Choosy Mothers Don't Choose Aflatoxins

I'm trying to eat healthier, and smarter. I really am. I have been trying to cut down on the chips and crackers (and sort of succeeding) and eat more "healthy" foods. You know, fruits, whole grains, the usual suspects. I have two problems with this approach:

a) My snack cravings gravitate to the savory-salty side.

b) I like chips. And cold cuts. And cheese. Things like that.

If sushi tuna rolls were sold like Oreos, I'd be in serious trouble. 

The challenge for me has been to find suitable savory-salty snackage that doesn't have the fat baggage of my usual munchies. Enter the nut family! Almonds, peanuts, cashews...these days most can be had in reduced salt or low salt versions. Plus they have the good fats, minerals, all that stuff that us supposed to be good for you, and I can eat a small amount and fill up.

So I'm munching my way through a big handful the other day, and a little tidbit of info burbles to the placid surface of my mind. A by-product of my overindulgence in reading about food, it slowed me down a bit. Peanuts, along with a number of other nuts and even chile peppers, can become infected with a type of  mold that produces something called aflatoxin.

As you may surmise, aflatoxin is well, toxic. Aflatoxins are known to be carcinogenic and mutagenic. Neither of those is a good thing. I believe I stopped chewing, and considered spitting out the masticated remains of the peanuts I had popped in my mouth. Hunger and good manners kept me from doing so.

Pondering this conundrum, another bit of food safety trivia* came back to haunt me: some mushrooms produce rocket fuel.

Okay, okay, they don't exactly produce rocket fuel, but they do produce a chemical precursor that, upon digestion in the stomach, decomposes into two other chemicals, one of which is rocket fuel. It's a dandy little chemical known as monomethylhydrazine, or MMH for short. MMH poisoning has an elevated incidence amongst workers in the aerospace industry, and it is the same type of illin' you get from eating the wrong kind of mushroom**. I remember reading long ago, of some researchers noting a similarity between the symptoms of chemical exposure in workers and those who had ingested some types of poisonous mushrooms. I like mushrooms, too. So I was a little bummed, especially knowing that even cooking them won't necessarily destroy the toxin. It could make it worse, because the chemical vaporizes, and ends up in the lungs. Whee!

Even my beloved chips are not free of the taint, what with the acrylamide scare. Yet another delish snack food ruined by the specter of carcinogens. It's a damn shame they taste so good.

I want to eat better, truly I do, but it seems to a health risk. Maybe I should stick to Italian hoagies.

*Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am a world class geek.

**Or perhaps it is the right kind of mushroom, if one is looking for certain other 'chemical' effects.