Free Wisdom Online: Eating the Cashew Fruit

You probably have eaten cashew nuts before, but might not have see the
fruit from which this nut comes.  It turns out, that cashew is one of
the weirdest-looking fruits on the planet.

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It's a soft pinkish fruit with a nut growing inside a shell
attached _outside the fruit_.  As I understand, when it's on the tree,
it hangs with the nut at the bottom.

Cashew fruits are not exported outside Latin America, partly because
they are very perishable, but probably also because they don't really
taste all that good, as I discovered.  The meat of the fruit tasted
rubbery and very tart.  I know you can make juice out of them and the
juice tastes tolerable once you add enough sugar - though I would
still hesitate to say call it "good."  I am not sure why they even
bother selling it as a fruit - maybe you are supposed to cook it
somehow.

Having finished the fruit I decided to open the shell to extract the
nut.  I first tried cutting it with a knife, but that didn't work.
So, I had a brilliant idea to try to crack it with my teeth.  No, I
didn't break my teeth, but it turned out that the shell was filled
some kind of disgusting liquid that I got to taste despite my best
attempts.  (I had vaguely heard that you are not supposed to eat raw cashew
nuts.)  The liquid around the nut tasted extremely tart and bitter and
my tongue and lips felt burnt for a a while even though I rinsed my
mouth right away.  As I later read, the cashew nut is surrounded by
some liquid that contains nothing less than cyanide and is actually
quite poisonous.  The nuts must be treated in some special ways before
they can be eaten.

Next day I noticed skin pealing off my fingers - not in any scary
kind of way, but sort of like what happens when you are not careful
with some of the household chemicals.  I didn't connect it with the
fruit, but then two days later I ate another cashew (don't ask why)
and I got the same skin irritation.  God knows what it's doing to my
stomach, so I think I am going to just throw away the other 3 fruits
that came in the pack.

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