An email we received in the Serious Eats inbox today:

Have you ever written about "Pine Mouth"...it happened to me and now I never want to eat anything that has pine nuts in it again! - Chris

As no one in the Serious Eats office had heard of pine mouth before, I searched on Google and found out that the term describes the bitter/metallic taste in one's mouth after eating pine nuts that makes it unpleasant to eat or drink anything else. This Daily Mail article from last May has more to say about it, along with this earlier blog post from October 2008 and other afflicted bloggers. While multiple studies have been done to learn more about pine mouth, this recent study in the Journal of Medical Toxicology doesn't shed much light on the subject:

While there appears to be an association between pine nut ingestion and cacogeusia, little is known about this condition, nor can any specific mechanism of specific cause be identified. It is not known if a specific species of pine nut can be implicated. "Pine mouth" appears to be an emerging problem.

Have you ever experienced pine mouth?

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