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Thanks to reader Keith B. for telling me about this (and no, I have no interest in trying them). — Dan
The Meal That Makes You See Tiny People?
A good meal can be a revelatory experience, transcending your sense of taste and becoming something otherworldly — or, so say a lot of food blogs. It can be something you talk about for weeks if not years, and yes, it can be an experience unlike any other. You may actually say you saw the heavens above open up.
Yes, that’s hyperbole — no matter how great a meal is, you’re not going to actually see anything out of the ordinary. Usually.
The exception? Some meals in China and Southeast Asia, if you have a specific ingredient — a mushroom called Lanmaoa asiatica, as seen below.
Known as jian shou qing in China, the mushrooms are totally fine to eat when cooked thoroughly; most people report nothing more dramatic than a normal meal. But when it’s eaten raw or undercooked, some diners experience something far stranger: imaginary little people appear all over the place. The University of Utah explains and shares an example:
After consuming [jian shou qing], locals frequently report having unbelievably bizarre experiences, most notably characterized by seeing “xiao ren ren,” or little people. A professor in [the Chinese province of] Yunnan recounted how one evening during dinner, he began seeing swirling shapes and colors after eating stir-fried mushrooms. Since the psychoactive effects are familiar to most locals, he began looking for xiao ren ren but was disappointed to find none—until he lifted the tablecloth and peeked underneath, seeing “hundreds of xiao ren ren, marching like soldiers.”
The phenomenon is called a “Lilliputian hallucination,” after Gulliver’s Travels, and it’s not well understood, to say the least. But it’s not uncommon. There are hundreds of nearly identical accounts in rural China, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea — regions separated by thousands of miles but connected by the presence of the same mushroom species.
The cause, though, is a mystery. When mycologists — people who study mushrooms — analyzed some jian shou qing, they expected to find a known psychoactive compound — psilocybin, for example, or muscimol, the chemical responsible for the effects of the mushrooms often abused for their hallucinogenic effects. But they found neither. (And if they asked the imaginary little people, well, they weren’t telling.)
In fact, to date, chemical testing hasn’t identified any compound in Lanmaoa asiatica that’s known to cause hallucinations at all. Per the blog of Mushies, a mushroom-based food company, “researchers are currently feeding mushroom extracts to mice and watching for behavioral changes, systematically narrowing down which chemical is responsible. Somewhere in this mushroom is a molecule that reliably makes mammals hallucinate tiny people, and we have no idea what it is yet.”
It’s unclear if there are any other side effects from Lanmaoa asiatica other than seeing little people marching around your immediate area, but it’s probably not worth risking finding out — in China, at least, local authorities warn people about the potential danger of eating the mushrooms. The good — if you like local mushrooms — is that the hallucinations are easy to avoid. If you cook the mushrooms first, the hallucinogenic effect goes away. Or, of course, you could just not eat strange mushrooms.
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More About Foods That Change Your Senses
Today’s Bonus fact: If you want to make your glass of water taste sweet, you can mix some sugar in it — or you can eat some artichoke. According to a 1972 study (here), artichokes contain the salts of chlorogenic acid and cynarin, which, “by temporarily modifying the tongue,” can make water and other liquids taste sweeter than they normally would. One of the researchers behind the study, Dr. Linda Bartoshuk, told the New York Times that “the artichoke effect lasts about four or five minutes,” and she herself noticed the effect “even after eating artichokes marinated in vinegar.”
From the Archives: Miracle Berries: The “magic” berries that make lemons taste sweet.
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And thanks! — Dan