Toxic squash syndrome | Hacker News Reader

Toxic squash syndrome

en.wikipedia.org

64 pointstosh51 comments

Open articleView on HN

When cooking zucchini it is worth chopping a slice in the middle and tasting it. If it’s bitter just throw it out.

The worst is you cut 5 zucchini’s , and one bitter zucchini ruins your entire dish.

This is worth doing for cucumbers and loofah as well.

For a second I thought this was going to be an article about people who only allow squash-commits to their repo

I came here for this

Was hoping for the same, so lets discuss...

Anyone have strong opinions about only allowing squash commits, vs allowing merge commits?

Having used both professionally, I don't think the benefits of squash commits only outweigh the hurdles for new developers. Merging is just easier, and I don't think the merge commits in master are really all that jarring?

Reverting large squash commits or merge commits after other commits have been applied to the main/master branch will likely result in conflicts.

On the other hand, limiting commits to do a single thing and having several per merged branch allows one to revert a problematic commit without conflicts or isolate a bug using git bisect.

I run squash-only repos. You can't just run a squash-only repo though; the practice is linked with things like trunk-based or branch-based development. More broadly, a single "thing" (feature/bug fix/task) needs to be done in a single merge.

That gets tricky too - what about features being developed by multiple engineers? Generally, I create a branch that embodies the full scope of work and devs treat that as the default branch while working on it - merging their branches into that one. That branch needs to be consistently rebased to be kept up to date in order to avoid conflicts, and devs will sometimes need to merge or rebase their own branches based on that branch. Usually, this isn't too complicated, unless someone buries their head in the sand for a little too long (pun intended.)

This also means that all CI jobs have to be configured to use the current branch rather than a static target - which makes logic a bit more complicated when dealing with things like E2E tests that create real environments.

What does it accomplish? A linear, well-constructed history and it ensures resilient CI jobs. The other side of that, is that the real product branch gets a very organized history, while feature development branches can have non-standard commit messages like, "I screwed up", and can allow force pushes that can't be done on my default branches. This allows for both clean history and me to not be policing people's commit messages. If you value none of those things, it's a total waste of time and energy.

> If you value none of those things, it's a total waste of time and energy.

This might be the case for me. I work on a relatively small dev team and luckily everyone has adhered to meaningful commit messages without needing any manual intervention.

I could imagine a time where this team is much larger and the commits begin to get out of hand. So perhaps my failure to appreciate squash-only repos is mainly a function of my relatively small team.

I used to be a big proponent of rebase+squash, but migrated everyone to merge+no-ff. I needed the previous commit to be easily accessible for CI purposes, and merge+no-ff gives it to you without the additional hassle of rebasing.

Can you expand on what merge+no-ff means?

i think it just means turning off merge fast-forwarding (git merge --no-ff, or config merge.ff=false) so that merges appear as explicit commits even when one side of the merge has no commits, where git would by default just zip them together making it appear as though no merge happened at all

less work than dealing with squashing, and easier to understand past branches than the default

This reminds me of the story about a mysterious outbreak in Mozambique https://www.damninteresting.com/the-curse-of-konzo/, which without giving too much away bears some similarity. It's a pretty good read for a Sunday.

Tldr: People in Mozambique started presenting with polio-like paralysis. However, on further examination by specialists, it was clear that their symptoms were not consistent with a diagnosis of polio.

Explanation in ROT13: Nsgre zhpu vairfgvtngvba, vg jnf qrgrezvarq gung gur rssrpgf jrer qhr gb puebavp plnavqr gbkvpvgl qhr gb gur cerfrapr bs plnabtravp tylpbfvqrf va fbzr pnffnin inevrgvrf, naq pnffnin ebbg vf hfrq nf n fgncyr sbbq bs ynfg erfbeg va nssrpgrq nernf bs Zbmnzovdhr. Nyfb, na vanqrdhngr vagnxr bs "fhyshe-pbagnvavat nzvab npvqf" (zrguvbavar?) erqhprq gurve novyvgl gb arhgenyvmr plnavqr. Fbyhgvba: rng n inevrq qvrg, naq jura rngvat pnffnin ebbg, qba'g rng gur fxva.

TLD-Decode: Cassava root can be poisonous. Don't eat the skin. Other foods can help blunt the poison.

At a brunch many years ago my wife made a Zucchini salad. On my first taste, I stopped eating it and warned all the guests. Everyone stopped, except one friend, who, unfortunately was somewhat OCD (but otherwise a wonderful person). Unfortunately, part of his condition is that he cannot waste anything, especially food. He insisted on eating the salad. I only found out (a) about cucurbitacins and (b) that my friend could not leave food uneaten after this incident. Had I known both things at the time, I would have taken the salad away.

My friend was quite ill for about a week, including some internal bleeding. Thankfully, he recovered fully.

Moral: don't let your guests do the polite thing if you realize something is not right!

TL;DR- Do not under any circumstance eat a vegetable which does not taste the way its supposed to taste.

Bitter gourd tasting sweet ? Bottle gourd/Cucumber/Zuccini/Pumpkin tasting bitter ? Straight to the trash.

In India a lot of elderly drink raw veggie juice on empty stomach in the morning and they don't usually discard veggies like this because bought with 'hard earned money' and die because of the toxicity. Two of several cases.[1][2]

[1]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/healthy-woman-...

[2]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/man-dies-afte...

That's kinda sad tbh.

As someone currently growing more cucumbers than I can handle (gardener problems), I've been eating at least 2 a day of a few different varieties, including a somewhat bitter pickling variety.

That said, I've never experienced the burping side effect many report. Makes me very curious what's going on metabolically to cause some to burp but not others. Can gas produced by the microbiome of the upper tracts of the intensities make it back up into ones stomach?? All very fascinating regardless.

> could result from cross-pollination with wild cucurbitaceae species, or from plant growth stress due to high temperature and drought.

ouch. if it's the latter then this will become much much more frequent. on the other hand, if it's the former then it will become less frequent.

so I guess we'll see in a few years :)

I once had a nasty case of food poisoning from a zucchini salad that I made. I always assumed it was from not washing them properly or undercooking them, but maybe this was it! In any case, my wife still hates zucchini even though it’s been many years since that incident.

Your wife loves you very much and/or your nasty food poisoning had very nasty external effects.

> Your wife loves you very much

That's generally the idea of marriage.

Love / Marriage exists and many forms. For example sometimes a very old average looking arrogant but rich man is married to a young beautiful girl. Though the other way around is more rare.

It wasn't some pointless observation of the obvious. The point was to explain why the wife now hates zuchinni.

Why in the world is this downvoted? A wife has never adopted an attitude towards something in response to how it affected her husband? My girl does that all the time. So do I for that matter.

I always taste zucchini before using them in a dish. You can eat them raw, so just taste a piece and if it's bitter don't use it.

These toxins are quite bitter tasting, so you'll detect that as well as old zucchini that just don't taste good.

I use a lot of frozen, sliced zucchini that I buy in bags from the grocery story... It's there some way to test them for safety before using them?

Since they're already sliced it seems like I'd have to taste each slice to be sure no slice is bitter.

I would suggest a random sampling. Maybe taste 1% of them, and if you find a single bad one throw away the entire bag or return it.

I remember reading about a case where an elderly couple ate zucchini from their own garden. The dish tasted terribly bitter, but they ate it anyhow. The husband died 2 weeks later of cucurbitacin poisoning.

edit, although only in German: https://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/ernaehrung/heidenheim-mann...

Report in English: https://gardendrum.com/2015/08/25/german-man-dies-after-eati...

From a very young age I rejected eating cucumber. It never "tasted right" to me, and it always makes me have horrible cucumber-flavoured burps. Blech!

I can't abide grapefruit or melon either, though I don't know if those are included in the list of potentially toxin-producing plants in the article.

Also, never been that keen on pumpkin.

Basically any kind of food of the above ilk.

Especially though with the cucumber - perhaps now I have an explanation for that innate dislike or reluctance to consume them?

...and it always makes me have horrible cucumber-flavoured burps. Blech!

You are not alone - in fact, this is the very reason 'burpless' cucumbers were invented. [1] Supposedly, they taste differently and cause fewer burps. I know I've eaten them myself - my mother used to plant burpless varieties - but it has been too long for me to back up the taste bit.

[1]https://www.plantfoodathome.com/why-are-burpless-cucumbers-c...

I have some reason to believe that cucumber aversion might be genetic.

I recall coming across something about it a while back while looking into the cilantro soap gene thing, apparently there's a few similar genes that cause other food aversions (eg: kale, cucumber, etc).

One suggested reason for this trait is literally "avoiding getting poisoned".

I eventually allowed cilantro in my diet and don't notice the 'soap' thing much anymore. Is there actually a gene in play?

Apparently yes, there's a common gene that does seem to come into play.

I wonder if repeated exposure causes you to stop noticing it?

https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/cilantro-love-hate...

I have a friend who is mercifully* mildly allergic to the entire ragweed* family so I guess this means that there is an up side to it :D

* It's not a common allergy and the fruit and vegetables in encompasses are often used lightly in all sorts of foods without being explicitly listed. She once even got a cocktail with something (possibly cucumber?)

* All squash, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, zucchini, etc

I don't understand, why are you calling this the ragweed family? Ragweed is an asterid and has basically no meaningful botanical relationship to any of the plants you listed (outside of all being dicots), which are all cucurbits.

She has always said ragweed, and so I assumed she knew.I am not a botanist.

Sorry, in addition to the above, also chamomile, if that helps.

...and I thought this is somehow about squashing commits in a toxic way, e.g. rewriting the commit message to seem that you've done all the work yourself. Was surprised that it's already a syndrome though.

One of my annoyances with GitHub's UI is how it emphasizes committer and commit date (in particular), things which are less relevant and usually just noise compared to the author and authoring date.

Interesting. Are these compounds responsible for the slightly bitter taste of pumpkin seeds? Presumably they aren't usually present at high enough levels to be dangerous.

Plant defense chemicals. Not all plants want to be eaten.

SQUASHFS error: squashfs_read_data failed to read block

What about bitter melon, which is a popular vegetable consumed throughout Asia?

Not the same molecules. In bitter melon it is mainly momordicine (an alkaloid) that seem to cause the bitterness.

Interesting! It looks like bitter melon also has cucurbitacins though. I wonder how you'd determine a bitter melon is producing toxic cucurbitacins before eating it, since it's already bitter from the momordicine?

Yes it could be tricky, and they really tend to cross-pollinate. The best way is to not grow it close to non-edible Curcubitaceae, which can be tricky in an environment with neighbors around. Also you don't tend to eat a lot of bitter melon at once maybe that could reduce the risk.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com