So Martha Stewart is making rhubarb desserts today – a fool (for April Fool’s Day, hah) and a grunt. But she said one thing that caught my attention:
The leaves are deadly poisonous … They are toxic, oxalic acid and you can really die from it. And you notice in the fields, at the farm, the horses never go near, the chickens, nobody goes near the rhubarb.
While it’s true that rhubarb leaves are poisonous the cause isn’t oxalic acid, which is found in many foods, including cocoa, spinach, carrots, and berries. Spinach contains enough to all but wipe out the calcium found in the vegetable, because oxalic acid combines with the calcium to form calcium oxalate, an insoluble compound that can build up and form stones in the kidney or gallbladder. If oxalic acid was the only toxin at work in rhubarb leaves, it would take several pounds to kill you.
It is possible, however, that there’s a second compound at work in rhubarb leaves that works with the oxalic acid to make them toxic. One suspect is a form of anthraquinone glycoside, which is present in rhubarb roots and has been used in traditional medicine as a laxative. The anthraquinone glycoside(s) in rhubarb leaves may work in tandem with the oxalic acid to have a toxic effect, although there doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence to back that up.
I have no idea why I posted this other than that I like rhubarb.
Good stuff. Very true. We grew rhubarb when I was a child and we were always warned about the leaves.
Jamie at Home had a great episode about rhubarb recently on the FN.
I have an idea of why you posted it. Because you like to sound smart – which you seem to be – but you like to display it for other people.
Rhubarb pie is amazing when done right.
Keith (or anyone else, really)-
Any ideas for non-dessert uses of rhubarb?
I think I’d like to try to make a rhubarb sauce – maybe with green chiles – for some sort of pork roast, but I haven’t done it before or talked with anyone who has.
Kevin: The Jamie at Home episode about rhubarb was indeed great, and he had a recipe for a stir-fried pork belly dish with a rhubarb sauce. From the JAH Web site on channel4.com:
Rhubarb makes a great accompaniment to rich, fatty roasts like roast pork and even duck – both meats that go well with acidic fruits.
I always knew Spinach was bad for you! I’m gonna call my mom right now.
Non dessert use: cut rhubarb stalk from garden; wash; cut; sugar slightly; eat fresh.
My father did it as a child.
Full disclosure: I heart rhubarb in all its forms.
I picked rhubarb and cut the leaves off right away. I picked up the leaves and put them in the compost bin. I had on a sleeveless shirt and now have a rash on my arms. Could the rash be from the rhubarb?
I’m not an expert, but I didn’t read anything about rashes when researching this post.