I have pine mouth!!!…wait? what???
That’s right people. I have pine mouth.
What the f—k is pine mouth you’re probably asking? I never heard of it myself until I did some research today because every morsel of food that I’ve ingested in the last 24 hours actually tastes like a bitter, metallic flavor, always starting in the back of my mouth. I initially thought that the homemade chocolate chip cookie I picked up yesterday afternoon from the deli on 52nd street was actually homemade with rat poison, and I was seeping rat poison from my mouth….but that was just me being neurotic. I decided to do a simple google search JUST to see if my symptoms were something that I should probably go to the doctor to check out, but my search results yielded TONS of results…most notably the response from Dr. Weil that gave me some calmness to my neuroticism:
Strange as it may seem, the bitter or metallic taste you describe can come from eating pine nuts. In fact, there’s now a name for it: “pine mouth syndrome.” The medical term is cacogeusia. Based on what I’ve read, the change in taste develops 24 to 72 hours after you eat pine nuts and can last a few days or even as long as two weeks, but it does eventually go away.
And it so happens that my friend gave me a large bag of pine nuts on Saturday, and I’ve been adding a bunch of them into my morning granola and yogurt the past few days….thus the pine mouth.
