Bitter taste in mouth (Page 5)

Hi all,

I got Pine Mouth for Christmas!

I ate a salad on Friday with pine nuts in it, and late Christmas day I started to notice a very bitter taste in my mouth whenever I ate or drank anything. It became worse today, so I googled it and found hundreds of people reporting the same thing.

I have reported it to the NSW (Australia) Food Authority. I know the FDA in the US has also been monitoring it since Feb this year.

I strongly suggest everyone who gets it reports it to their local food authority.

Sure it might only be (very) irritating to some, but then there are theories that it may also be a low level type of poisoning from immaturely harvested pine nuts.

To find out what it is for sure, it needs to be tracked and studied. The only way to get that done is to report it.

Me too. Couldn't figure out why I have a bitter taste at the back of my tongue. It is worse with sweet foods. Three days ago I was picking the pine nuts out of a pasta dish my husband brought home. Let's see if it goes away in a day or two.

Update - taste has gone away after about 4 days. Can't be sure, but I think eating/drinking mint may have helped. ????

Wow...I have been experiencing a very sour, bitter taste in my mouth for about 2 weeks now. I have never experienced this awful taste before. Nothing tastes good and no matter how much I brushed my teeth, the unpleasant taste stayed. For the past two week I have been eating pine nuts with my salad. So, this all makes sense... It was driving me crazy... trying to figure out what I had done differently to cause this terrible taste in my mouth.

Thank you!!! I will not eat pine nuts again... even though I love them in salads... this unpleasant taste is not worth it.

So I've had this same exact result from eating pine nuts too, only I've noticed a difference between brands. If I eat pine nuts by Great Lakes International Trading Inc. (package says "Mediterranean Pine Nuts - Vac Pack), then I don't taste anything bitter a few days later. However, if I eat pine nuts by Diamond of California (a brand often sold in grocery stores' baking aisles) then I experience the weird, bitter, back of throat/mouth taste. It's incredibly odd. Maybe the vaccuum packaging by Great Lakes has something to do with my not experiencing any odd flavors days later. Hmm...

So I've had this same exact result from eating pine nuts too, only I've noticed a difference between brands. If I eat pine nuts by Great Lakes International Trading Inc. (package says "Mediterranean Pine Nuts - Vac Pack), then I don't taste anything bitter a few days later. However, if I eat pine nuts by Diamond of California (a brand often sold in grocery stores' baking aisles) then I experience the weird, bitter, back of throat/mouth taste. It's incredibly odd. Maybe the vaccuum packaging by Great Lakes has something to do with my not experiencing any odd flavors days later. Hmm...

So I've had this same exact result from eating pine nuts too, only I've noticed a difference between brands. If I eat pine nuts by Great Lakes International Trading Inc. (package says "Mediterranean Pine Nuts - Vac Pack), then I don't taste anything bitter a few days later. However, if I eat pine nuts by Diamond of California (a brand often sold in grocery stores' baking aisles) then I experience the weird, bitter, back of throat/mouth taste. It's incredibly odd. Maybe the vaccuum packaging by Great Lakes has something to do with my not experiencing any odd flavors days later. Hmm...

I too have a bitter taste in my mouth. I've had it for two days now. I notice it when I eat or drink ( even water). 2 days Ago I ate 2 handful after my wife had roasted some for our dinner salad. This is the first time I've had this bitter taste although we have eaten pine nuts many times before.

Mad dog

hi there a friend of mine has been experiencing the bitter taste in her mouth for 1 1/2 months and she has it from 9.30am onwards till bed but doesnt wake up with it. she is not on alot of meds but it seems worse when she eats bland foods like potato, bread, plain cake, cheese, veges-except carrot and peas, scones. it is more barable when she eats sweet things like icecream tin fruit, minties and coffee. we thought it was Dysgeusiam but it isnt clear with the symptoms. do you know what else it may be. [please help).

I went back to our local supermarket, Tom Thumb, and located the brand of pine nuts we had recently eaten. The brand name was Mellissa, packaged by a company in California. After reading the info on the package, I noted that the product is from China and the company in California apparently imports in bulk and packages under the Mellissa brand name.
I spoke with the grocery and he is going to look into it. I had previously posted on this site the fact I too had developed a very bitter taste in my mouth that has now lasted about 4 days but is now starting to subside. 4 days ago I ate a couple handful of pine nuts that wife had roasted for our salad. The next day was when the bitter taste started.
Could just be coincidental with eating of the pine nuts but it's interesting to note that the only reason I suspected the pine nuts is that I had Googled ' bitter taste in mouth' and that is where I first read of the pine nut correlation.

I am not sure if they are the nuts themselves or some preservative they added to them in China. I have had a bitter taste in my mouth now for 5 days after eating dried goji berries (wolfberry) from China.
First, I thought there is an inflammation in my throat but it seemed unlikely. Now that I read about the nuts, I will stop eating goji berries for the next few weeks to see what happens.

Hi, I have had a bitter metalic taste at the back of my mouth/throat for a few days now. I have not eaten any pine nuts. I do have systemic Lupus and am on meds but I have been on these for years. I also have a tenderness above my ear and on the side of my head. I have been to my G P and my bloods came back fine. Any ideas? thanks.

I had no idea pine nuts could do this. I was searching for why, when I eat, my food tastes bitter. Especially sweeter foods. I did have pine nuts a couple of days ago on a salad. this is bizzare, but seems to be a viable explanation. I was starting to worry that I had a cavity or the flu???

I went to the dentist and had one filling done. the next morning i started having bad tastes in the back of my mouth. The problem continued. The tastes are mostly rotten, and sometimes metallic. I think its got something to do with my filling. I went back to him for more fillings but didn't mention it for some dumb reason. I think the dentist shaved off too much of the filling when he was fixing my bite as i could feel a deep hole after he'd done it but he said it was fine. I couldn't see to contradict him. I have been putting up wit this for a while now. So finally i made an appointment to go back and get it checked. Oddly!! The morning after i made the appt, the taste stopped happening. Then we had a cyclone and so I didn't make it to my appt. But the tastes have come back.

Another thing is that i started using a mouth wash after i went to the dentist because i wanted more fluoride since we don't have it in our water. When i stopped using it (becuase it was making my teeth over senstive i though) i thought the tastes improved.

I think i had better go back to the dentist again. But i am afraid he will just sheet hte problem home to another hole in my mouth that doesn't actually exist. I confess i don't trust the dentist. Perhaps i can go back to this one for a check up and if i do have to get another filling, i will go to another dentist.

But i'd like to know what these tastes are.

I looked on the web a bit and i see that a metallic taste can be caused by reflux. Perhaps all the pine nut eaters are getting reflux from the pine nuts.

well i started having bitter taste 4 past 2 days and cause of that i have to drink lots of water and sometimes i vomit little bit ..and night time i dont even get sleep my mouth tends to be dry even drinking water its still dry...
even the food i eat they taste bitter

You sound sick patient7, see a doctor

I just got this bitter taste in my mouth this afternoon. I thought at first something was wrong with the Cherry Riccola I was sucking on, but it didn't go away and the taste of wine was also awful. So I googled and found this site. I too just had pine nuts the past couple of days! I haven't gotten them for a very long time, and have been using walnuts instead, mostly due to cost. We decided to treat ourselves with a homemade pesto pizza with fresh pine nuts and I was also eating them straight out of the bag. Not sure where they are from, the local store packages them up in baggies. But no doubt probably from China. I wonder if organic ones from a health food store would cause the same thing. Will have to try, because this is terrible and while I love my homemade walnut pesto, I do love regular pesto too. I couldn't stand the thought of having this taste for days, so I experimented, what goes well with bitter. Gin does! and a shot of gin helped, with a sprig of fresh garden mint. So much so that I thought I was cured immediately so I tried my wine again, still awful. Oh well I guess the worst thing now is that I have to drink gin for days. Okay the best thing really is to either avoid pine nuts or find ones that don't do this, I never had it happen before so it must be the pine nuts and not something wrong with me (well there may be things wrong with me, but on this issue I see I am not alone...)

Same thing as everyone else! Thanks for this post -- the bitterness had me contemplating everything I had done/eaten for the past few days. Hadn't eaten pine nuts in quite a long time, then made a pesto with them as well as topped them on my asparagus and a handful while cooking last night. Ugh. Even toast tasted bad. Threw away the bread first, then everything else tasted bad. When my glass of red wine didn't taste good, I knew there was a problem. Found this forum, threw away the pine nuts. Won't do that again!
-Sue

Great article here is another site that talks about some of the causes for a Bitter Taste In Mouth

Have you recently ingested any zinc cold remedies? These products can cause olfactory nerve damage which results in odd smells/tastes and even a complete loss thereof. I have olfactory nerve damage from a zinc cold remedy (cough lozenges) and I smell sulphur or burnt hair all the time. When the damage first occured I smelled ammonia very strongly.

Thankyou Selene, I was so worried as to why I have this awful bitter taste in my mouth everytime I eat and for a while afterwards. I ate a small pack of pinenuts 3 days ago and it started 1 day after I did. It is mostly on sides of tongue and roof of mouth but is so annoying. I appreciate your input so now I feel at ease as to what it is. Tracey