Fugu For Thought

I don’t know about where you live, but in my corner of northeastern Pennsylvania there isn’t much in the way of interesting food. The closest that I come to danger, upon the rare occasions that I eat out, is the threat of contracting bovine spongiform encephalopathy from my steak. I certainly do not partake in the life-on-the-edge culinary experience of fugu, or pufferfish.

Considered a delicacy in Asia, the fugu contains a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX), found in the liver, ovaries, and flesh. The fish are so deadly that sushi chefs in Japan must endure a vigorous test; a test that only about thirty percent actually pass. The small amount of poison found in the flesh produces a “funny tingly sensation on the tongue and lips”, which is good because, if you’re anything like me, garnishing your hamburgers with Demerol is both expensive and stressful (not so much post-meal, admittedly).

However in large doses, like those found in the liver and ovaries, the effects are quite different:

“Those poisoned gradually lose muscle control, although not consciousness, and eventually suffocate to death when the diaphragm becomes paralyzed.”

Fun! A firsthand account of a non-lethal case of fugu poisoning is quite harrowing:

“Approximately four hours had passed after the fugu meal - I was not the only person who felt numb on finger tips. ‘Probably we ate poison today,’ someone said. ‘My finger tips won’t hold a piece of mah-jong ,’ someone else joined. We all felt something out of ordinary but nobody took the matter seriously.

The mah-jong was over and I tried to rise for the guest’s belongings upstairs. I fell on my hip before I knew. ‘What on earth is the matter?’ I wondered, but managed, while feeling my body numb, to go upstairs and get back to my guests.

‘I feel dizzy,’ someone said.
‘Something is strange,’ others uttered and they all left. I felt too sick to put things away. ‘Sorry but let me go to bed,’ I excused myself and rose to go to my bedroom upstairs, then I suddenly felt like vomiting. My stomach by then was empty and left me in sheer agony. I felt dizzy and crawled on all fours to the bed.

I felt my whole body in sickening rotation whether I opened or closed my eyes. I felt pressures on the breast and hard to breathe. I called for my husband, who would not wake up. Our eldest son, then a primary school student, woke to help me. I asked him to bring me certain medicine for heart, which helped soothe the ailing condition and gave me some sleep.

My poisoned sickness lasted for good three days and nights. The doctor came for camphor injections and said that I would have to wait for natural recovery. After all, none of us died or appeared in the newspapers.”

Sounds like my kind of party! I’m fascinated by this, in the sense that, who, how, and why did people first discover a way to eat a potentially dangerous plant or animal? The wild almond, for example, contains lethal doses of cyanide, yet at some point in our evolution someone discovered that certain almonds could be eaten and, indeed, were delicious. These are the people of history I would like to meet, the people who heard stories or saw people die from fugu poisoning and thought, “Fuck you fugu, we’re gonna figure out how to prepare you. Just you wait and see.”

The Wonderfully Tasty, and Deadly, Fugu [Retrospectacle]