A UK tourist suffered third-degree facial burns after biting into an exotic fruit in Mexico. “I couldn’t believe the pain from just one bite,” Thomas Harold Watson, 28, said while speaking to UK-based Southwest News Service while describing his strange fruit-eating experience on May 1 while sight-seeing in Campeche, Yucatan peninsula.
The Bedfordshire-based construction worker was strolling through a local market when he came across a stand selling cashew apples, the fruits that encase the namesake nut (cashew apples encase cashew nuts).
Watson, who shares and chronicles his travel experiences on Instagram, had known that the fruit was edible and decided to give it a try. “You can eat the cashew apple fruit, it’s meant to be a bit bitter. I’d heard about it but never tried it in the flesh, so I bought it, went for a walk and started eating a few different fruits,” Watson said.
“I thought I’d open it up – it felt like a passion fruit, and I bit into this sac which exploded straight away. Instantly it felt like fire, I could feel this fire going across my mouth,” Watson recounted explaining that it was painful right from the first bite.
He woke up the next day to find his face completely burnt and “scabby” as if it had been doused with acid, as seen in viral photos. “When my lips were all burnt they literally felt like they’d be dissolved, it felt like my lip had gone like baking paper for three or four days,” he further added. He also said that the acid from the fruit discoloured fingers on his hand.
Unbeknownst to him, the cashew fruit contains cardol and anacardic acid, a caustic combination that can cause skin blisters.
Watson discovered this hazard through a Google search while he was going through the pain and learned that workers who shell cashews often suffer severe burns to their hands and arms.
“A couple of days ago I was able to peel off my whole lip, it was a couple of inches wide. They’re still quite burnt up and not great but way better than they were,” he further explained and said the recovery process was long and painful.
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