Read the title of this little blurb, and you might first think that I have or am considering telling someone off over a real or perceived slight or actual event where maybe my manhood had been questioned. That could not be further from the truth. My essay today was set into motion by a post I saw in a garden group by a concerned mother. She had read somewhere that potato plant leaves, if consumed, were poisonous. She was thinking about starting a garden but was not sure if she should plant potato’s out in the open with easy access to them or if she should fence them off so her little Tide pod eating offspring couldn’t eat them and possibly die or heaven forbid get a tummy ache. I added the Tide pod eating part, but something tells me I may not be too far from the truth in that statement.
I was incredulous about potato or even tomato plants being poisonous as I do not remember back in my childhood attending a funeral for a child that had ingested potato or tomato leaves and then dying from that. Wanting to make this article as factual as I can, I googled “how many potato leaves can I eat before I die”. I was disappointed by my findings in that I will have to cross feeding potato or tomato leaves to my enemies off my tools list because even if a large quantity are consumed the worst that can happen is nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Sounds like a commercial for the latest new wonder drug minus the exploding part.
Another tidbit I discovered in my research was that rhubarb leaves are poisonous. If you eat enough, it can, in fact, “kill” you dead. But here is the kicker. While that statement is, in fact, true the number needed to accomplish that is astronomical. Just 25 grams of oxalic acid would kill, but you’d need to eat 11 pounds of rhubarb leaves to build up a quantity in your system large enough to get to your expiration point.
The lesson learned here is that while there are, in fact, dangers all around us, we are more in danger of dying from a bleeding ulcer brought on by overthinking this than the actual dangers that exist.
Go out and enjoy life! What’s the worst that can happen?
