Is it possible to eat a toxic amount of culinary herbs/spices?
Is it possible to eat a toxic amount of culinary herbs/spices?
Either all at once, or over a lifetime?
Nutmeg is poisonous in high doses and can lead to hallucinations, seizures, and other complications.
The "Anarchist's Cookbook" covered this 😂
How much are we talking? Are there any documented suicides by nutmeg?
It's funny because I am cooking with nutmeg, and was saying that. A quick search tells me that you can have hallucination from 15g of nutmeg.
However, with the strong taste, sounds like a good netty bad poison
Everything is toxic if you eat too much of it
... except cannabis, presuming you don't have a genetic disposition to schizophrenia. Nearly no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Compare that to alcohol (or, indeed, water). In fact, the only reason I say "nearly" is just in case; its safety has been known for a long time.
This is in fact one of the core reasons why I finally stopped being a straightedge and accepted taking it. (Though smoking is still a no-no and the worst way to experience anything, basically.)
You can easily kill yourself with a water overdose (and it's actually fairly common),so yes.
Nutmeg was already mentioned - high doses can easily kill someone, sadly even without hallucinations simply by killing off ones liver and dying an agonizing death a few days later. The same goes for cinnamon, but with a much lower dose.
There are a few more, but I don't want to give people too many ideas.
To make it short: Yes, possible,but it's mostly a very slow death over multiple days that fucks you up really bad and is a horrible way to go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herbs_with_known_adverse_effects
The list itself says it is incomplete and I immediately thought of a couple items not listed that have known toxicity issues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perilla_frutescens#Traditional_medicine,_phytochemicals,_and_toxicity
"The poison is the dose" is a saying for a reason.
Nutmeg can be relatively fast toxic , but it's soo much that the spice taste of it would be terrible overwhelming any food.
But it can relatively easily kill your kidneys.
So never overdo it.
Heard it can get you high but line between death and high is so thin it's not worth it.
IIRC, you'll need around four ground nuts to achieve LD50, which would be difficult to consume.
I mean, as humans, toxicity isn't a deterrent, it's a selling feature!
Yeah, the reason we like booze is because it's toxic and fucks up our brains.
Tamil proverb says
அளவுக்கடந்தால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ்சு
It's emphasizing that even the most potent, life-giving elixir can become poisonous if taken in excess.
Goodness those characters are so pretty!
just kidding
Actually a lot of spices contain unsafe levels of heavy metals, so you definitely could hurt yourself with them
Licorice is not that common a spice any more, partially because it's toxic at pretty obtainable levels, though people who like the flavor still typically won't accidentally consume a dangerous amount.
All at once, absolutely, but it's going to take a LOT of most things.
Theoretically, anything is poisonous if you have enough of it. We even get oxygen poisoning by breathing air that is too rich in oxygen for too long.
It really depends on the herb but as a general rule you likely cannot. If you are cooking and decide to add double or triple or even 10x the herbs / spices then the recipe suggests you will be fine. The worse case scenario is that you make it taste bad. That being said everything is poison at high enough doses but for culinary herbs that is a huge dose. You will really have to force yourself to eat large enough quantities since it will taste very unpleasant.
There are plenty of other plants that are more dangerous.
Generally speaking, I think you're right. Herbs and spices are safe. But I wanted to add a caveat: caution is always a good idea. You could damage organs like the liver or kidneys, specially if you have an issue with them.
For example, too much turmeric can result in liver damage: https://www.jeffersonhealth.org/your-health/living-well/the-trouble-with-turmeric-associated-liver-injuries
Another example: Rooibos tea is awesome but there's this guy who drank a bit too much, and ended with liver failure: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4435260/#B4 There are more reports of hepatoxicity here: https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/rooibos-tea
Caution is a good idea but as long as you aren't drinking gallons of tea or taking tons of herbal pills you should be fine.
Cinnamon can cause permanent damage in high doses.
Other than that and the others mentioned here, probably just old, rotting ones would be bad.
How high?
It appears to be 0.1mg/kg of body weight too avoid coumarin overdose (which is much stronger in Cassia than ceylon cinnamon), which is toxic to the liver: https://ovidsp.dc2.ovid.com/ovid-new-a/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&PAGE=fulltext&D=ovft&AN=01445481-201002000-00007&NEWS=N&CSC=Y&CHANNEL=PubMed
You can overdose on water, so I'd say "yes."
Galium Odoratum is sufficiently poisonous that one should only use 3-3.5g per liter of beverage (usually a wine-based cocktail named "Maibowle") to avoid liver problems (apart from those caused by alcohol).