Can You Eat Horse Chestnuts
You can eat horse chestnuts, they are very nutritious and contains potassium, calcium, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and protein. Horse chestnuts are also used in some traditional medicines. But they do not have a good reputation due to cyanide present in them. It is considered unsafe as it causes twitching of muscles, depression, and weakness in the body.
Horse chestnuts seem very appealing, tempting you to want to eat them, but they are highly toxic to humans, even leading to paralysis and death. According to WebMD (under Side Effects Tab), raw horse chestnut seeds, bark, flowers, and leaves are UNSAFE and may even kill if taken orally by adults or children.
Horse chestnut seeds, bark, flowers, and leaves contain large amounts of the entheogenic drug esculin, making the trees toxic. Despite having lovely spring flowers, the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) has horrendous-tasting nuts that are toxic to humans because of a toxin called aesculin. Horse-chestnut trees and conkers contain a toxic chemical called aesculin, which is harmful to humans and many animals, including dogs. The horse chestnuts poison, a chemical called aesculin, is relatively mild, and because the conker fruit is tough and bitter, it is unlikely that anyone would consume a substantial amount.
The conkers leaves are greenish, but are more rough and larger than those on sweet chestnut trees. While chestnut trees only grow to about 40 feet tall, they too bear white flowers, but blooms in June. Chestnut trees are found in landscapes by nature, green spaces as ornamentals, and are also planted in orchards to produce nuts.
In gardens, however, and also on streets and in parks, horse chestnut is grown extensively in both North America and Europe as an ornamental tree. The common horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum), with its vertical spikes of white flowers scattered with pink flowers, is particularly popular, as are hybrids that have pink or red flowers. Horse chestnuts are grown extensively on streets and parks in places that have temperate climates, and are prevalent throughout the region around Sooke, and other nearby areas such as Victoria and Esquimalt. Horse Chestnuts (Aesculus spp) are not edible, and are actually unrelated to the real chestnut trees discussed above, despite their similarity of nuts. Horse Chestnuts, like real chestnuts, grow within a shell known as a burr, but whereas real chestnuts have lots of small, delicate hairs on the burr, horse chestnuts have much less, but larger, tougher, and more pungent spiky PRICKLY bristles.
Both horse chestnuts and edible chestnuts yield a brown nut, but edible chestnuts will always be highly processed. People looking for a completely natural food without preservatives will find that horse chestnuts are highly processed.
Edible chestnuts, however, always have acorns or spines in their nuts, which is what you might think your fingers would look like spines. Conker nuts are bitter, and people often mistake conkers for chestnuts because the two nuts are very similar.
| Disadvantages | |
| Twitching of muscles | Eating raw horse chestnuts can cause twitching of muscles |
| Depression | It can cause depression |
| Weakness | Eating them can cause weakness among the body |
One thing that we have to realize is that chestnuts are sweet, they are edible, but conkers, or horse chestnuts, are toxic, they are not meant to be eaten. Asian chestnuts are usually approved for raw consumption, but there is no guarantee that eating raw chestnuts does not make you sick. The fastest way to get your chestnuts into shape is by keeping them at room temperature for several days; however, the room temperature conditions also will dehydrate chestnuts, so you need to consume them promptly.
Chestnuts purchased in the shop should already go through the curing process and be ready for consumption. Fresh chestnuts can be refrigerated in a paper bag in a crisper for 2-3 days, or in an airtight container for up to 10 days. Fresh chestnuts left inside the shells last very well in the refrigerator, where they can be stored easily for up to one month, provided that the refrigerator is set at a consistent 2degC or 3degF.
When choosing chestnuts that have been processed in the shop or at a market, consumers must examine them closely for quality, the same way that you would examine a banana or pear.
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If you like to roast chestnuts in your oven, pull out your chestnut roasting pan or chestnut roasting basket. Just 10 roasted chestnuts provide 17% of your daily needs – an important benefit considering that most of us do not eat almost enough. Bears, which have to eat 20,000 Caleries per day during fall, really like their snacking on edible chestnuts. Keep an eye out for a real chestnut, and count yourself lucky if you do get to have a bite of the American chestnut.
Edible species of chestnuts found in Michigan include American, Chinese, Japanese, European, and Chinook. Fresh chestnuts provide vitamin C and are far lower in fat than other nuts, containing double the starch as potatoes, earning the chestnut tree its bread-tree moniker in some regions around the world. Consuming nuts or leaves from horse chestnut trees causes severe colic in horses and other animals, which causes vomiting and stomach pain.
The conkers are actually slightly toxic, containing a chemical known as aescin, which causes vomiting and can also paralyze. The other side of the conker is that they are not edible because they have a chemical called aescin, which is poisonous and can cause vomiting and paralysis. Not only are conkers toxic for dogs, the nuts and spiky outer coatings also can cause damage and blockage of the intestinal tract of your dog if they are eaten.
If you are worried your dogs might try to eat conkers, you should take them in areas far away from any horse chestnut trees, where it is less likely that they will find any conkers on the ground.
If you see signs of extreme mildew, smell an off-putting smell, or have conkers as solid as concrete, these are not good to eat. If you are suffering from worms, it is more than likely because you are smitten with one of the two species of chestnut weevil, which is a type of beetle. These chestnuts looked just like roasted chestnuts that I had back in China, and felt just like chestnuts, and a man working at the home told me that these were chestnuts.
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Whereas the spines of the sugar chestnut shell are packed tight together and are super-thin, whereas the chestnuts themselves are smaller, and usually flattened out at one side. A red horse chestnut tree is identified as an ornamental deciduous tree, having conical clusters of attractive red flowers, compound palmate leaves of five leaflets, and small, circular, spiked seed pods. Consumers should note that the term horse chestnut is sometimes used to describe a non-related tree in the genus Aesculus; trees of this genus can also be called Buckeyes.
What happens when you eat a horse chestnut?
Esculin is present in raw horse chestnut seed, bark, blossom, and leaf, which should not be used. Esculin poisoning symptoms include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, twitching muscles, weakness, depression, and paralysis. If you mistakenly ate raw horse chestnut, get medical help right away.
Is there a way to eat horse chestnuts?
Even though you cannot eat raw horse chestnuts, you can use them for medicinal purposes. Simply extract Aescin from the poisonous conkers and use it to treat diseases like hemorrhoids and chronic venous insufficiency. You can also use conkers to keep spiders and other insects away.
What do horse chestnuts taste like?
Horse chestnuts taste incredibly inedible and bitter. They also give off a rancid smell that can be pretty off-putting and make you avoid eating them. While edible chestnuts have their covers explode away quickly, horse chestnuts’ covers do not explode away immediately and are pretty tough nuts to break.