Round about Christmas time found these totally delish little bites. Bought them as my special treat since I can’t eat anything of the normal Christmas menu.

About halfway theough the twenty or so, eating no more than one or two per day … I’d call them biscuits you might call them cookies … I read the ingredients.

Huh?

First in the list, meaning there’s more of it than anything else, was apricot kernel flour. And I thought that was poisonous?

Diving down that rabbit hole, I discovered that raw apricot kernels are poisonous, containing cyanide; that cyanide is a biologically produced poison, in contrast to—for example—arsenic which is of mineral origin.

Cooking makes apricot kernel flour edible, and it is considered a health food as it has a high protein and needful mineral content.

At the end of January, I decided to get that packet out of the fridge, had been there long enough, how many to go? Four? I ate three. That night had an attack of gout in my left thumb and left big toe.

Gout is caused by the breakdown of purines into uric acid. Purines? Okay, they are important in that ‘cells use them to make the building blocks of DNA and RNA.’ (Courtesy of Google) I had already met excess uric acid once or twice in relation to eating too much red meat.

How could these scrumptious little bikkies be causing me such pain? Er, probably the baking agent? Ammonium hydrogen carbonate. One of my many many allergic reactions is to ammonia.

But, you know, I was still confused. What on earth has uric acid in common with ammonium that could be causing me such pain?

Nitrogen … they both have nitrogen in them.

And to make the whole deal worse (for me) all that happened on the same day that I chewed a single solitary coffee bean, thinking I’d ‘wire’ my brain to prevent the dizzies I’ve been having.

Caffeine is another example of a purine.

Unreal!

Back in the days of high school, I failed chemistry dismally. Give me a go now and I can probably pass.

All of it means, read the ingredients even closer.