whats safe to eat ,whats poisonous

[snakeshack]

VC I think you can only eat worms in that rhyme :-

Long, thin, slimy ones; Short, fat, juicy ones

Actually worms are a wonderful survival food, if you purge the gut in moss for 24 hrs then dry and grind/crush to a powder they make an amazing oxtail like soup and contain more protein pro rata than beef. They were the difference between life & death for many POWs who built the Burma railway


Sent from my iPhone using Grow Your Own Forum

[FB.]

My Gran said not to eat raw potatoes because it would give me 'worms' but I think it was because we needed them for dinner.

'Worms' probably refers to parasitic worms such as Enterobius, Ascaris, Taenia and other human intestinal parasites. In the past many people carried them but nowadays they are quite rare in the UK and mostly 'caught' when people come back from exotic holidays.
Other parasites might include: Giardia, Entamoeba, Cryptosporidium to name just a few - farm animals can carry these parasites and excrete them in their faeces.
Then you have the likes of Salmonella and Campylobacter which are commonly associated with poultry (so if you have chickens nearby their droppings could have contaminated the soil). Plus certain toxigenic strains of E.coli (such as E.coli O157) often found in pigs and their manure.

Simply washing the potato (or carrot, or other vegetable) and then eating it could result in the ingestion of all kinds of diseases if they were present in the soil or on the land to begin with, such as having been introduced by the use of manure or allowing animals onto the land.

Washing with water may look clean, but parasites and bacteria are tiny - one billion bacteria or at least one-thousand parasitic 'worm' eggs could fit into a one-millilitre container.

So back when your gran told you not to eat them raw, it was wise advice. Nowadays we live in a less diseased society and can often get away with being less careful (but we're not 100% disease-free; plenty of people still get food poisoning from poor kitchen techniques, especially during 'barbecue season').

Fruits tend to be above the soil and mostly away from faecal contamination by animals.