In article , wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
That is more or less correct. But in Japan young bracken shoots are
cooked and eaten as the delicacy "mountain greens". They don't taste
particularly good to eat and I avoided them after working out the
translation. Some details on the active ingredient - nasty stuff...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptaquiloside

Forms a powerful alkylating agent and seriously damages DNA.

Which is odd, since Japanese cuisine and longevity are always lauded
about (tending to people pointing fingers at how healthy eating fish
is).

You forget the Merkin effect. The environment is full of carcinogens,
but anything that doesn't have the backing of Real Money behind it
gets flagged as really bad news, however far down the list of dangers
it is. That being said, bracken isn't one of the really lunatic
cases, and is well worth not eating.

Actually, it's unfair to blamce just the Merkins. Our apologies for
governments refused to do anything about azo dyes for ages (and, to
some entent, still do), despite the carcinogenicity of some (e.g.
kipper brown) and foul effects of others (e.g. tartrazine).


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.