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Difference between revisions of "Horse Chestnut"
→News About Horse Chestnut
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*Tell your health care providers about any herb or dietary supplement you are using, including horse chestnut. This helps to ensure safe and coordinated care | *Tell your health care providers about any herb or dietary supplement you are using, including horse chestnut. This helps to ensure safe and coordinated care | ||
==News About Horse Chestnut== | ==News About Horse Chestnut== | ||
'''Can you eat conkers?''' | |||
*Source:http://metro.co.uk/2016/10/18/can-you-eat-conkers-6200252/ | |||
:By Alice Johnston | |||
Ah, autumn. Season of crunchy leaves, chilly winds and conker fights. | |||
Conkers can look so appealing sometimes. That shiny brown carapace, their firmness, the fact that they look as if they would taste good roasted on a fire… | |||
It means each year, around this time, people start searching for whether or not you can eat them. | |||
Don’t do it! | |||
Even though conkers might look appealing, there’s no sensible way you can eat one. | |||
And yes, that applies even if you fry, boil or roast them. | |||
A friend of mine once actually broke a microwave by cooking a conker in it – it exploded with such force that the glass was shattered. | |||
So you’ve had fair warning. | |||
:And there are a number of other reasons why: | |||
Let’s get one thing out of the way first, you might be confusing conkers (also called horse chestnuts) with sweet chestnuts, which are delicious. | |||
Conkers are not sweet chesnuts. | |||
While they might look the same – both have green spiky shells and both are brown – they’re completely different. | |||
Conkers are actually mildly poisonous and contain a chemical known as aescin, which can induce vomiting and even paralysis. | |||
That said, it’s not true for all animals with deer and wild boar being a couple of exceptions to the rule. | |||
But horses, despite the name, would still get sick if they ate them. | |||
The presence of these chemicals also makes the seed taste very bitter – so it’s not even worth it for the taste. | |||
It’s not as if we haven’t tried. During World War I, the government experimented during times of rationing to see whether conkers were a viable food source. | |||
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'''Herb to Know: Horse Chestnut''' | '''Herb to Know: Horse Chestnut''' | ||
*Source:http://www.motherearthliving.com/Plant-Profile/Herbs-to-watch-Horse-chestnut | *Source:http://www.motherearthliving.com/Plant-Profile/Herbs-to-watch-Horse-chestnut | ||