in shops are processed and washed so you can keep it a bit longer in your cupboard without poisoning yourself, but making it at home can poison you if you don't use it straight away, even in average doses. I was sick all night, and luckily, it wasn't too bad, but I've kept away from flax seeds in my home-cooking ever since. Not a single RUclipsr or cooking blogger I was following back then ever made a warning about being careful with ground flax seeds, so it's really nice to hear you mention it.
hey my name is also audrey!!! and my last initial is b!!!
Glad you're okay 👍
Grains, seeds etc should be refrigerated, especially if they are ground!
We grew flax a few years back and didn't know that either. More you know now because yeah, that was not common knowledge and I think still isn't.
The last point, yes! I feel like a dodged a bullet when I forgot I had a ground flax seed bag I used back when I was on my health craze. SO many people recommended adding ground flax seeds to different vegan or vegetarian recipes and it's scary to think that there were times I was close to the limit of what I could safely eat.
Doing some research on the flaxseeds: it looks like cyanide isn't actually a problem as long as you approach it properly. Supposedly, heat and moisture breaks it down, so if you bake it into a muffin or bread there isn't any risk, but if you want to eat flax powder you need to boil it for a while first.
Also, a tablespoon or two or raw ground flaxseed is well below the amount that will make you sick.
Ya I read that there are specifications on the process they have to use to get ground flax that makes it safe. I kinda wish she would do another vid explaining cause ground flax does help those of us w pcos.
Thank you OP. For the flaxseed crackers used to make, the recipe called for the flaxsseeds to have boiling water poured over them & steeped for 15 mins. Then the seasonings & other seeds added before being rolled thin & baked. So that makes sense boiling water is used on the flaxseed first.
What about a decade ago promotions to eat raw flaxseed oil to increase Omega levels? I could never stomach it & had a bottle in the fridge for ages. Thank goodness we never did use it.
@@mymai5859 in general glycosides are not soluble in oil so the oil should be safe
So it seems that then there would be no reason to eat them at all, since the healthy omega-3 acids in them are destroyed by heat.
The flaxseed meal one is something that surprised me on the potency. I bought a bag of flaxseed meal for gluten-free baking since psyllium husk can be relatively expensive. However inexplicably stopped using it as I was feeling rather ill; at least I know the reasons now, and that my deduction was correct.
You can just add xanthum gum to gluten free flour for gluten free baking. It's a little more expensive than standard flour, but not too bad for gluten free and very easy as a substitute. The main difference really is that doughs tend to be much stickier and less stretchy.
@@hannahk1306 We have been using xanthum gum, but I was wondering about options to improve elasticity with the end product. Which led me into giving flaxseed meal a few attempts; while the end result appeared to be somewhat better, the repercussions aren't worth it at all.
@@hannahk1306 If your baked good turns out sticky when using xanthan gum, you're adding too much of it! I've been gluten free for 5 years and my whole family is amazed at how I can manage to take gluten free recipes and make them basically indistinguishable from wheat flour recipes. It takes a lot of testing to find the right flour blend & amount of xanthan gum for each type of recipe (cookies, cakes, breads, scones, etc will all need different amounts since they're all meant to be different textures!), but it's definitely doable with enough experimentation.
edit: reread your comment after replying and yes, you're right, the doughs end up wetter in gluten free recipes
would be nice for that to have a legally required warning label, so people can keep their intake below safe limits
@@morgan0 100% agree! I had no idea there was cyanide in flax seeds and I used to grind and add a tablespoon or two to my yogurt quite regularly. It was my favourite thing to add and I was told that it was healthy. A dosage warning would have been much appreciated!
Hi Ann! Love your content! Quick correction from a plant science PhD student: in vivo is within a living organism and in vitro is within the glass. You had them switched 😊
Here for this comment. Thanks for clarifying
She actually noticed later on and added comments to the subtitles.
And in utero is a really good album ;)
Yeah I was a bit confused -a horticulture student😭
I was kinda shocked when she said that, cause the translation is so obvious right, almost the same words, letter per letter (in vitro - em vidro/in vivo - em vivo)! Then I remembered she is not speaking portuguese or any other latin language haha 😆 "Glass" and "alive" don't resemble these scientific expressions in the least, so you guys just decorate them all (:
Tara gum is in fact made from the seeds, but from a specific part only: the endosperm-the storage unit for the germ (embryonic part). This is the same for guar gum, locust bean/carob gum, fenugreek gum, cassia gum etc. About 80% of the endosperm/gum products is a carbohydrate polymer called galactomannan which provides an initial kick of energy to the germ in nature and causes the thickening effect we use them for :) The flours are usually made by grinding the whole seeds or even pods, so contain many more components. The gums are a multi-billion dollar industry, used as you know in foods but also cosmetics, personal care products, and even oil drilling! Final fun fact, locust bean gum has been identified as a paint binder used in a Roman Egyptian mummy shroud from nearly 2000 years ago 😮
Yeah this seems like a fairly large mistake in the video.
So the supplier saw that the rest of the parts get thrown away, thought he could make some money by turning trash into treasure and selling it to some health nut suckers and ended up poisoning people... Yup, that checks out.
Yeah, that's a pretty big mistake here which still wasn't addressed...
This is so fascinating to know more about tara and the gums especially. Thanks :)
I find it crazy how daily harvest's supplier just suggested they use an untested, unfamiliar ingredient and daily harvest said yes. That's like being offered a strange drink by a stranger and drinking it immediately.
Yeah.. Frankly, it really doesn't matter what their supplier "told" them. If you're a commercial food producer and you decide to use an ingredient you've never used before, and you're not aware of it being commonly used elsewhere, and you don't _explicitly verify yourself_ that it is both _legal and safe_ for use in that application, that should be considered *criminally negligent* behavior, IMHO.
That whole company should, frankly, be prohibited from ever selling anything in the US again. They're clearly just not competent enough to be up to the task. (They'll almost certainly just get a slap on the wrist, though...)
@@foogod4237 Honestly, I'm kind of with them on this one. Sure it's obvious in hindsight, but who's ever heard of something like this happening before? What company goes to the trouble of sourcing a food additive that's not even legal when they already have a huge selection of known-legitimate products? And then quietly recommend it to clients like it's got a small but steady market, none of the hype that usually surrounds health scams?
Call it the Tallarico Effect (being so easy to google you assume someone would've caught them), but it's not gross negligence to fall for it, it's human nature.
It's even worse because they put it in food that a bunch of people ate. They should be sued by everyone who ate the lentil crumbles.
And the best part is that they probably won't face any consequences for that. Those kinds of egregious cases should have companies facing massive fines, enough for them to either take consumer safety seriously or go out of business.
The only hope are lawsuits. Those will likely be settled out of court, but I hope the case will be compelling enough that they'll lose a couple hundred million on that.
@@foogod4237I hate that this is how the U.S. "works." Everyday activities are a constant risk for regular people here. And for someone like me who is disabled the risks are just skyhigh and we're constantly told both to 1) suck it up and stop complaining and 2) just die already and quit wasting "other people's" resources. When we're supposed to be entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
How many people do you think ordered that food because they are disabled and needed healthy food they didn't have to cook?
This talk about apple seeds reminds me of what happened to my coworkers friend. 6 years ago they would sell apricot seeds as snacks at trainstations, promoting it as a healthy snack. So this person, who was hungry, bought a bag and started chucking them down like peanuts. Then on the train he started getting sick, so sick that he couldn't talk anymore and they took him to the hospital by ambulance. The thing that saved his life was the fact that the ER staff managed to find the bag of apricot seeds in his coat jacket, because they had no idea what was going on with him. Shortly after the sale of this product got banned from trainstations, because only with tiny letters had there been a vague description that you were only allowed to eat a few seeds a day, it didn't mention that eating more (or like this man did, he ate half the bag) could result in death.
the fear of cyanide in flax seeds is the same idiocy as the fear of hydrazine in champignons
Wow
what a moron
The tara flour incident is one of the scariest to me.
An ingredient you thought was harmless and we haven't recognized as toxic causing that many people such severe poisoning symptoms... just when they were trying to be healthy and eat something plant-based... it's horrible.
Not everything natural is safe, snake venom is also natural. What could scare me are the long term effects of some stuff we didn't study well, these would pass unnoticed.
people certainly forget that not everything natural is safe and healthy.
@@mamupelu565 You just agreed with OP's point. The "natural/plant-based" thing wasn't the focus, it was the fact that this ingredient was there, not studied well so we had no idea it was dangerous. We (understandably) trust food makers to only put safe stuff in their food, and while contamination can happen from time to time, it's scary to know that one random ingredient could be the culprit. Even if I was the sort to scrutinize ingredient labels, I don't know every ingredient out there!
@@mamupelu565they didn’t say anything about it being “natural.” You just really wanted to get this out.
@@mamupelu565snake venom is actually the same compound used for botox/filler :)
I'm glad you covered the Lentil Crumbles, I remember at the time it happened lots of the 'drama' youtube channels were making differrent assumtions for what caused it. I remember seeing comments that the wrong mushrooms must have been used, or other ingredients hadn't been cooked properly.
Although it is rather concerning they added an ingredient they hadn't heard of before without actually checking it.
Yeah I assumed there was some improper food handling at some stage of the process that caused people to get ill. Scary stuff.
I remember Daily Harvest tried to blame it on people not cooking the lentils properly 🙄
@@laneybobaney7415 they should've stuck to overpriced smoothies
the theory about it not being cooked properly came from the company itself, because at first they tried to downplay it as people getting stomachaches from not cooking their lentils enough. no mention of the multiple people who had to get their gallbladders removed.
Perhaps someone from the company should be a quality tester?@@ididntknowtheyhadwifiinhell
When you switched from talking about tetrodotoxin to a story about picking up a shell my first thought was "OH NO DID SHE PICK UP A CONE SNAIL" and I'm honestly quite glad to hear it was 'only' a blue-ringed octopus. Bullet dodged either way!
I was thinking snails too at first. I didn't even know there were octopuses that were that venomous.
(Yes that is the correct plural of octopus)
@@laartje24 Octopodes is also correct, but rarely used.
If someone tries to "correct" anyone for saying octopuses I hit them right back with "octoPODES you dingus, it's Greek not Latin"
@@WlatPziupp octopodeez nuts
@@WlatPziupp Haha, I personally would hit them back with a good "Begone, prescriptivist!" XD
@@laartje24I figured everything in Australia was venomous.
The fugu one wasn’t unsurprising to see here but I studied abroad in Japan this summer and twice my PI took us to a full course fugu dinner (meaning they make use of every part that they can, giving you small servings of Fugu cooked different ways) and so I discussed with my PI a lot about Fugu as a dish in japan and how they minimize overall risk with Fugu with scientific approaches. He’s not an expert on it but he told me the poison is related to their diet, so farm grown Fugu aren’t dangerous BUT it creates its own problems because apparently farm-grown Fugu Liver tastes the best and so there’s market for people to buy Fugu liver but then there’s cases of people selling normal Fugu liver (which is where the most concentrated toxin is!!) and then that can kill someone extremely quickly.
I was somewhat disappointed to see that not mentioned at all in this video. Farm-raised fugu pose no danger, because the poison only comes about from their diet out in the wild. This has been nailed down to the point that you can even buy (raw) fugu sashimi in some supermarkets in Japan.
@@macyler How interesting! That said, I think it links to Ann's wider point; if you are eating a dish prepared by someone else (and unless you know fully the details of the underlying components) you are relying on the good will, skill and disclosure of the people preparing it for you. If that's a concern, it's a concern that could be mediated by (for example) only eating fugu from specific locations, I suppose?
So now I can finally claim that tik tok isn't just metaphorically toxic, but quite literally too. nice
Pretty sure this isn't the first time tiktok has promoted eating poison
AFAIK, the whole Tide pod eating 'challenge' started on that literally toxic social network...
@@pinknblackproductionsFor real. Remember the Pink Sauce? And now that lady is begging for donations because she’s broke.
@@zwerko as toxic as youtube is because there are some idiots on here.
tiktok shows you what you like to see, their algorithm is more advanced than any other social media. if the platform is toxic for you, you're the problem
@@zwerkoi’m pretty sure the tide pod challenge was mainly on youtube since tiktok wasn’t as popular back then
The Tara flour one called my attention because of how similar the plant looked, I am from Venezuela and we don't have it but trees from that genus have even marked our vocubulary because they produce pods with inedible seeds and useless shells that every growing season just litter the place, where we have the tendency to say "echar vaina" (meaning "to throw/drop pods") to refer to bothering someone intentionally such as snickering. I find it interesting you can make a flour out of those things, and of course, it's toxic, echen esa vaina a la basura.
It's not toxic and I'm very sad to see all those negative comments about this situation here. Tara seed flour in fact E417 and considered safe in the EU till this day. Tara gum is the juice out of these seeds and isn't any less or more toxic.
@@JCel I looked it up before commenting this but not too deep, the Tara flour seems to be bad in large quantities and not edible when consumed raw, maybe I made my comment a little too harsh in the end. Did not imply the gum was toxic, I got it clear that it wasn't.
I never imagined to see another venezuelan on this channel. Let's gooooo
E417 is the gum the polysaccharide extracted from the seed coat). The protein appears to be the (waste) product from that process...or perhaps a further-purified fraction from the waste. Whether it might have a use in animal feed, who knows; certain birds and non human mammals can tolerate many foods that are lethal to people. But for someone to see "protein" and assume it's a safe and approved people food, Just because something else from the same plant is edible? That's incredibly (lethally) careless.
@@alecity4877Seems to be a similar situation to cassava flour, should not be eaten raw but toasted is fine, as the whole of Brazil proves.
Please do a video on the dangers of drinking raw milk! Theres been a HUGE trend online recently where people are falsely claiming that pasteurized and homogenized milk is bad for you and tou should drink raw unprocessed milk and people and their children are getting extremely sick from the raw milk
Bumping this. Please inform ppl about raw milk!!
I grew up on raw milk straight from the farm as did most people in small villages back in the 70s and 80s in the UK, for some reason I found myself becoming ill more often after we moved and started drinking pasteurised milk. Even now when I go to visit my sister in the village we grew up in I ask my brother-in-law to get some straight from the tank as he works on a farm, I much prefer the richer, creamy, taste of it.
Raw milk is not inherently dangerous. It is the presence of the bacteria that is the issue. I know plenty of farming families that drink raw cow or goat milk. But I would not want to see it become commercially available for the masses.
People really do be regressing and drinking unpasteurized milk 😅
Addendum: the risks outweigh the benefits when it comes to drinking raw milk. Hence, pasteurization. And that's why in some places it's illegal to sell raw milk. These tiktoks, fb shorts, yt shorts say that there are "more nutrients" in raw milk and that simply isnt true at all.
But I also understand that there is a small-industry interested in cheesemaking which sometimes needs raw milk. Still, this comes with a process of its own (salting, fermenting, cooking) that makes it relatively safe.
@@sallyphilpin4939We always boiled milk from the farm. No one drinks it straight from the cow. Unless there's a different definition of raw milk, if you grew up on a farm, I assume, you boiled it too. We boiled it, used the cream for tea, made yorghurt with the rest, etc. The boiling process kills pretty much everything.
In middle school, our science teacher had us "dissect" apples to kind of ease us into dissections with something that wasn't gross. He had us break open the seeds so we could see the cotyledons, and then encouraged us to taste them because "they weren't poisonous." Obviously, just eating one seed wasn't going to hurt us, even if we were still kids, but it still amuses me to this day that he was actively encouraging us to eat cyanide.
Oh, don’t worry.
Newly qualified teachers are probably telling students that, if they swallow whole apple seeds, a tree will grow out of their heads because modern science.
@@clogs4956what in the propaganda
@@clogs4956you just made that up
@@clogs4956 To be fair, if a seed gets caught in a certain place of your throat, it can grow.
starting with dissecting apples is actually a great idea! eating the cut seeds, not so much lol
The blue-ringed octopus story is wild! 😱 Im so happy you were okay!
Thank you so much for the info on the Daily Harvest thing. I remember when it happened, reading random people's accounts on reddit detailing tragic awful things. Limbs being amputated, stuff like that. I think about it from time to time and have googled it a few times but couldn't find any updates. I assumed it was contamination but it's totally insane to learn that it's because they used an untested ingredient. The incompetence of Daily Harvest is genuinely insane. Just trusting their supplier like that. Awful. Thank you for bringing this up, it's something that's been vaguely on my mind ever since it happened, it's both relieving and depressing to hear it's just corporate incompetence lol.
British chemist Miles Power actually did an entire series on amygdalin and its sister chemical laetrile because people promote that stuff as "vitamin B17" and a cancer cure. It's also in peach and apricot stones.
Didn't actually know about flax seeds though, that's kinda scary since you can buy them in health food stores and supermarkets here.
A staggering amount of things one can find in a 'health store' ranges from potential irritant to downright toxic...
You can buy apricot seeds in health food stores too (depending on the country).
They taste quite good because amygdalin releases benzaldehyde slowly. (benzaldehyde taste bitter in high concentration, but very good at low concentrations)
I realize this is just anecdotal, but I've been eating "bitter almonds" for 7 years with no ill effects. After my brother was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and died at age 50, I started seeing a urologist. After 6 months of eating the seeds, my PSA levels reversed. My doctor said that he's never seen a reversal in a man of my age and wanted to know what I was doing. When I told him, he said that they had learned about it in med school. It wasn't considered dangerous or poisonous, it was an old treatment for cancer before they started radiating us and using chemotherapy. He advised me to continue eating the seeds. My 83 year old father doesn't believe in natural preventatives and treatments and is currently undergoing traditional cancer treatment. He told me that he could smell something in it that smelled like the apricot seeds I eat and wanted to know if I knew what it was. I absolutely do not believe that apricot seeds, apple seeds, etc will poison or harm us. As they say, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and the few seeds included in that fruit are good for us. The problems begin when people take it to the extreme. After all if you drink too much water too fast, you can die, but a normal amount of water is necessary for life. IMO, the western diet is extremely unhealthy. Other cultures have been eating fruit seeds for centuries and still do. Over the past 100 years, it's been villainized in the west and removed from our diets. Keeping us unhealthy is good for business and keeps us coming back to buy their "treatments" and "cures".
I’m kind of surprised, and a bit dubious, about the flax seeds as well. An awful lot of vegans use ground flax in place of eggs and a lot of people use it as a fibre supplement or thickener for smoothies
I used to eat around a 1/3 cup some days. Not every day because I’m not so great at sticking to things but certainly sometimes multiple days in a row.
So I’ll look into it some more before I decide what to do with the bags of flax in my cupboard
Flax is so nasty tasting too. And people just buy$$$ into the hype
i love "how to cook that." ann and dave give us the safety information we need without fearmongering or scary clickbait. we as consumers of media are under a deluge of health and safety warnings that vary from potential to misleading to very real and it's not always easy to understand the difference. i'm glad htct goes the extra mile to give us the facts how the experts arrived at those facts.
I think the "tiktok" in the tittle is kinda a clickbait. The whole video doesn’t mention anything about tiktok, even some clips seemed to be from youtube. I think since many youtube users think of Tiktok as being full of " stupid" people and videos, making a video with Tiktok on the thumbnail would make people more inclined to click.
@@parleymanderson7527more people inclined to click means more people saved from eating toxic foods
Can you talk about the “raw milk” trend of TikTok? I keep seeing a lot of “health” influencers promoting it, saying it’s healthier since it isn’t pasteurized, but that couldn’t be further from the truth 😭
Supposedly if it’s warm and straight from cow, it’s safe. But after that, major bacteria.
I wouldn't call it "healthier" but if the hygiene has been excellent (clean cows, clean equipment and cleaning with effective products often enough) and cooled asap it's not dangerous. Or unhealthy.
Listeria and yersenia and biggest threats and neither one are no joke.
It's prettt much similar that you shouldn't be eating raw dough if you've used eggs because risk of salmonella.
Or always have your eggs boiled hard/fried fully.
It's why you should clean everything properly when cooking poultry and not chop anything elsew where you chop your bird meat. And salmonella only dies in +70c temp. It doesn't die in freezer.
Immunologically active proteins are passed through mammary excretions (aka milk). That is why there are huge differences between breastfed and formula babies. Pasteurization denatures all of those proteins. So from a *nutrient* standpoint, they are equivalent. But from an immunological standpoint, raw milk may have some biologically active properties. What those are, however, we don't really understand well.
My dad grew up in a farm and the used to tell us that they weren't allowed to drink milk freshly from the cow, they had to boil it at least to clean up some of the bacteria.
Raw milk is healthier and safe to drink. As long as it was milked safely as well. Wonderful bacteria in the milk.
I need to send this to my nephews, who believe to anything on the internet. Thank you for this videos. You saved their kitchen, lives, and their mother sanity with each of those
When you mentioned a pretty shell I was first worried it was a cone snail, which is even more dangerous than a blue ringed octopus! I’m so glad you’re ok!
Same here. I went on a diving trip to the great barrier reef and our instructors told us to not touch or pick up anything for that reason
That's what I thought too!
Yeah I teach my kids not to pick up any shells now. A local guy pocketed some shells his kids handed him. A few hours later he was at home when he felt something squishy against his leg. He was wearing swim shorts with the mesh. He pulled his pants off and shook them out and a small blue ring octopus plopped out. One was also in another shell in his pocket lol. Textile cones are scary too.
Flax and chia seeds are an important source of omega 3, especially to us vegans. I might be wrong but when I last checked the EU and Finnish recommendation was 2 tbs of seeds per day, which should be a safe amount. Usually EU is strict about possibly dangerous things and my dietian recommended this amount so I'm going to stick with it :).
@@j.v3896Cool, that's way over a tablespoon or two.
Ha, Vegans ☕
They have a nice texture too
Month late but Ann specifically said they were dangerous when milled or ground, so I'm guessing the 2tbs is WHOLE seeds. She stated that whole seeds get digested and aren't harmful the same way.
@@himbosuplex That assumption is incorrect. They were looking at ground seeds.
It should be noted that fugu are *not* toxic when farmed properly. Their shellfish diet is what makes them have it.
I was looking for such a comment! Fish itself is not toxic, it's its diet which makes it so. If you know what it eats, and it doesn't eat anything bad, it's just a bland-tasting fish.
Always a wonderful time when Ann uploads.
Just a note: flaxseed is also known as linseed. You may see it as an ingredient in foods (e.g. bread) with either name.
Technically, "linseed oil" is flaxseed oil that has processed with stabilizing chemicals, primarily for use as paint or varnish. If you see that on a food ingredient list, there's something wrong, either with the food or the person writing the list.
@@EphemeralTao I didn't say 'oil'. For example 'soy and linseed' bread has whole flaxseeds in it. I live in Australia, maybe it's different than where you are.
@@EphemeralTao now I'm picturing a person writing an ingredient list whilst drinking industrial linseed oil and laughing maniacally lol
@@tickledtoffee perfectly smooth insides, fully plasticised but good vitamin d levels
@@MazHem lol Beach Barbie
I had a friend who also casually handled a blue-ring octopus, he didn't realize how toxic it was. He said his mom SCREAMED when she saw he had and it slapped it away from his hand. What a scary close-call indeed! 😳
I really like how Ann explains the scenice of things its really interesting.
the empirical method
Her depiction of how you would go about working out how much cyanide is in apple pips was very good, it's always nice to show the process of how scientists learn things.
@@estherstreet4582 In this crazy world, it helps.
I know this isn't the point of the video at all, but at 8:55 the video is taken from the village I used to work in in Nagano, Japan. In fact, my doctor's office was right down the road and I passed by this building once a month to go to the pharmacy. It's such a delight to see something so familiar in a completely unrelated video!
I love how Ann keeps warning and educating people to avoid dangerous practices from internet.
Thanks for all your labor of love, Ann 😊.
agreed!! ❤❤
I used to tell my students, "'All natural,' doesn't always mean, 'All good for you.' Take a look at dirt. Dirt is 'all natural.' Eating dirt isn't 'all good for you.'" Here are more examples of that. Thanks for the tip on the apple seeds.
I use to say: "Even hemlock is all natural, but it killed Socrates anyway..."
i often see people pointing out that snake venom is also all natural, it really gets the point across
And the blue ringed octopus is natural too
Eating dirt is bad? Where are you supposed to get your recommended daily anthrax (RDA)?
Cyanide, strychnine, arsenic, radon, anthrax, and ebola are all natural.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the editing on Ann's videos? Her cut scenes are often home made, and did you see the fun way the QR code came up?
I thought her blooper was very cute.
The cyanogenic compounds in flax seeds are broken down by heat if there is water present, so boiling flax seeds or baking them in something like muffins will get rid of the cyanide.
This was so informative- I’ve been waiting for an update on the Daily Harvest outbreak. It’s absolutely crazy to me that they put this product they had never heard of into their food without even checking on their own to see if it was safe for consumption. The whole thing put me off ever ordering from an online food company again, especially after I read about the grey areas of food regulation in the US. Thanks for another great video!
You think that's bad, it's pretty common practice for food companies to put ingredients into their batch that will form MSG during production, but they don't put MSG on the label because "we didn't technically put it in." They do very much know it will be in the finished food, that's the whole point. So for anyone allergic to it, or wanting to avoid it, you have to watch for weird ingredients like hydrolyzed pea protein and whatnot. It's really bad with fake/alternative cheese products especially.
@@tirsden MSG is in tons of foods naturally, and there's no such thing as an MSG allergy,. The hate it gets is mostly racist bullshit from the 60s. For example, it was originally called 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome'. Since then studies have consistently shown no negative effects unless the person knew they were eating MSG and already believed they had a sensitivity.
@@tirsdenSad that they have to avoid putting MSG on the packaging though, because the belief that it will cause headaches to non-allergic people is a myth perpetuated through someone who ate a bunch of salt + fat and blamed it on the MSG.
The weird thing is that Tara flour has been in countless products for years without anything like that ever happening. So there had to be another problem.
@@zalba5710 I understand Tara gum has been used for a long time - made from part of the seed and likely in relatively small quantities. Tara flour from the whole seed looks to be the issue.
Amazing video as always, at 6:07 I think it was meant to be Tetrodotoxin and not tetrododoxin. Also, I have obtained a license to serve fugu many years ago being an avid angler in Japan, however just like many other fishermen who also have the license almost none of us will ever serve fugu. Even with the proper knowledge and skills we still find it not worth it, as unlike the chefs at specialized restaurants, most people with licenses dont have 10s of thousands of serving experiences.
Edit: Some major reasons why most people with licenses still do not eat fugu in Japan.
1) First only a few species are edible while other spieces have poisonous skin as well as much more blood in their flesh making it harder to bleed out.
2) Second is due to uncertainty of other toxins such as Ciguatera fish poisoning. While proper Fugu fishermen would catch Fugu that are already known to be safe and then the fish would also go through multiple layers of inspection, commonly caught puffer/globe fish can't have reliable food sources and envronments. Fugu as seen from its major beaked mouth is an omnivorous fish and some times feeds on poisonous shellfish and crustaceans. Thus, while being the same fish, if caught in different areas could potentially be poisonous.
3) The last and most important risk is the rise of hybrid species due to climate change. Recently with temperatures of the waters changing, the habitats of various fish are more greatly overlapping. This has caused some Fugus to cross breed causing dangerous and very deceiving hybrids that may look like one spiecies while having the properties of another.
I am so thankful that Ann has such a huge platform to not only address specific issues but to also demonstrate the level of research required to come to a scientific conclusion on something.
Every time that toxic food is in discussion I think about Maniçoba(ma -nee-so-ba), which is a brazilian food from indigenous people, made with Cassava leaves and had to be cooked for 7 days, because the leaf has a high concentration of Hydrogen Cyanide that can literally kill you if not eated properly.
Yes I was always baffled by all the maniçoba being eaten in Belem! How did they figure out how long it had to be cooked? Did someone die after it had only been cooked for 2 hours, so they tried again at 4, 6, 8, 10 hours? Did they just keep trying until someone didn’t die? 😱
If you're hungry enough you'll try anything, I suppose. Kinda scary.
Maybe they observed an animal eating leaves that had naturally fermented or been soaking in water for a long time? I don't know.@@Melshed
@@Melshed Maybe it's really bitter until cooked properly. The way our taste buds have evolved, a lot of poisons are bitter and unpleasant.
I must admit when you started talking about the apple seeds being poisonous, I was thinking I could include it in my murder mystery but sadly I don't think my would-be victim would accidentally ingest that many apples unless I dumped them in an apple juicer or a vat of juice... Kudos on the video, which is, as always, entertaining and educational. Thank you!
That would have been a way to go, though! Could you imagine the coroners figuring out that the victim died because they ingested too many apple seeds all at once? 😂 Good luck on your writing!
Well, now you can have someone eating enough raw flaxseed flour in some sort of fridge set crumble instead. Give me a delicious enough sweet treat and I could probably eat 70-160 grams of ground flaxseed in one sitting. Now the question - ignorant baker, or deliberate murder?
maybe you could try bitter almonds? you could reach the LD50 of cyanide in ~9-10 bitter almonds
Thank you. I've decided to just stab her. In my story I mean. @@SweeterThanYou
It's always deliberate and never just one murder. But it's body disposal I struggle with. If the police ever saw my browser history I'd be in hot water for sure. Thank you for your lovely comment! @@britishraptor7703
Ann, I think I could listen to you explain anything. The way you talk and how you explain things is so easily understandable and pleasant to listen to. You are one of the jewels of the Internet. Keep up your excellent work!
So interesting about the flax seeds. My sister uses ground flax seeds as a vegan egg replacement in baking. 1 table spoon of flax with 3 tablespoons of water is 1 egg, so she often uses about 3 table spoons of flax in baking. I might mention this video to her, I’m sure there’s plenty of other replacements she could use.
That doesn't even sound like it would even work tbh.
Tell her to use the same ratio but with chia seeds, they create mucilage it it's super healthy and works to replace eggs in vegan food.
The main downside is that you need to soak the seeds for a few hours to activate them, but you can keep a container of bloomed chia seeds in the fridge for a few days to a week. 1 tbsp bloomed chia seeds = 1 egg.
She could try psyllium husk instead, 1 teaspoon psyllium + 1 tablespoon liquid per egg. Creates a very goopy, gluten-like structure, so it's also a good way to add structural lift for gluten-free baked goods.
I wouldn't be concerned about using it in baking as the cooking process will eliminate the cyanide forming compounds.
Flaxseeds are fine when baked in something. The heat and moisture gets rid of the cyanide
its worth searching if heating alters in any wat the content of cyanide, so to not panic unnecessarily
My marine biology teacher stressed so much to never touch or pick up any octopus you find for that exact reason! Very important. Great video, Ann!
Never thought Anne would be teaching us how to discretely poison our enemies with health food.
lmfao
"Here, Eric, try these lentil crisps. No, you can just take the box, I've got my own!"
She's not. Flax seeds are totally fine. She got her amounts wrong. Many agencies recommend them for their health benefits. The Unnatural Vegan just did a video debunking this.
@@MeredithDomzalski her getting the amounts wrong doesn’t make it “totally fine”
@@AngryBoozer It isn't just that she got the amounts wrong, even though she way off. Multiple food agencies also recommend flax seeds as part of a healthy diet. There are no documented cases of someone dying from poisoning due to eating flax seeds. It's been tested in clinical trials in amounts far above what any person would normally eat in a day, and they didn't even find problems then.
By the way, her own vegan chocolate cake recipe calls for six tablespoons of ground flax seeds. If she's so concerned, maybe she should choose a different replacement in that recipe.
The fact that she presents herself as an authority and hasn't corrected this yet is atrocious.
Interesting about the Flaxseed - also called Linseed. I have never seen warnings about excessive consumption on packaging. It seems cooking reduces toxicity, although I am not sure if this applies just to boiling or to dry roasting as well.
Would be interesting to know more about.
Because it is highly unlikely and there hasn't been a case of cyanide poisoning from flax seeds.
@@adapienkowska2605 It's weird how she mentions the no deaths regarding apple seeds but leaves out the no deaths from flax seeds.
As someone who is used to eating apples whole, and loves flax seeds, the introduction was VERY good info. Thanks Ann!
Thank you for helping kill misinformation Ann!
5:30 usually the way we get figures for toxicity is from doing that kind of experiment in mice
I've heard, both first and second hand, a surprising number of reports of close-call encounters with the blue ringed octopus over the last few years or so. Apparently, it's fairly slow to anger and it's a good thing too as a single bite results in virtually guaranteed death! SO glad your encounter was just such a "friendly" one, Ann!
Great information! I learned a lot, as always! Thanks!
"Apparently, it's fairly slow to anger"
Yep - you can see hundreds of videos on RUclips, tiktok and co of people showing the cute little blue octopus they found.
@@ABaumstumpf To be fair, those people are usually tourists who are unaware of the danger. There's so many dangerous things in the oceans that you don't learn about in school unless you live near one. I had no idea that lethal jellyfish even existed (I knew they could sting you but not that they could kill an adult) until one day RUclips recommended a video to me titled "the most lethal jellyfish in the world"
@@nowandaround312 That is why when you travel you normally should first read up on your destination, and why travel-agencies normally give you brochures that detail the dangers. And australia is a meme for a reason.
@@ABaumstumpf I agree, but there's so many dangerous things in Australia it's hard to learn about all of them in a short period of time and remember everything. It's still dumb to pick up a jellyfish even if you aren't aware that it can kill you but I think it's different than people who *knowingly* risk their life for views
I heard about the lentil bite situation, was wondering what happened there since I believe at first the brand tried to blame it on people not cooking the lentils thoroughly enough. It's really interesting to know what actually happened!
Not cooking the lentils thoroughly enough! LMAO! A response that was okayed by a panicking legal department perhaps? Or some rogue social media manager? I mean, it's not an awesome thing to try, but I've never heard of lentils causing liver failure on their own, goodness gracious!
When she said a small octopus and covered in sand in her HAND, I had a feeling she was going to discover the blue rings 😂
Glad you're okay! That really was a close call!
I once picked up a pretty and unusual looking bug and let it climb over my arms as I took it home to identify it.... found out it was an assassin bug! It wouldn't have killed me, but I totally wouldn't have had a good day if that little guy felt threatened in the least...😂
So my rule of thumb, if you cannot positively identify it, do not handle it. Better to be safe than sorry and in unimaginable pain.
I did the same with a blister beetle. Thankfully, it either wasn’t scared or was female.
This actually happens so often without us even knowing. But most of these animals know instinctively what is a threat and what isn’t and humans aren’t generally threatening. As long as the animal isn’t being harmed, they won’t hurt you but obviously people still shouldn’t handle animals that they aren’t sure about. As for the blue ringed octopus, most octopus species are very intelligent and likely know that they won’t be harmed in a human’s hand. Their toxins are mostly used for hunting purposes as well and a human is not prey for one of those animals.
i love how she talks about a near death experience with a blue ring octopus and then goes on to explain her toon blast sponsor
the bluering was very polite
Hey Ann, not sure where people normally contact you for requests, but I have one. Not sure if you've ever heard of companies like Bokksu and Sakuraco, but they're snack boxes from Japan that send you a variety of Japanese snacks. One of the classic items for both is their white chocolate infused freeze dried strawberries. They're delicious but the company charges around 3 dollars PER strawberry. I've tried to do some research on this and couldn't find any info on how these are made. I'd love to give making them myself a try but I have no idea how they could possibly make these. It's hard to describe how they are to someone who hasn't had one but it's like they replaced part of the strawberry with chocolate but it's still a strawberry somehow. You're the only person I could think of who could figure it out. Would love to solve this mystery!
Now i'm curios, I've had chocolate coated freeze dried before but I've not seen the chocolate infused ones. I'll have to order some to try.
@@HowToCookThat Definitely worth trying! They're so different from the ones that are just chocolate coated. Interested to hear your thoughts on how they do this.
I wonder if they might impregnate the freeze dried strawberry with melted chocolate under vacuum to draw the chocolate up into all the air pockets? That's how we impregnate very porous materials with resin in the lab for analysis. You could probably also do it just by soaking the strawberry in the chocolate but that would be harder to guarantee an even an consistent infusion.
@@HowToCookThat It may not be feasible, but it's an interesting thought: you could also buy a home freeze dryer and make them yourself. Then you could also do a video on the science of freeze drying, which would be both fun and informative for us. I mean, you could do a video on freeze drying without the machine, but I think it would be more fun if you also made "astronaut ice cream" and freeze dried fruit while explaining the science behind it.
commenting for the algorithm, you do such great work and deserve so much more than you get! keep up the good work ann!
thanks yuzuthesquash
The flax seed note is very interesting to me because it’s used frequently as an egg replacement in baking. It uses 1 tbsp ground flax to 2.5-3 tbsp water per egg. This is then put into an entire batch of whatever baked good, and baked for the full length of time for whatever recipe. You obviously aren’t eating an entire batch of cookies or whatever in a single day. So I wonder if this one is a matter of small doses, or if baking does something, or both? This has been a staple of baking for me for years, and I had never heard about this. It’s definitely something I’d like to know more about
Baking flax seeds into a baked good gets rid of the cyanide. And 1 tablespoon of flax isn't enough to cause harm either way.
Ann, everytime you talk about studies related to whatever topic you always give essential context to them like the methods used, dates, if it was peer reviewed and I really need you to know that every time I love you a little bit more. You've done it so often at this point that I love you enough to want you as a bridesmaid at my wedding (if and when that happens, im very single lol) and I hope you have read at least one of the many comments I left on various videos saying I love you because it's true and I do ❤
Have a great week, Ann!
Here in Finland we have guidelines about flax (you can have up to 2 tablespoons per day) but it's more because of the potential heavy metal load and not toxicity. In fact, you shouldn't eat too much of any kinds of seeds because they accumulate heavy metals and over time it could cause health problems. The main concerning ingredient in flax seed is linamarin which is broken down during cooking so as long as you are not eating fistfuls of flax seed raw you're going to be fine. It is a very commonly used ingredient here so I think if it was as toxic as Ann claims here there would certainly have been reports of people falling ill but I have never heard of anything like that. Or maybe there are different strains used in other places that have higher toxicity?
The Unnatural Vegan just did a great video debunking this claim. It's fine.
@@MeredithDomzalski Thanks for the tip, just watched that video. I really wish Ann had done some more research here, I generally love her videos but saying something untrue with a straight face like this makes me lose trust in her. Hoping she will do another video and correct the mistakes in this one...
@@BaskerElli Same!
Wow, the lentils story is incredible! I remember when the first reports of symptoms started showing up online, and the subsequent recall. I hadn't heard any follow-up news about it though, so really appreciate you talking about it here.
I had just finished eating a waffle with ground flaxseed, when I watched this video. I am throwing away my ground flaxseed. Thank you for letting me know that something I thought was good for me, was really harmful. Have a wonderful day ❣️
you dont really need to do that, just keep to under the reccomended daily limit and its fine.
I really wish there was a clarification about raw vs heated ground flax seeds. I about panicked because my oatmeal uses ground flax. I love your videos, but I'm glad I trusted my gut to learn more about ground flax because something didn't sit right this time.
Which one is edible?
@@blendjulia cyanide gets destroyed by heating.
As someone who did not enjoy chemistry in school, I very much enjoy and appreciate your videos. They're a way to gain knowledge in a very informative way. Thank you!
YES! Early morning Video to eat breakfast with! I'll never understand why people think "Natural equal Healthy." There are endless Natural grown plants that will kill you very quickly if you eat it lol
7:36 THIS!
My dad was collecting shells near Philip Island and ran out of hand space so he was putting them in his trunks (whilst snorkeling). He handed my mum up a shell and she said there was a baby octopus and handed the shell back to my dad. By then the octopus was fairly pissed off and was flashing blue- yup it wasn’t a baby but a nice sized blue-ringed octopus. Dad was very, very lucky not to put that shell near his family jewels.
The "blue ring" reveal *immediately* got a jaw drop from me. So glad you didn't get bitten or cut by it!!
During the tara flour section, "in vivo" and "in vitro" were switched. Apart from that another great and interesting episode!
I feel like it’s notable that you neglected to mention that only raw flaxseed contains this toxin, and flaxseed that has been baked, toasted, boiled etc. is perfectly safe. While adding the meal to a smoothie may not be a good idea, the way many vegans use it as an egg replacer in baked goods is perfectly safe and nutritious
It is perfectly safe raw in normal quantities as well.
People may experience some issues after eating 100g of freshly ground raw flax seeds in one sitting, but there has never been a case of cyanide poisoning by eating flax seeds.
This is fearmongering.
15:12
Blue Ring Octopus doesn't kill Ann
Acoustic wall: "Fine, I'll do it myself"
I love how the title says "how to cook that" every time, makes it seem like she's gonna tell us how to make poisonous food
Your experience with the blue-ringed octopus and the story of that venomous spider in your kitchen really makes me wonder how Australians even live to be adults.
By sheer luck.
When I was a 5 year old I was bullying a spider with a stick, it was full chasing me and I was barefoot. I specifically remember it's face being red and looking very gnarly and my parents growing up etc had no idea what it could have been.
As an adult I found out it was a red headed mouse spider, they're so venomous that they use funnel web antivenom.
Straight up could have fuckin died, F
@@finch600 I just looked up that spider. It’s 3,5 cm long. I think that’s a very big spider (I’m not from Australia). Adult Australians really are a wonder. My experience from central Europe that matches that the most would be the time a poisonous plant grew in our backyard and I accidentally touched it and got a small rash that lasted a few days.
Well, Arizonans have less deadly but still deadly critters and we make it to adulthood by not putting our hands where we can't see them, leaving critters alone, knowing what to do if we do get bit/stung and doing so right away, and treating venomous and non-venomous critters alike (and any plant or inanimate object that might be one or hiding one) with a healthy amount of caution and respect. Freaking out because of fear will only make you do stupid things that get you hurt. Having the presence of mind to back away from it slowly or put a cup/jar/bucket over it with a rock or book on top to contain it basically neutralizes the threat.
As a child you learn to get an adult if you see a critter. As an adult you either have learned how to handle the situation, or who you get to handle the problem for you (like I will totally relocate spiders and scorpions, but if a rattlesnake got into my house, the cats and I are going in the car, and the snake owns the house until the fire department can remove it because I don't have the training, and my cats are stupid enough to mess with it).
I lived here for like 33 years before I ever got stung by a scorpion (the deadliest in North America... I was fine), and it was my own fault for breaking my rules for avoiding scorpions (check wood/cardboard/brush with a blacklight, wear gloves and thick long sleeves when handling piles of those things, only handle them by day, poke them with long sticks to scare the scorpions away before you handle them...). I have made it 36 years and still haven't been bit by any venomous spiders, stung by any bees (did get stung by one wasp when i was little, and a lot of ants but I was messing with the ants), and while I have been unexpectedly uncomfortably close to wild rattlesnakes on quite a few occasions, I was never in any danger as I was still far enough away and they were calm. I haven't even seen a wild gila monster (venomous lizard) or coral snake.
When I was nanny for a toddler, I used my plushy spider and a scorpion in resin I had and a toy snake, and photos of them, and taught her that if she saw a spider, snake, or scorpion, to stay away because they would get very scared and might bite her and make her sick and owie, and tell me or another adult about it so we could move it somewhere safe for it to live. I was informed about every single jumping spider, of course, but she still mixed up dogs and cats so this was better. As she got older she learned that some got to stay, but others could hurt her. This taught her they weren't scary things, but scared ones, and we just had to give them space so we both could stay safe. She's a lot older now and afaik she isn't afraid of them but she also doesn't mess with them and hasn't been bitten or stung. That's how you survive to adulthood here.
Well, that and unless you are really really rural and can't get the right medical care in time, most deadly things are quite survivable... you will just have a really really awful time of it and may have lasting life-altering damage to your body after it.
To end with a random fun fact: the deadliest venomous animal in North America by far is... the honey bee. Not because of toxicity, but because they are incredibly commonly encountered, so rates of stings are so much higher than bites/stings of other animals just from that commonness alone, and of those, just enough people happen to be allergic or in some other way more sensitive and just enough of those don't make it that the statistics alone make all others combined still almost a negligible number of deaths, and honey bees killing only rarely ending up as so many more _by comparison._
Afaik, deaths of Australians from venomous critters are also incredibly rare, even though theirs are so much more deadly than ours, just because most of those are in incredibly remote areas, and where the people are, there tends to be both education and medical care to prevent deaths from them. That and "deadlier" venom when both are deadly doesn't exactly mean much... either you have time to get treatment or you don't, toxicity isn't the main factor when either can kill you, but speed is.
If you made a podcast of you debunking food hacks and explain the drama in the food world, I would listen to it everyday.
Very informative! Thank you.
I am now curious about chips and breads with flax seed in it. Maybe I will read the back of a package at the store and see if any of it says "ground flax seed".
Are you able to comment on why people think consuming flax seed is beneficial to their health?
Do we absorb anything from the whole seed?
So many questions.
How????? It say 7 hours
Flax seed is a food
.. well-known food. I don't know what she is saying
I think people are eating them because they are rich in fibers and omega 3.
Ground flaxseed is rich in alpha-linolic acid and fiber. They're study fairly rich in protein.
Flax is often fed to animals in every meal in their feed and cooking degrades amygdalin so I wouldn't worry about the amygdalin too much unless you're eating excessive quantities (like a cup or more at a time) raw or maybe if you're feeding it to small children.
It's good that regulators are being proactive, but in the long history of it being consumed by people and animals, there's no documented case of cyanide poisoning. The greatest actually documented risk of flaxseed is choking if you eat it without enough water because it's so high in fiber.
Foods baked with ground flax seed are fine as the cooking process will eliminate the cyanide forming compounds, especially a high moisture thing like bread.
from the title I thought it'd be something like "oopsie woopsie your recipe didn't say to cook the kidney beans for quite long enough". The whole tara flour ordeal was pretty shocking
i remember people posting about getting sick from daily harvest crumbles! i'm so glad that you covered this because I was like "wtf!"
Thank you Ann! Your posts literally makes my day
This has been dangerous episode for Anne. From poisonous octopus to fall studio components. Stay safe!
Hi Ann,
Regarding flax seeds - what about flax seed oil? Sometimes it's recommended as a source of folate, but what's the toxicity situation there?
What I can find, linseed oil is safe because the toxins aren't fat-soluble, so they stay in the dry material after the pressing.
@@rannvamacdonaldarnskov4794 Thank you so much!
Hey Anne! You got the in vivo/ in vitro the wrong way around, in vivo (from Latin living) it’s inside an organism and in vitro (from Latin glass) it’s in a Petri dish/ test tube. Really similar words so it’s a simple accident but I thought I’d point it out ❤ love the video, I learned a lot! I had no idea about the flax seeds
Always such a joy to watch your videos. I love the variety, I love the things I learn 😊
I remember the lentil crumbles story but never found out the root cause. Thanks for covering it!
Great video. If you ever do one of these again, would you consider talking about legumes?
I was taught that cooking beans and peas and also some lentils, to be safe, requires lots of water and heat. When the legumes are cooked, you discard the water. But a lot of my vegan friends use aqua faba (the water residue after cooking legumes) as egg substitute. They even concentrate that brine to get better "eggy" results and then they make baked goods with it or mayo. Are they poisoning themselves?
Aquafaba is actually supposed to be very specifically the water from chickpeas as far as I know? Lentils and beans can be very hard on the digestive system, but chickpeas and green peas tend to be a little gentler. It sounds quite unfortunate if someone were to use eg. lentil rinsing juices for cooking 🤢
@@jasminv8653 I'm not so sure. I entered "how toxic are chickpeas?" and my first hit was "Health Risks and Benefits of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) Consumption" in pubmed .. going by the abstract, chickpeas sound quite toxic. I don't have full-text access to the entire review though. So I don't know, how much of that toxicity is retained in cooked chickpeas or their aqua faba. In my country, aqua faba is a term for all kinds of legume cooking water, as you can achieve the same "eggy" effect with nearly all of them. Tmk chickpea aqua faba is the most popular one, simply because it's the most neutral in taste.
Very interesting, I always thoroughly rinse away the stuff that's in canned beans and when I've used dried beans I soaked them overnight and discarded the soaking water & rinsed them as I was taught it was bad for people to ingest the bean water stuff
@@bookshelfhoney the liquid from canned chickpeas is safe and used in baking. its just high fodmap
Aquafaba is the water left after cooking, but the water from soaking is still discarded
Very interesting! I'm super curious about the flax seed part as that is something highly used as a supplement in the equine field to help with horse's skin and hair. My horse and most others' that I know get it daily (mine has for like 15 years). Obviously they are much bigger than people but I'd like to see what reports are of any possible toxicity cases in equids.
Is it ground flaxseed or just whole? My instinct tells me that horses and other large herbivores may have some resistance or metabolize amygdalin differently since it would be something they could encounter as a normal component of their diet, but also given they'd again be consuming it whole in that case (whether apples or flaxseed or stone fruit) maybe not. I'm sure someone's done a study...
I always wondered what happened with the daily harvest thing, so thanks for the update!
It's great that you're spreading the bad effects of this around, Ann. Especially with the Flax Seeds, it looked like doctors were even saying they were good. People usually trust doctors which could've been bad. Thanks, Ann!!
someone in a labcoat was saying it was good. and you can buy those easily
ground flaxseeds are a good source for omega-3, especially for people who dont eat eggs and fish, since its a nutrient essential for your wellbeing and the health of your cells. there are also other sources (like walnuts or flaxseed oil), so its better to vary your source of omega-3, but being deficient in omega-3 still has health consequences. it's about balance
This is the first I've heard of them being harmful! I just knew about the Omega-3s and fiber, and I figured ground was better for Omega-3s. I also remember hearing from a canine nutritionist that they were okay for dogs! I made dog treats with ground flaxseed! 😢 But never again, I trust Ann more! (And my dog doesn't seem to have been harmed)
Well I mean they might be good in small amounts, but there’s not really any studies so I personally would avoid them.
@@ludovicatirone4304 chia seeds are a good source of omega 3 and aren't as risky as flax seeds if i recall correctly
Thank you Ann! Always the best videos!
Thank you for doing all this research and legwork to provide us with as much evidence and facts as possible! Really appreciate all the effort and time commitment you put into making these videos, and breaking it down into layman's terms so the general public who aren't food scientists (like me) can understand.