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motaman
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A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain
#25831260 - 02/23/19 12:56 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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https://amp.livescience.com/64826-woman-dies-mushrooms-restaurant-spain.html
A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain
Rachael Rettner | Feb 21, 2019 12:41 pm ET
A woman has died and more than two dozen others are ill after eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Spain, according to news reports.
The reason for the illnesses is still being investigated. However, it is being reported that the woman ate a dish containing Morchella mushrooms, or true morels, which can be poisonous if not properly cooked, The Telegraph reported.
The 46-year-old woman developed symptoms of food poisoning, including vomiting and diarrhea, after eating at the Riff restaurant in Valencia, Spain, and died on Sunday (Feb. 17), according to The Guardian. Her husband and son also developed symptoms and are still recovering.
Health authorities have so far identified 29 people who developed food poisoning after eating at the restaurant between Feb. 13 and 16. Most of the cases were relatively mild, with the exception of the one death, The Guardian reported.
Morchella mushrooms are thought to contain the toxin hydrazine, which is destroyed by cooking, The Independent reported. Similar-looking species of mushrooms, known as false morels, can be lethal.
An inspection of the restaurant on Feb. 18 did not find any obvious reasons for the food poisonings, but food samples from the menu are still being tested, The Guardian reported.
The restaurant is currently closed during the investigation.
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Morel Guy
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: motaman]
#25831466 - 02/23/19 06:04 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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No alcohol with these in your system.
-------------------- "in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur" In filth it will be found in dung it will be found
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tacodude
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Morel Guy]
#25831520 - 02/23/19 06:37 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Any more info on the combo contradiction?
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Morel Guy
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: tacodude]
#25831533 - 02/23/19 06:49 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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It's probably like drinking on NSAIDs but a lot more potent/fast acting.
Likely some sort of stomach bleeding or irritation/inflammation. There aren't many studies on it because human testing is not usually a good idea. Animal testing would also be very cruel and different in response to alcohol.
-------------------- "in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur" In filth it will be found in dung it will be found
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bodhisatta 
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Morel Guy]
#25831699 - 02/23/19 08:39 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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I have a feeling they just had a sanitation issue and the kitchen was cross contaminating. Probably really had nothing to do with the mushrooms.
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Morel Guy
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: bodhisatta]
#25831705 - 02/23/19 08:41 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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She likely drank too much ethanol is my guess.
-------------------- "in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur" In filth it will be found in dung it will be found
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feevers



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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: bodhisatta]
#25831714 - 02/23/19 08:45 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
bodhisatta said: I have a feeling they just had a sanitation issue and the kitchen was cross contaminating. Probably really had nothing to do with the mushrooms.
always a possibility
really all it takes is one new dishwasher who cuts corners or line cook who doesn't follow proper protocol and people can get sick, even die
I'm assuming they weren't serving raw mushrooms
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bodhisatta 
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: feevers]
#25831725 - 02/23/19 08:49 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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They definitely cooked those shrooms is my guess. Raw morels don't sound like a delight.
The lady probably would have had to been absolutely hammered drunk and ate a fistful of raw morels to get sick. I'm still sticking to my cross contamination guess.
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Thesunbeam
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: bodhisatta]
#25831845 - 02/23/19 09:55 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Yeah raw morels are kinda gross, wouldn’t think she ate them raw
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Amanita86
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Thesunbeam]
#25831995 - 02/23/19 10:58 AM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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29 people all had the soup? You could track it back if you had all the deets but there isn’t enough info in the article.
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musiclover420
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Amanita86]
#25832177 - 02/23/19 12:04 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Amanita86 said: 29 people all had the soup? You could track it back if you had all the deets but there isn’t enough info in the article.
Seems interesting that it only effected 1 person so badly as well, 1 death and 30~ mild cases of sickness?
Makes me wonder if there was an old/spoiled mushroom that she ate and the rest got bits of in the soup or something
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Holybullshit
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: musiclover420] 1
#25832290 - 02/23/19 12:57 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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They probably cooked the meal sous-vide. And the temps never got high enough to destroy the hydrazine. Or, as they article states, they might not have had the mushroom they thought they did. At places like that, chefs also do a lot of experimental dishes, that may not follow the same practices you would normally use when working with those mushrooms. I really wish we knew what they were used in.
With sous-vide cooking you are able to cook food at exact temperatures, for very long times if you wish. Generally, depending on the dish, you might finish it in a pan before serving. Through normal cooking methods you would cook it with high heat for a short time, with sous-vide you never use those high temperatures. It's absolutely wonderful for cooking meat, allowing you to unwind every last bit of collagen without overcooking the meat, you can keep a steak at medium-rare(or however done you want it to be) even after many hours of cooking. Then finish it in a pan to get a good sear on the outside. And since it never reaches high temperatures you can prevent overcooking vegetables as well.
Not only does it allow precision you just can't get any other way. But it speeds things up, because it allows you to basically have most parts of a plate ready to go, just unseal it, sear it in a pan(if needed) and plate it. Makes things go so much smoother and easier, as far as each dish being ready to serve at the same time.
But since this mushroom is rare, and widespread use of sous-vide relatively new, I doubt a lot of people have experience cooking it sous-vide, and the temperatures in the water bath were not high enough, and depending on what dish was served it may have either not been pan finished, or didn't spend enough time being exposed to high heat in the pan. I saw someone mention soup, although I don't know if they were just guessing or what, but perhaps it needed to be boiled to make the mushrooms safe, but sous-vide cooking occurs at much lower temperatures than boiling, and even if they were using a big pot they might have used a double boiler, or never held it at boiling for very long.
Does anyone know what temperatures need to be achieved to make these mushrooms safe?
At such high end restaurants, on any given night, there are only a few dishes on the menu each night...and with prized ingredients like that they may have incorporated it into more than one. So it is no wonder why so many people got sick. It is even plausible that her plate was rushed, or someone messed up and the water bath wasn't as hot as the others or it spent less time cooking, so it contained more toxins than others.
This woman might have also been very petite, with a low BMI, or short-statured. People like that don't last very long when they've got all their water coming out both ends.
I have a lot of restaurant experience, and I highly, highly doubt 30 people got violently ill because of cross contamination or dirty dishes. Especially somewhere Michelin-starred, you can be damn sure something spoiled would never be used in such an establishment. I think it is a fairly safe bet to say that a toxic ingredient was used, and was either improperly cooked, or was not the ingredient they thought it was.
Edited by Holybullshit (02/23/19 01:41 PM)
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bodhisatta 
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Holybullshit]
#25832419 - 02/23/19 01:46 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Simply using sous vide could explain it too. Used wrong they turn into pathogen incubators.
Just because critics love the restaurant doesn't mean it gets any more inspection scrutiny.
Either that or they got a load of false morels and no one noticed for weeks.
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drake89
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: bodhisatta]
#25832736 - 02/23/19 04:18 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
bodhisatta said: Simply using sous vide could explain it too. Used wrong they turn into pathogen incubators.
Just because critics love the restaurant doesn't mean it gets any more inspection scrutiny.
Either that or they got a load of false morels and no one noticed for weeks.
No one brought up whether or not they were fresh. It's possible they were fresh , first of the year from china. But simply soaking the dried ones could breed pathogens too. And likely this lady had a health problem that made her vulnerable to whatever microbe it was.
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bodhisatta 
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: drake89]
#25832768 - 02/23/19 04:28 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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even fresh how much do true morels have like the same as buttons no? I eat raw buttons along with millions of other people all the time.
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Holybullshit
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: bodhisatta]
#25833367 - 02/23/19 08:06 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
bodhisatta said: Just because critics love the restaurant doesn't mean it gets any more inspection scrutiny.
Michelin starred restaurants are the best of the best. They are ran and staffed by experts, the scrutiny comes from the people working there, they do not cut corners, each ingredient and each plate is held to the highest of standards. Unless there was a disgruntled worker, or sabotage from the competition, then nobody in that kitchen would allow spoiled ingredients to go into the food.
Mistakes do happen though, and they are generally on the cutting edge of food preparation, so the mushrooms could have been added to the dish in some atypical way.
As I've said, without knowing which restaurant is involved and which dishes were served this is pure conjecture...but gourmet restaurants don't generally cook food in one large batch...there are exceptions, certain ingredients such as sauces could be cooked in a batch that would end up on a lot of plates...but just knowing what I know of how kitchens like this operate something would have to go very, very wrong for any pathogens, especially at that level, to end up on so many plates. Which is why it is easier for me to believe a toxic ingredient was involved.
I would really like someone here who has a lot of knowledge on the toxicity of these mushrooms(or a lookalike) and what must be done to remove it to chime in...surely here of all places somebody has that knowledge.
Edited by Holybullshit (02/23/19 08:13 PM)
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drake89
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Holybullshit]
#25833460 - 02/23/19 08:49 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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False morels have hydrazines. The wiki entry is very long, and suffice to say a theres lot of contradictory evidence. The symptoms do match with regular food poinoning until you get to neurological damage. If the kitchen is as top notch you'd think they could tell a false from a real morel, especially the purveyor...
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Eazybreezy02


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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: drake89]
#25833553 - 02/23/19 09:37 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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This ridiculous and horrible reporting in the news, once again. Pure speculation about the morels on the part of the media. Any vegetable could be a culprit, cross contamination, unwashed hands, etc etc could be just as likely the cause
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Holybullshit
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Eazybreezy02]
#25837478 - 02/25/19 06:45 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Eazybreezy02 said: This ridiculous and horrible reporting in the news, once again. Pure speculation about the morels on the part of the media. Any vegetable could be a culprit, cross contamination, unwashed hands, etc etc could be just as likely the cause
I'm not saying it couldn't be. But in reality it isn't that easy to give 30 people food poisoning in one night. If it were it would be straight dangerous to ever eat out, because all of that shit is happening on a weekly, if not daily, basis at your average restaurant/fast food restaurant. Places are nasty, with unhappy/undertrained/underpaid people staffing them. So the chances of them being the cause in one of the very few restaurants where things like that rarely occur...
I mean, the sous-chef could have crossed a line with the wrong mother fucker and he retaliated with some kind of chemical emetic or something. But I would believe something like that before I believe unsanitary conditions at a Michelin-starred restaurant poisoned 30 people. Especially considering millions of people eat at truly unsanitary restaurants, with ingredients not fit for consumption, contamination on every food prep surface, and people not washing hands/changing gloves, to no ill effect everyday.
Edited by Holybullshit (02/25/19 06:50 PM)
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bodhisatta 
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Re: A Woman Died After Reportedly Eating Prized Mushrooms at Fancy Restaurant in Spain [Re: Holybullshit]
#25837646 - 02/25/19 07:50 PM (4 years, 10 months ago) |
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Unsanitary could be as easy as the thermostat holding soup or the sous vide going bad and no one checking with a thermometer
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