Would You Eat an Unidentified Fruit?

[Joshua Howard]

Scenario: You are walking through the forest during an extended backpacking tour of a remote region somewhere on earth. You are carrying food rations with you and are capable of catching a sufficient supply fish to eat if desired.

Keeping this in mind, you discover a fruit-bearing tree of some variety unknown to yourself. Being an adventurer, do you sample the fruit (accepting the presumably rather remote possibility that it is unhealthy or poisonous), or being cautious do you ignore it?

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

Question for anybody that knows. Is there actually such a thing as poisonous fruit? I mean is there really something out there that looks and tastes just like an orange or an apple,but 10seconds after you eat it you die? That just seems like a strange thing to actually exist in nature.

 

[Kirkman1987]

Considering I have food and fishing is plentiful, I would never eat anything wild I couldn't idenify.

 

[Rii]

Not whilst I had food that I knew to be safe, no.

 

[Finn]

I'll take a picture of it, hook up the camera to my satellite laptop and email it to my good friend Dr. Pine at University of Maryland's Department of Botany or Dr. Chuckles at the Department of Orchards and ask them to identify the fruit. There you go.

 

[Kestra]

Never. The odds are high that I'd be allergic to it. Then again, I wouldn't last long during a walk in the woods, either!

 

[trampledamage]

Definitely not! Bad enough to get food poisoning here where I'm close to a hospital, I really don't want it to happen in the middle of the rainforest.

 

[cultcross]

Question for anybody that knows. Is there actually such a thing as poisonous fruit? I mean is there really something out there that looks and tastes just like an orange or an apple,but 10seconds after you eat it you die? That just seems like a strange thing to actually exist in nature.

not so much 'you eat it and 10 seconds later you die', no. At least nothing you're likely to encounter. But there is plenty of fruit that will make you violently ill. The main reason is because they are intended for life other than humans to eat. It makes sense if you're a berry producing bush, for example, to encourage birds, who will carry your seed further and more widely, to eat your fruit rather than mammals who may not stray far, and end up seeding your offspring as direct competitors to you.

I'll take a picture of it, hook up the camera to my satellite laptop and email it to my good friend Dr. Pine at University of Maryland's Department of Botany or Dr. Chuckles at the Department of Orchards and ask them to identify the fruit. There you go.

21st Century. I love it here.

 

[Jadzia]

I had a few berries once. Droopy purple ones hung in bunches of around 100, and about 1000 such bunches in the tree. They were sweet and fruity, but bitter as well, and left a strange powdery texture in my mouth. Didn't like; I'm still alive.

 

[Mr. B]

I'm not taking any chances if I have food... if the possibility even crossed my mind, I would bring an illustrated survival guide book with me on my next hiking trip.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

As long as it doesn't taste like "burning".

 

[cultcross]

As long as it doesn't taste like "burning".

Sometimes the burning happens elsewhere, and 3-5 hours later...

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I wouldn't eat it unless it were a life and death situation. If I have food, why do I need to go eat random wild food?

 

[Holdfast]

I'll take a picture of it, hook up the camera to my satellite laptop and email it to my good friend Dr. Pine at University of Maryland's Department of Botany or Dr. Chuckles at the Department of Orchards and ask them to identify the fruit. There you go.

I knew a Dr Pine once. Nice fellow but he just wasted away to nothing after his good friend Dr Chuckles passed away from complications to a humerus fracture...

... on topic, no I wouldn't eat an unidentified fruit. A friend does this with surprising regularity (considering he's still alive) but I suspect that may say more about the general benevolence of the English countryside than the wisdom of such a move.

 

[RoJoHen]

I wouldn't eat it unless it were a life and death situation. If I have food, why do I need to go eat random wild food?

Because it's pretty.

 

[SilentP]

Don't sample, but then again, I haven't eaten fruit in...probably faaaar longer than is healthy.

 

[Captain Ice]

I may take a sample with me for later identification just in case it's some heretofore undiscovered fruit but, otherwise I'm going to leave it alone since I have a known, safe food supply.