15 Things You Didn't Know Could Poison You

Tomatoes are delicious, but their leaves contain glycoalkaloids, which can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and in severe cases, paralysis. Luckily, they taste fucking disgusting so you won’t eat them on accident. 

Rhubarb leaves’ll fuck you up. They contain oxalic acid, which can lead to kidney failure or even death. You’d have to go absolutely hog-wild on the stuff though. 

When potatoes go green, they produce a chemical called solanine, which can lead to vomiting, diarrhea and general abdominal awfulness. While green on a traffic light means go, on a potato it means stop, motherfucker.

Cherry pits contain cyanide, proof that we can’t have nice things.

Surely there’s no more wholesome-sounding fruit than the elderberry. However, the seeds, stems, leaves and roots are toxic — what a crappy-sounding way to die that would be, elderberry stem poisoning. Absolutely pathetic. Nobody at the funeral. 

Castor oil can help keep you regular, but the castor bean plant, which it’s made from, can help keep you fuckin’ dead — it’s laden with ricin, which as we all remember from Breaking Bad, is terrible stuff.

Honey is a miraculous food — it can last forever. However, it can make you do exactly the opposite. It sometimes contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which, unless the honey is pasteurized, can cause headaches, dizziness, weakness and vomiting.

Raw kidney beans contain the bamboozlingly-named lectin phytohaemagglutinin — it’s apt that the word sounds a bit like vomiting, as that’s what it can make you do. Also, poop sloppy diarrhea all in your underpants.

A sprinkling of nutmeg is what elevates a pumpkin spice latte, but eat several spoonfuls straight from the jar — as literally only a maniac would do — and you’re in trouble. It contains myristicin, which can cause hallucinations and nausea.

Wanna burn your skin while shitting your fuckin’ guts out? Cashew shells can cause that due to containing urushiol. Cashews are treated before we get them, so they’re safe, but still. Nuts.

The only people wandering around eating industrial quantities of black licorice are deep weirdos, but they could be in trouble — it contains a compound called glycyrrhizin, which in high enough quantities can cause a person’s potassium levels to drop dangerously. 

Daffodils are beautiful, but every part of them is toxic. That’s not nice, is it? Kinda thing that makes you think, “Ah yes, there is no god, and we live in a cruel and uncaring world.” 

You can’t spell “arsenic” without all the letters of “rice,” and appropriately enough, rice contains tons of the stuff. It’s taken out by various processes before we eat it, but it’s still, like, is the world trying to murder us?

Starfruit is a beautiful-looking, delicious thing, which if you’re already ill can completely finish you off. It contains caramboxin, which has severe neurological effects on people with kidney disease — causing seizures, even death. Hideous! 

Apple seeds contain amygdalin, which when digested, releases cyanide into the body. You’d have to eat an insane amount of apple seeds to die from it, and it would hurt like hell when you shit, but yeah. Cyanide. Terrifying.