Facts
Some people are brave enough to eat this carcinogenic fern! In fact, the Japanese culture has been eating bracken fern for quite a while. Many other rural parts of the world have as well. Most of the time people eat the fiddleheads of the Bracken fern. This is the part of the fern with the most ptalquiloside so it is the most dangerous part to eat. However, there are two solutions to this.
1. Soaking the Bracken fern fiddle heads in cool water helps keep them crunchy and changes the water regularly depletes the toxin. This is the way the Japanese culture eats them.
2. Pure ptalquiloside degenerates at room temperature. Salt and baking soda increase this effect. This means boiling the fiddleheads in a salt water solution guarantees almost all the toxin as been taken out.
If you want to try a Korean Bracken fern recipe then follow this link:
Korean Bracken fern recipe
However, Asian cultures that regularly eat Bracken fern have higher rates of throat and stomach cancer. It has not been proven that this is the cause, however, it may be a factor. Eating Bracken fern everyday causes an overload for the body and this creates a high risk of cancer.
Bracken fern has been found to cause three conditions.
Leukemia causes cancer in bone marrow. Normally, bone marrow makes red blood
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cells, white blood cells, and platelets. When leukemia infects the
body bone marrow makes an unhealthy amount of white blood cells.
These white blood don't stop growing when they should. Due to their
number and size they crowd other blood cells and cause problems.
Thrombocytopenia is a condition where the blood has a low amount of platelets. Platelets help the blood clot.
To learn more about how Bracken fern causes cancer click here.
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