What Are Pomelos Typically Coated with in the US?
- Bryan Le
- May 5
- 2 min read
Subreddit: r/FoodScience
User: u/lwarzy
Original Post:
I have had plenty of pomelos in the past. (Love grapefruit flavor but I have the bitter gene, so pomelos it is.) I made a couple of loaf cakes from them in the past week though. The cake (and glaze) I made yesterday used a lot more zest than the previous one, and every time I taste it, I get a numb sort of feeling in my mouth. I do not have any known food allergies, however I do have a sensitivity to high concentrations of formaldehyde. (migraine trigger)
I am in the US and the pomelo I used yesterday came from Trader Joe’s. (I recognize the pomelo may not be of US origin ofc.) It was much, much fresher than the one I used last week which had dried out quite a bit - that zest was much more dry and deep yellow while this one was moist and more of a light greenish-yellow. I realize now that I forgot to wash the fruit before I zested it, and wondered if there might be something in the citrus coating that could have led to this?
It’s almost a numbing and cooling sensation and primarily seems to be coming from the glaze/icing, which was just powdered sugar, pomelo juice, pomelo zest, salt, and heavy cream. I checked the formaldehyde content of pomelos, and it doesn’t appear to be significantly high which is why I suspect it could be something on the outside of the fruit, or even possibly a strong concentration within the zest. I’ve eaten pomelos fine in the past, but it’s always just been the flesh, never the zest obviously.
Anyone with a deeper knowledge of citrus and citrus processing have any ideas as to what might be the culprit?
My Response:
Studies that evaluate how much isotopic formaldehyde enters into the body from the environment show that the human body produces more formaldehyde from the metabolism of threonine, synthesis of DNA, and other biochemical pathways than would be absorbed from exogenous sources like this.
The bloodstream contains a relatively high concentration of formaldehyde - at any given time you have about 2 to 3 mg of formaldehyde per liter of blood. You would be experiencing a constant auto-immune disease from birth if you were allergic to formaldehyde; exceeding the amount in your blood would result in blindness and eventually death through conversion to formic acid, as what happens during methanol poisoning.
Dr. Bryan Quoc Le is the Founder and Principal Food Consultant of Mendocino Food Consulting. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Mendocino, California with his wife and two dogs.
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