There are times, when sharing meals with colleagues, one learns that they have been unwittingly been carrying on in an inappropriate manner with a particular food item. It was pointed out to me that eating the fuzzy area in the artichoke – above the heart, encircled by the prickly leaves – was a faux pas (or ‘fox pox’ in the words of a particular cognitive scientist). I had been eating the whole of the artichoke, save for the prickliest of leaves, for years. When I inquired as to the concern about consuming the fuzzy middle a little concerned that perhaps this explained my mental state, my colleague shrugged. Apparently this fell into that grey “just because” area.
An Internet search revealed that this fuzzy part is the choke to the arti. While all cooking sites noted the choke needs to be discarded before serving, no one felt the need to explain this necessary procedure. I came across a Yahoo! Answers question, from someone in the same predicament as myself:
Help! Someone just ate the fuzzy center of the artichoke. I can’t find out what I should do. Is it poison?
I have come to view the answers given on Yahoo! Answers with suspicion, but I was glad I wasn’t alone in my choke poisoning. The answer chosen as the resolution to the question stated that while the choke was not poisonous, it can get stuck in one’s throat, causing one to choke, hence the name. This hardly seemed believable. While I am unable to think of other fuzzy edibles, I’m sure they exist and do not get stuck in one’s throat, just because the fuzzy tentacles lash on to the uvula on the way down.
Artichokes, in their old tyme native land were called articiocco, the Italian can be broken down and translated into ‘chief stump’. Apparently, in the 16th century the artichoke had yet to go for anyone’s throats. It wasn’t until artichokes were brought to Elizabethan England that folk etymology appears to have taken over. Such as can be evidenced here, in this line from Ben Johnson’s 1598 comedy “Every Man In His Humor:”
Like a young Hartechocke that alwayes carries Pepper and salte in it selfe.
Apparently from the earliest dates of artichoke (or variously hartichoke) existing in the English speaking world there has been a belief that, as the OED puts it:
The flower contained an inedible centre which would choke anyone attempting to eat it.
I guess I’m just lucky.
As to fuzzy edibles, there are always kiwis, which I always ate as one might eat an apple- skin and all. I found no discomfort in it, but those around me were often startled by that approach. I stopped doing it only cause I ate so many kiwis in high school that I developed a mild allergy to them. So maybe they are poison.