Pineapple Contains Tiny Shards!

Briar's mouth hurts after consuming too much scrumptious pineapple.

Welcome to Briar’s daily journal. This is where Briar writes about everything she learns daily, mostly for her own personal record. Never stop learning ♥

01/26/2025

Ooh! We’ve got a short post today!

You know how when you eat too much pineapple, it makes your mouth hurt really bad, and so you have to try to figure out how to eat the most pineapple possible without it being too much?

Yes. So that was me this morning, and unfortunately, I miscalculated. It got me thinking. Why does pineapple do that? Is it really that acidic? Why doesn’t the same thing happen when you eat a lemon?

After looking it up, I found my answer. Pineapples contain an enzyme called bromelain. Bromelain breaks down proteins and, therefore, eats away at the protective coating on your mouth and tongue, leaving it susceptible to the acidity.

That’s not all! Pineapples have a defense mechanism in the form of tiny needle-like shards of oxalate crystals. They cause micro-abrasions to the inside of your mouth and also allow the acid to seep in.

Oxalate crystals are just a conjugate base of oxalic acid, which you might know as the varroa mite treatment beekeepers use. I have an oxalic acid story of feeling like tiny pieces of glass were cutting into my lungs, but we’ll save that for another time.

Combining that with bromelain gives you a sore, worn-out tongue. I ate the pineapple early this morning… and I’m still feeling it.

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We have a lot of Hmong people in our area due to the immigration in the 1970s. Most of them came to the Midwest, particularly in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

I heard today that some would flood their rental house basements with water and raise carp because it was a cultural thing that they did. I found this interesting, so I tried looking it up, but I didn’t find a single credible source.

I found multiple uncredible(I almost wrote incredible, but that wouldn’t make sense) sources of people on forums arguing about how they were sure they remembered this. Still, none of them could list any sources there, either. So, it might be true, or it might not🤷‍♀️.

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Lastly, I was calling my mom this evening, and I had the phone perched precariously against some books directly in front of a small lit candle. The phone slipped, knocking the candle off the end table, and hot melted wax splashed all over my lap.

I didn’t even exclaim anything XD. I just said, “Well, mom, I just got hot melted wax poured on top of me; I’m going to go change out of these clothes and throw them in the wash.”

She replied, “Throw them in the freezer so you can peel the wax off.”

I did a quick search online to see what everyone said, and they all said the same thing as my mom: Stick it in the freezer, scrape off the wax, and wash it.

I put my jeans in the freezer, which wasn’t super effective. We’ll see what happens after it goes through the washing machine.

-Briar Albaugh