Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical | Hacker News Reader

Tonka beans – A delicious flavour with a toxic chemical

bbc.com

130 pointsrfreytag96 comments

>“I was talking to a vanilla purveyor recently and he offered me tonka bean paste,” says Raquel. “I was like ‘If I want to use tonka bean, I’ll use tonka bean.’”

One of my biggest issues with mislabeling foods. Sell me vanilla at the market price, sell me tonka at the market price, but don't sell my vanilla that is actually tonka at vanilla market prices. Same with scallops and stingray, crab and surimi, calamari and pork, chocolate and flavored vegetable oil.

>calamari and pork

I think that's an urban legend

It is an urban legend. It takes FAR too much effort to mask the flavour to make it a cost-effective substitute.

It's like the "McDonald's hamburger is really red meal worm" or "KFC is really genetically engineered boneless chicken monsters" myths.

This American Life undertook a relatively serious investigation of this question (calamari 'rings' as pork rectum) and they basically came away with "inconclusive":

https://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/do...

I can't listen to it right now (I will later, because TAL is great), but did they do a blind taste test? I wish I could remember where I found it, but some curious foodies tried it and the pork rectum had a... let's call it "distinct" flavour that was unpleasant and difficult to mask.

yes they did. they were able to mask it. they also had some less masked but thought it would just be perceived as off squid.

There was an NPR story that dug way into this myth. And while they weren't able to track down any actual suppliers of pig bung, they did make their own pig bung Calimari supplied by a local butcher. IIRC, the blind taste testers all preferred the pig bung over the real deal, and they all considered themselves to be Calimari "snobs."

I guess you're right[1]. The thought of the substitution wasn't really stopping me from eating calamari, it's more about how do I not get ripped off by unscrupulous merchants?

[1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/16/imitation-calamari-...

> scallops and stingray

Ray and skate is nothing like scallops.

> calamari and pork

Again, nothing alike.

> chocolate and flavored vegetable oil

Chocolate contains more elements than just cocoa butter, so you can't just replace it with vegetable oil. I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

> Ray and skate is nothing like scallops.

They are frequently substituted, cut out in little circles, and sold as "scallops". It is legal to do so (in the US.) The poster is complaining about mislabeling.

Frequently where? I believe this is yet another urban legend. The meat looks different.

Here in Australia. A lot of people just aren't familiar enough with the real thing to know the difference.

And the taste is totally different

This was elevated to meme status by a mention in Jaws, but neither the FDA or the National Fisheries Institute are buying it.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-09-29/entertainment/...

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39179/are-cheap...

"It is legal to do so (in the US.)"

How is that possible? Isn't that plain lying? Can't you sue such company? As an European, I can't comprehend that. If something is labelled "scallops" it must be real scallops or else you would get sanctioned immediately after somebody finds out it's not and fills a complain. If substitutes are used, it must be labeled as "scallops flavored" or smth.

https://www.today.com/food/chocoholics-sour-new-hersheys-for...

> I'm sure there's some chocolate out there that cuts vegetable oil into the cocoa butter, but I've personally not come across it.

You should come to Poland. :-(

It's referred to as 'compound chocolate' [1]. It's done because to make paletable chocolate you need to add a greater porportion of cocoa butter than is in cocoa beans themselves. This makes the cocoa butter more expensive than the cocoa solids/powder. To save money low end chocolate replaces some or all of the cocoa butter with other oils, and uses chemicals to doctor up the chocolate to create something with roughly the same experience.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_chocolate

It sort of makes one stick with whole ingredients. If you want flour that is relatively bug free, grind your own wheat. No packaged goods. Certainly shrinks one's choices but it might be the right thing to do to encourage more transparent suppliers.

Are bugs in flour really that big of a health concern?

It makes it difficult to calculate one's protein intake.

I guess it depends on the person. For example, flour is currently allowed 150 insect filth/fragments per 100 grams [1]. Your reaction will vary to this information but mine is to try to forget this information as soon as possible because I love bread and I am not ready to get a wheat grinder (though I have seen a nice portable one in a Mormon household that I will probably purchase one day). Similarly, in Montreal, it was recently discovered that turkey sausages were mostly chicken and 'pure beef' sausages were made of horse meat [2]. A certain fish that looks like mackerel (edit: served as albacore) and is served as such in some places causes significant gastric discomfort if consumed in a large portion [3].

Food adulteration is a big deal and was much worse when regulation was loose/non-existent. My point was that whole ingredients (such as wheat berries) are a reasonable approach to self empowerment in terms of controlling what you put in your body. It is in my opinion more doable than running one's own farm or some such.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels

[2]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/sausage-science-1.4234568

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escolar

My reaction to the insect in flour info is "yay more proteins". Why would one try to avoid it? I mean on a scientific level.

Well, if only it was insects. It says insect filth and parts without specifying the proportion. People say 'yum' when they hear beef but it is a rare person who will have the same reaction to dung. Edit: also, if it was just insects, which it isn't, these insects are hardly likely to be the clean and sanitized crickets that are sold as flour.

Cooking is chemistry, enough adulterants in your flour would affect the final product. That's why there are different flours for different uses.

Also why are the bugs in the grain? Were they alive, or did they die in the grain after being doused with a pesticide somewhere in the mill and now you're eating pesticide too(besides the pesticide residue normally allowed on grains from spraying on the fields).

We didn't evolve to eat sterile food products free of all possible foreign organisms and wastes. It's far from clear that it's healthy to create such conditions artificially.

This is a big problem in the USA, but much of Europe is far stricter about food labeling.

No joke, a big thing I noticed the first time I went outside America was, "Holy shit, the food is real." No matter where I go, I find cheap food that's simply better quality than anything that's even mid-range in the US. It's especially noticeable with snacks/junk food, where everything in America is some odd artificial flavor that tastes nothing like what it claims to be, while (particularly in Japan) things taste exactly like what they claim to be and often are made from those exact ingredients.

Agree with the exception of mainland China where processed food is even more race to the bottom than in the US. Recommend that you assume food served on internal flights is inedible and plan accordingly.

Don't buy heavily processed food in mainland China. The fresh food is amazingly fresh. I'm visiting my family in China right now, and love going to the market every morning.

I agree on the airplane food. Take a high speed rail if at all possible!

>calamari and pork

What?? Since when do they do that? What parts of pork have a calamari texture? I've literally never heard of that before

The idea is that the final part of the digestive system of pigs and squid tentacles have similar texture and appearance and the flavor can be similar, but so far there are no reported instances of the switch in meat sources happening.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14981406

Fake eggs in China was the one that really astounded me!

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/06/how-to-make-a-rotten-egg...

Citing an anonymous source, the paper outlined how the fakes were made: prepare a mould, then mix the right amounts of resin, starch, coagulant and pigments to make egg white. Sodium alginate, extracted from brown algae, gives the egg white the wanted viscosity. Then add the fake egg yolk, a different mix of resin and pigments. Once the proper shape is achieved, an amalgamate of paraffin wax, gypsum powder and calcium carbonate makes for a credible shell.

Ethics aside, I just don’t see how that’s cheaper than a real egg. That’s a lot of process and materials, mostly time consuming to pull off.

There might be con-artist idealists after all.

And bacon. Around 9 out of 10 products in the bacon section are actually 'Manufactured Meat Product'. I'm in Australia which usually has quite strong consumer protections, but being able to call it bacon is misleading. Only looking at the ingredients list gives it away.

I was surprised the article didn't mention nutmeg, which is widely used despite its toxicity, so I tried to figure out how their LD50 compares (i.e. how much tonka nut you need to eat to have a 50% chance of death, and how nutmeg stacks up).

I couldn't find any clear answers for tonka beans and the exact dose of course depends on body weight but the lethal doses for nutmeg were an order of magnitude higher: for nutmeg the doses are given in thousands of milligrammes per kg body weight, for tonka beans they're in the hundreds.

So I guess it could be said that tonka beans are 10 times as deadly as nutmeg.

EDIT: g -> mg, sorry about mixing up the units

> for nutmeg the doses are given in thousands of grammes per kg body weight

Is it really fair to call something toxic if the LD50 is more than your bodyweight? I suspect you might have your LD50 value off.

Oops, you're right. I meant to say milligrammes. I haven't had much sleep lately and my brain's not working right. I'll edit.

It turns out the LD50 of Anvils is way less than a typical persons body weight when applied topically to the cranium via a 20 foot drop.

Nutmeg is still dangerous in non-lethal doses. Eating just a couple nuts will put you in a fairly unpleasant delirious state for up to 2 full days.

I've heard it's much better fresh than dried

And the typical amount used in a dish is 1/100th of a nut or less. Literally a few strokes on a rasp is enough to flavour a dish.

Yep, it's a bit surprising at first if you do not cook very often just how little of a spice is required (at least it was for me). Just a tiny bit more than needed generally tastes awful.

Same with chilli's.

GF bought me a chilli set and while they where all delicious, the naga one was in a league of it's own.

They went mild, medium, I felt that and oh dear god, what have I wrought.

In hindsight I should have respected the reputation of the Naga chilli.

Take enough nutmeg, and you'll start hallucinating.

In a good way or a bad way?

well... put it this way: no one has bothered to make it illegal

You can read that for yourself: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Nutmeg.shtml . The Datura page is also highly recommeded for another dose of "why would anyone do this?!".

Bad, nausea.

Some people enjoy it, but the vast majority of trip reports I’ve read are essentially “do not bother to try this, it’s not worth it”. Like DXM, it seems to have different “plateaus”, and the line between a pleasant dose and a multi-day hell of delirious anxiety is rather small.

Very bad. A floormate of mine tried it freshman year in college (of course) and finally emerged from his dorm room two full days later with giant bags under his eyes, and nothing good to say about the experience.

Although banning might be excessive, products containing coumarin should be labelled appropriately. If what the article says is true, such as that a teaspoon of cassia cinnamon can put you over the safe limits, then consuming coumarin is dangerous for those with liver problems, recovering from mononucleosis, or when consumed in conjunction with other liver-damaging compounds (i.e. alcohol).

Probably also consider caution when taking some analgesics, like acetaminophen/paracetamol.

Yea, but those are already properly labeled. I'm not sure what you are getting at?

I believe pavement means consuming coumarin while taking analgesics.

Indeed, I was thinking that it's probably one more detail a person could neglect, unwittingly nickel-and-diming their way to further liver damage. For a perfect storm, add them altogether on top of a case of undiagnosed hepatitis.

Another food also banned from the US because of its coumarin content is the herb Hierochloe odorata, also known as bison grass or sweet grass. It's an important ingredient in Żubrówka vodka. For this reason, the Żubrówka you can purchase in the US is essentially fake, containing ingredients meant to simulate or approximate coumarin.

Tonka beans are quite popular in Europe and there are a lot of deserts or even jam using them. The thing though is that it tastes awful in large dose, so you're unlikely to encounter a large dose of it...

It's a bit like nutmeg which is also quite toxic in large doses but is not banned in the US (which shows that sometimes those decisions are rather arbitrary)

Can someone who's a better cook than this author tell us their opinion of the taste?

It's a delicious, sweet, nutty aroma that marries extremely well with chocolate. The Swiss chocolate manufacturer Villars makes a delicious "Praliné fève Tonka" that I can't recommend enough :)

Yes, that part about his cooking experiment was rather ridiculous. It marries very well with vanilla and chocolate. By itself it has a bit of a sweet nutty flavor that is rather complex.

To be slighlty flippant, it's kind of the shitake (or msg) of desert, it enhances the rest of the flavors.

The writer is a woman.

shiitake

dessert

It tastes delicious and has a fantastic aroma. It's quite complex. I'd put it somewhere between vanilla, marzipan and cinnamon. I've tried it with chocolate, almond, vanilla, fruit, cream, custard with good results. It also apparently goes well with fish (haven't tried it yet).

It tastes rather like cola nuts to me - like cinnamon + cola + vanilla.

Thanks for the suggestion about fish

The article is correct that it tastes a lot like vanilla. Nothing special if you ask me, there's plenty of spices with more characteristic taste. Maybe if used by an exceptional chef will make a bigger difference, I don't know

I've heard that the actual fruit is very tasty but I've never seen or tried one

Tonka bean tastes amazing. Hard to describe, it's vanilla-esque but doesn't taste like vanilla.

I had the pleasure of tasting a Tonka Bean IPA I brought back from Brazil a couple years ago. Immediately ordered some of the beans (thanks to my freedom as a Canadian (-: ). They're really great in crème brûlée.

do you just dust the top of the creme brulee with tonka shavings?

Tonka (Tonquin) beans traditionally were stored with [nasal] snuff tobacco as a flavor agent.

See page 42: http://www.top25snuff.com/images/dokumenty/snuff-yesterday-a...

https://www.amazon.com/Tonka-Beans-Wishes-Ravenz-Special/dp/...

But it's illegal?

The article says it's illegal to sell the bean to eat.

TL;DR with the important stuff bumped (I hate, hate, hate clickbait and burying the lede):

Tonka beans, containing the toxic-to-the-liver chemical Coumarin, are banned for use in food in the US but still used in some high-end restaurants and bakeries, leading to occasional FDA raids. The beans impart flavors akin to vanilla, lavender, cherries, and grass, due to their sharing some chemical components. They're probably safe in small amounts, making the ban controversial. If you have certain rare enzyme disorders or (obviously) existing liver damage, however, the risk of harm is higher. The chemical is present in smaller but still-large amounts in certain other foods and spices, notably common cassia "cinnamon"—the less-common true cinnamon contains only trace amounts. The use of Tonka/Coumarin in non-food products is unregulated, and it is in fact used in cigarettes, e-cigs, and cosmetics. It can be absorbed through the lungs and skin.

Tonka bean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipteryx_odorata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamomum_cassia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamomum_verum

Thank you for summarizing it succinctly.

"Tonka beans have an intense flavour that chefs and food manufacturers have enthusiastically embraced. There’s just one problem – it contains a chemical that could, in large enough doses, kill you."

This is the first thing in the article. How is the lede buried?

Ah, yeah, I looked past the subtitle and started reading the article itself, which is definitely not ideal inverted-pyramid reporting, as it starts with:

"It’s led to raids by law enforcement agencies and mass deaths in animals; in the United States, chefs have ‘dealers’ who smuggle it into the country."

So: lede's not buried, but the rest of the article's garbage.

I'm fine with nonstandard, creative news writing, gonzo, whatever, when it's justified and done well, but this article's just a rambling eyeball trap.

I adopted a pitbull whose shelter name was "Beans". Immediately upon adopting, I dropped the name "Beans" and gave him the moniker Tatanka. My wife occasionally calls him Tonka Beans for short...

He's my best friend.

tatanka like buffalo from dancing with wolves? we use that reference for the thundering footsteps of our hairy family members wrestling, playing tag, playing...

exactly...we were watching dances with wolves the night before we got him :)

Tangential, but I like it. Have an upvote.

I am somewhat appalled but not at all surprised to see click bait headlines leaking into the BBC's vernacular.

The use of BOLD TEXT is also a bit annoying.

I wonder if it has to to with the fact that this is the BBC Future section.

The bold text is for links. Confused me at first, too. Really poor choice.

I can mentally ignore links, but I don't mentally ignore bold. I assume that if an author is using bold, then they're trying to tell me something really important.

But, if bolding hyperlinks becomes the "new style" of online writing, then I guess I'll have to slowly learn to desensitize myself to bolded text as well.

That's ridiculous, there's no advantage over underlining text, and everybody recognises the latter as a standard.

And like trendia said, BOLD TEXT already has the semantic meaning of shouting. It's very aggressive and in-your-face to read

It could be worse, I seen far more clickbaity articles about this topic

>This flavour is so good its illegal

>If your food tastes this good it could kill you

>This flavour caused a drug raid

Oh it totally could be worse in an absolute sense. But for the BBC...this seems quite bad. Its one thing to get that language from an ad or distractify. Quite another from the Beeb

What makes you file it as click bait, exactly? I thought the headline gave me a very clear idea of what the article's contents would be. How would you improve it?

Edit: Wait, the actual article says secret and on HN it says chemical. Hmm.

It's click bait because the most important information is missing from the title. It could be improved by changing it to "Tonka beans: delicious and toxic".

Missing? I'm confused. All of those words are in the title.

Only in HN's edited title, not the original BBC title.

I think I've been misreading the BBC title the whole time as also saying "Tonka beans". Oops. It's in the subtitle but not the real title.

Bitter almonds contain cyanide and are used in loads of traditional desserts.

It gets deactivated by the heat

Yes, but you do not heat it in all desserts.

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