Deadly and Poisonous fruit and vegetables (a list of some of your 5-a-day that can kill)

Hello Homosapiens... As we all know Halloween has come and gone, however the horrors of your 5-a-day still linger. Not many homosapiens know the dangers of particular fruits, vegetables and fungi and although some may knowledge is limited. So lets see what horrors could be lurking in our kitchens and our gardens and see if we can protect ourselves better from their menacing ways. 

Apples:  Apple seeds contain a mischievous compound - cyanogenic glycosides, which through an enzymatic process, will turn into cyanide. Whilst the seeds of an apple or two won't cause you any damage and I know I am one two completely eat the whole apple (even the stalk) and apparently there has been a recording of one known death as a result of over indulging in the little buggers. So Snow White count your self lucky honey. 

Plums, Cherries, Apricots and Peaches:  The stones (or pits whatever you call them) of these stone fruits also contain cyanide like the apples little children. Swallowing a whole pit or two won't do a lot of damage and I would have to wonder why any one would want to any way, but like almonds, the toxin becomes exposed when the seed is crushed or damaged or chewed upon (Note to all dog owners there), making children and animals particularly susceptible. Every year, a handful of deaths in children and adults are attributed to ingesting fruit pits or maybe they choked on them first. You have been warned. 

Almonds: Yet another natural source of cyanide (Are you seeing a theme developing here?) This time, all of the ingredients are simply sleeping as if they were Snow White waiting for her Prince, until the seed not nut (the almond I know a particular homosapien loves as might you) is corrupted i.e. crushed by teeth. But again, not to worry, domesticated almonds do not contain this natural defence mechanics, so you're safe unless you go foraging around wild almond trees. 

Chocolate (Cocoa bean): Yes I've included chocolate simply because my family is made up of four legged children. While it is not poisonous to you homosapiens the ingredient theobromine can be fatal to both cats and dogs. Most of us love our four legged ever young children (And I say most, because there are some cruel bastards out there), but it is imperative that you  keep your treats to yourself (No matter how long and much they linger at your feet). Unfortunately like most of our four-legged children they like sweet and anything you'll give them, keep them as far as possible from your treats, because as little as 40g can make them violently ill and in some cases death and higher doses often lead to death. 

Rhubarb: Don't be such a Guppy - your rhubarb pie is still safe and so are the ones they may serve your children at school. The red stalks are perfectly fine (And yummy), it's the dark Maleficent-like, leafy greens that are not so innocent as sleeping beauty. No the compound oxalic acid won't kill you, it can cause dizziness and kidney failure, coma and seizures (So still not a nice walk in the woods, my dears). To be fair, you will have to eat more than just the one leaf to have results like these, but think twice (or about a dozen times) before using the delicious-looking greens in a soup or salad (Thats goes to you too Snow White). 

Potatoes: Buying this root from your local market is normally harmless. However, potatoes and other members of the Nightshade family naturally contain solanine. It has natural fungicidal and pesticidal properties (an obvious natural defense) and in potatoes, develops when exposed to light (a bit like a a Mogwai turning into a Gremlin - another reason to store your spuds in a cool, dark place. Once they begin sprouting or green patches appear, I'd suggest not to even eat them, throw them out. Even after cooking, solanine is still strong and can cause nausea, indigestion, diarrhea, and vomiting, as well as cardiac problems and dizziness (ever see a green crisp or chip in your packet?). 

Kidney beans: Like other legumes (including those nasty tasting lima beans) kidney beans contain a potentially lethal toxin - phytohaemagglutinin. Ingesting only a few beans can land you in the hospital and a whole handful will have your family standing over you coffin in a cemetery. Have no fear my budding homosapien cooks, the toxin is easily neutralised when the bean is boiled for at least 10 minutes - but the toxin can become up to 5 times more toxic at 175 F (just off boiling) than if eaten raw. Roguetranslations: if you throw raw kidney beans into the slow cooker for some chili or your making West-Indian rice and peas (Its a bean not a pea ugh) you're going to want to cancel dinner plans, avoid this and just buy some canned ones, at least if something happens, you have a manufacturer to blame. 

Deathcap Mushroom: As a food, mushrooms are used as toppings commonly on pizza and in the good old English breakfast, as well as in soups and sometimes eaten by themselves. Many mushroom lovers choose to forage mushrooms in the wild, but you know not all mushrooms in the wild can be eaten safely don't you? One of the most deadliest mushrooms is the Death Cap mushroom (Amanita phalloides) it and other toxic Amanita mushrooms attack the body by inhibiting the formation of certain proteins in the liver and kidney, leading to coma and death. The Death Cap's toxins are present throughout its tissues and are concentrated, it only takes 3g of Death Cap tissue to be consumed for it to be considered lethal. Because of the serious threat it poses, it is important to know how to identify a Death Cap mushroom.

Click the link to help Identify the killer stool. LINK FOR identification

In January 2012 it was reported that two people had died at a New years dinner party, from one of natures little killers. 

THE MAIL (source)

So be careful what you eat and how you eat homosapiens, not all is well in your 5-a-day as you see. 

MEMOIRS OF MARBIE: Grey's Anatomy (Part 1)

November 1990:  I know I’m going to get into so much trouble for even thinking it, let alone physically doing it. I’m going to go to Greyson’s house.  It’s Friday and after school my mum has to work a little later today so I’m told that Aunt Jacky would be picking me up after play-centre. Rio doesn’t go to play centre so I see no reason why today of all days I have to. I could go home with him and wait for my mum to collect me to go to the dreaded Aunt Cece’s or even better Aunt Geegee.

Name: Aunt Cece

Sex: Adult female

Description: Short, beautiful black woman. Always in the newest fashions and sometimes seems as though she could be making up her own fashions as she goes along. Short hair that was straight (Probably from a hot comb). She had that beauty that everyone wanted, I noticed this cause men always paid her attention when she took my cousins and me out. She, always used to keep walking, she was rude like that. She never spoke a word to any of them. Maybe she likes girls.

She has A Daughter a few years younger than me, Christella. Aunty Cece was one of my dreaded Aunts, for the fact that she had a wicked temper on her. If you stepped out of line, you were bound to get punished. I remember one time Christella and I were in her bedroom playing with her dolls and horses.. One of the horses were those horses with long hair (Not ‘My little Pony), a new brand of toy that all the girls wanted and so did I. I loved anything to do with horses. The horses hair was plaited and I asked Christella if she wanted it that way, cause to me it looked stupid. She said no, and that her mum had done it. The smell of the white cigarette and that smelly brown barl and dried flowers was in the air, Aunt Cece was laughing downstairs. I began to undo the doll horses hair and as I got to the last few braids the growl of a angry woman scratch my neck, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? That took me bloody hours to do and you’ve gone and undone it in a matter of minutes pass me the fucking horses.” Enraged and me feeling scared I passed the horse to her in the doorway and scurried into the corner of the room. “Idiot” she continued. As I sat in the corner with my knees up to my chest and my arms tightly wrapped round them I lowered my head in shame and in fright. Had she been a monster or something of the sort in a nightmare (My nightmares were mostly of dying fish in a kitchen sink) her eyes would have turned different colors, her teeth would have sharpened and out grown her mouth, her hair would of stretched o the clouds becoming as black as tar and I would be dead within minutes. But no, she threw the horse on my head and I swear the coco I got in the middle stayed there for weeks.

Aunt Cece wasn’t all that bad, she used to take me to fair-grounds and parties all the time. She even said I could say the word shit, because shit is just another word for dog poo. She taught me a lot if not only to have fear in my heart from my elders. She was the Aunt though I felt much love for and would tell her things I didn’t want to tell my mum directly. She was able to translate my inner feelings to my mum.

At Rio’s house, Rio asks his mum if we can go to the corner shop to get penny sweets for after dinner. She allows use to.

“Where does Greyson live?, you said he lived near you.” Stroking his ear as we walk down the round with our arms over each other’s shoulders.

“He lives down there and stop that, not now.” Pointing down the road behind us I smile and begin to plot.

“Ok lets go there before we go back home.” Not thinking that if we go I might not want to go back to his house and also we’d be a long time. Long enough for Aunt Jacky to know that we were up to no good.

“Yeah.” Shrugging me off him as we enter the shop. I stand outside waiting for him looking down the long road, hoping it’s not too far to Greyson’s, I hated going into shops they were always so filled with things and people, so enclosed. Coming out of the shop Rio begins to walk down the road, he doesn’t say where he’s going but I just assume it’s to where I want to go. Passing a building on my left, I notice that it my old nursery I went to with that white lady, on my right across the road there’s a pub,, a pub full of people. I never understood why it was only white people in pubs and maybe, just maybe you’d see one really, really dark black person that acted white. Anyway I’m just filing this all in my memory bank for when I want to go to, if I go to Greyson’s house alone. We cross the road and Rio says that Greyson’s house is just in front of us, I am excited and want to see what the inside of his house is like. I wondered if he had lots of Bruce Lee and other Oriental things in his house like dragons and chopsticks. Opening the gate to Greayson’s house I noticed that at the end of the road is where my road is, then looking back to the house I notice two dogs in the windowed porch and his front door wide open, I can see a woman chopping something on the floor. The larger dog of the two, begins to bark wild, bearing its teeth, savage as hell, I’m scared. Rio presses the doorbell seemingly un-phased (Like the woman can’t hear her dog barking). “Is Greyson there?” he asked the short pretty lady, with wet hands, kicking the brute barking dog to one side.

“No, outside. Babyoi!!!!!” She screams out cocking her head to the corner of the house Babyoi, who is Babyoi?

“Thanks” Rio replies and turns around looking at me with a grin. As she closes the door he begins to laugh and the dog once again begins to bark at us. “She can’t speak much English, they’re Chinese” (Erm, because Chinese people can’t speak English? Idiot). I notice where the dogs are the door on my left it reminds me of something.

Leaving through the gates, Rio turns left round to the back of the houses me following still hearing the screams in my head I spot the young oriental Greyson wearing that same hideous purple jacket with a long stick in his hands. Thrashing at the walls and floor, twirling around, kicking into the air like he is one of the badly dubbed martial arts actors I’ve seen on video, I only notice that it’s a broken broom stick and the awkward movements he makes appears to be unintentional. He has no clue what he’s doing spiraling out of control like a misguided whirlwind from the heavens, and his purple jacket rising up above his waistline, seeing his skinny, even more so skinny of a body than mine, Rio runs up to him as I stop just feet away.

“Oi Greyson, we came out to play for a little bit, but we have to go back soon. Rogue is in trouble.” Gripping Greyson’s shoulder he turns to me as he speaks, Greyson looks at me and I am ready for the badly dubbed voice to come out. At my feet the large stone path is littered with crips packets and dried, white dog shit. Who knew that dog shit would turn white, or maybe there was something wrong with the dog that laid it’s messy for all to see. Greyson begins to speak, the long nail sounds begin to repeat, but then I look up at him and look into his black, shark-like, hooded eyes. His skin, although dirty from goodness knows what was a nice complexion, slightly dark than Georgie’s skin, digestive biscuit looking with hues of yellow, but the dirty marks on his face just shouted out ‘Damn this boy needs a wash’. Its not as though he looked like that in school, well I could really tell that, I always saw him from a distance or in the dungeon toilets.

“Hiya, you wanna come in?” Greyson holds onto Rio’s hand on his left shoulder and he begins to walk round the house going another left. His voice is very soft and high, he sound like one of those Chinese little girls, where is the bass in his voice? Into the back garden gate that was his, I follow across the well, paved ground and look at those ugly clothes racks that look like umbrellas (so common). He opens his back garden door, which lead into his kitchen, looking up to my right, a ‘Beware of the dogs’ sign, left a large round electrical tub thing with dried, stuck on rice round it. The cooker needs a clean thick with black shinny greasy stuff. The woman, his mother is crouching down on the floor still cutting with that huge knife as Rio and Greyson pass her I hesitate to walk passed her, what if she were to miss what ever she was chopping and got the end of me toe, it’s bad enough me getting a nail in my foot, but to loose my foot completely, no thanks.

“You go, go, go go”, she hurries me to go pass waving her knife at me like some lightweight paper fan. It’s a duck she’s hacking at, the neck now severed from the body, wings stretch out to their sides and a large jagged split down the middle of it’s white and pinked chest. Walking slowly passed her now hoping not to get any of the blood on my shoes, I think to myself that maybe the duck was alive when she started hacking at it, I mean that would explain the mass of blood right? Just passing her and at the kitchen door leading to the front of the house Rio calls out.

“Roguey, come on.” I look back and she is holding the duck’s head and shaking it at me making the most, scary quacking noise, whilst stretching out her hand even further to me, laughing. I quickly run up the stairs and just hope that dog does come out of the front way upstairs, I don’t want to get a snap.

The stair way is dark and dingy, the walls a dark yellow with smudges every where and if the cooker is to go by anything the rest of the house is going to look a right tip. Looking in front of me they turn right into a room. Shoes, clothes outside the room entrance. I walk up and look in the room cautiously. The first thing I see is a massive T.V incased in a dark carved wooden storage, it looks amazing and I know it cost a lot of money. The sofas are a pearly yellow color, the carpet patterned with squares and circles, dark blues and black, yellow spots in-between the square segments. I start to walk in-between the squares like I’m playing a game of chess with my feet. Greyson kneels down in front of the T.V and Rio plods himself on the large sofa to my right. The walls are as white as snow, with amazing ivory and jade carved pictured (I hope the elephants are still alive). “Have you seen Guyver?” Greyson asks pushing a VHS video in to the machine below.

“No, what is it.” Leaning forward placing his head in his hand Rio asks. I sit down in front of the black table filled with images of lots of long headed oriental people with these funny looking hair buns. The fruit in the table look odd as well, odd, but they do look juicy I want one, especially the red looking one and that orange thng that looks like an tomatoes made out of leather.

“It’s about this super man.” Greyson swiftly turns round with excitement

Interrupting the excitement of Greyson “We’ve seen super man, is it your Chinese one?”

“Brushing him off and carrying on Greyson continues. “No, it’s about this boy yeah, who gets this suit yeah and then he has like this bio-booster armor and like yeah, all these baddies try and kill him because, the baddies are like the aliens man, and yeah, they don’t want him to be a cyborg cause that’s what the suit did to him and all his power he can’t control so…”

Rio stands up “We have to go, come Rogue.” Greyson looks at me, those black sharks eyes seemingly turn into to the widening, tear jerking, pussy cat kind of way. Surely he isn’t going to cry. “Rogue we’ve been gone like half an hour and my mum will know we didn’t go just to the shops. Come on, we can go back and carry on…”

“Carry on what? I want to watch that Macguyver thing.”  I look at Greyson’s face and it starts to form a little crease at his mouth.

“But it’s not Mac-Guyver it’s Guyver. I Got Macguyver too wanna see it.” Greyson shoots up to his feet with a little defensive tone to his voice that blends into the sweet sound of ‘Stay’ in his carton girl voice. Had I been dreaming I would have expected rainbow to stat flying from his un-brushed mouth.

Rio grabs me by the hand pulling me up to my feet and whisper with frustration “Hurry up man, or I’m gonna get ground too and when I’m ground you can’t come to mine when your mum wants to come round for tea.” Mum always said she wanted adult conversation time with Aunty Jacky and that he was always at Aunt Leah house. So many secrets.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming.” Shrugging him of me a pass a glance at Greyson. He returns the glance.

“You can come round whenever you want to come out to play.” He projects across the living room as Rio pulls me down the stairs. “Bye!”

“Babyoi!” His mother shouts up at him. Greyson comes rushing pass us on the stairs, closes the baby gate at the bottom, turns left and opens the door where the dogs are. I hold my breath and watch the long shadow turn into a dog as it runs passed and the short fat one scurries on behind. “You can come down now.” He says. Rio says ‘Bye’ to the woman and she grunts English-second-language ‘Bye’ back., I whisper mine, she seems really rude, bitch!

Walking back to Rio’s house, I know that I will have to go to Aunt Cece’s later on I really don’t want to but hey, planning got me into all this mess. But my next plan will work. Aunt Cece will take me to Aunt Geegee’s if I play my cards right and if I play my cards right all hell will be let loose there, well more like heaven.

Rio’s mum didn’t know how long we had been gone for, she went in the bath short after we left and she was still in it. Thank god for that one, now I won’t be in too much trouble. But as we close the door to the front of the house Royley looks down at us from, arms crossed and all. Only time will tell and a short time at that, what he’ll say and do, or even worse make us do. 

Behind our back as we stand next to each other we hold each other's hands and squeeze. 


© 2010 - 2011. All rights reserved N P Rogue Laudat-Scott 'Mind of Rogue' and 'Memoirs of Marbie'