A few months ago, a friend told me about a coworker of his who, after a meal in a local restaurant, had contracted a case of "pine mouth." In case you haven't read about that mysterious malady yet, pine mouth is a condition that causes a bitter, metallic aftertaste to linger in your mouth for days or even weeks, sometimes making eating or drinking incredibly unpleasant.

Although it appears to be a relatively new phenomenon (the majority of recent cases were reported beginning in 2009), increasing numbers of individuals are experiencing pine mouth.

Researchers and journalists have suggested that the condition could be attributed to Chinese pine nuts imported into the U.S. beginning about a year ago. Explanations range from the suggestion that oils in the nuts from China had turned rancid (possibly due to long travel time) to the claim that the variety of nuts imported from China is simply not one edible by humans.

Given those theories, my friend's coworker called the restaurant where she'd dined to inquire about the source of their pine nuts. Yep, you guessed it: They were imported from China.

In fact, most of the pine nuts sold in stores and served in restaurants are imported (other typical sources are Russia and North Korea). The odd thing in this case is that the restaurant in question proudly declares its dedication to using local and organic ingredients.

When I first heard about the incident, I felt compelled to come to the defense of the industry. For most restaurants, particularly in New Mexico, to source every ingredient locally would be incredibly difficult. Bread made from locally grown wheat, for example, is rare here. Have you ever bought a New Mexico-grown avocado? How about olives? Even the most devoted members of our Farm to Table alliance won't limit themselves to serving just local wines and beers (and honestly, I don't think anyone would want them to). While you could certainly hope to see local beef in an Asian noodle salad, I doubt you'd be surprised or disappointed if the noodles came from, say, Japan. And so on. The availability of varied, even exotic, foods — not just those grown or made within 100 miles of where you live — is a glorious benefit of our global economy.

"The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies — and then pay the relatively tiny energy cost to get them to market," suggested Stephen Budiansky in a recent New York Times op-ed piece. "Sometimes, that means buying vegetables grown in California or Costa Rica," he added.

Nevertheless, the pine mouth topic has been nagging at me. I suppose, then, that this writing constitutes the public retraction of my original opinion. I'm not going to hold my breath until my salad is dressed with oil cold-pressed from New Mexico-grown olives, nor will I withhold my chip from a bowl of guacamole made with avocados from California.

But with the recent news that China has leapfrogged over Japan to become the second-largest economy in the world, I can't help but wonder whether we New Mexicans really want to spend money on pine nuts shipped in from overseas when there's a delicious crop of piñon nuts (only pine nuts grown in New Mexico can adopt this moniker) right in our own backyard.

Now, I understand that there are issues involved in cooking with and eating New Mexico piñon. The nuts are typically harvested by hand, so quantities can be limited. According to www.pinonnut.com, the website of the New Mexico Piñon Nut Co., the cones of the piñon tree take two years to develop, and "once every seven years a good crop comes along." And before we can enjoy the delicious nutmeats, they must be removed from the shell.

That means that preshelled or not, piñon nuts aren't going to be cheap. A recent article in The New Mexican by Tom Sharpe cited local prices ranging from $10 to almost $30 per pound — a far cry from the $8-per-pound nuts available at some local grocers.

But as Michael Pollan has asserted, "There's no escaping the fact that better food ... whether measured by taste or nutritional quality ... costs more." A batch of pesto — one of the primary uses of pine nuts in restaurants — only requires a few ounces of nuts, though, and a similar quantity would certainly suffice in almost any salad.

Do we want to pass up on our region's local bounty and run the risk of diners contracting pine mouth just
to save 10 or 15 bucks? Why don't more Santa Fe restaurants take advantage of the local piñon crop? To do anything else, well, that just seems nutty.

Laurel Gladden is a freelance writer in Santa Fe. Contact her at the.ethical.epicure@gmail.com.