Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Limes

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why limes are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Limes, known for being a fruit. Famous for being a key pie thing. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why limes are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Yes.

What is your relationship to or opinion of limes? Limes, well I do like them. One of my favorite cocktails is the Moscow Mule, which is a little bit of ginger ale, a little bit of lime, and a little bit of vodka. But yeah. And a little bit of adkir. But yeah. And a little bit of a magic brass goblet. They're always in a brass goblet.

I do love those brass goblets. I feel like I'm in Siberia having a nice, nice toasty vodka. I once saw some graffiti on, I think it was UCSD's campus. There was a graffiti that said, linen lives. And then right next to it, it also said, Lemon Limes. So I really enjoyed this sort of political back and forth. Hilariously because that happens with so many topics on this show.

We did a whole episode about lemons. This is a whole episode about limes and there's not room for lemon lime as a flavor. That would be, I think, a separate show because there's so much to say. Yeah, it's too much. And also I want to say a special thank you to Keep Out Kat on the Discord. They suggested a great topic.

They suggested key lime pie, which did very well in the polls and won. I found that to explore that, which we will, we need to explore all of limes. So you're getting both those topics in one episode to understand key limes. The key is the lime pie Yeah, I don't know and that's one of my relationships to limes is key lime pie is very good I had a slice of it this Week, I'm actually not I don't like the texture of it for some reason. I'm not a big key lime pie fan, even though I like limes. Me and Brenda were talking about this.

We both feel like we love pie if it's truly great, but if it's anywhere below great, we're just neutral on it. It's not like my favorite dessert, but when pie is great, it's great. That includes this one. Yeah. And this is a universal fruit. People love it. And I'm glad we can totally cover the pie in the process, too.

And on every episode, we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called Don't Want to Be a Statistical Idiot. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Don't want a nation of anecdotal data. Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Don't want a nation of anecdotal data Information of numbers and statistics Counting down our new SIPPOS statistics

That brings me right back. Yeah it's like a time portal to exactly 20 years ago. It's cool. That name was submitted by you, agent on the Discord. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Miss Cillian Wagging Band as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpada.gmail.com. I do want to ask why you didn't go with put the lime in the coconut and calculate it up.

I'm not that into coconut. Maybe that's why I could have just plugged that in and overruled the discourse. You're not into coconut or accidental non-infidelity. That's right. I'm about traditional values of key lime pie and matrimony. It's as American as key lime pie and matrimony. Nice. Yeah. And so there's tons of numbers this week.

A lot of them are kind of in the takeaways. But the first number is October 2023. Yeah, I remember that. That was last Halloween. That's when a new study published in the journal Nature Genetics theorized a geographical origin point for all citrus. Whoa, we got citrus city somewhere? Yeah, we touched on this on the lemons episode

and this is newer research than the past grapefruits episode. Those are the other citrus cifs. The breakthrough came from the DNA of oranges. Whoa. A team at Wuzhong Agricultural University in China, they assembled the genomes of 12 species of oranges, compared those to 300 other existing records for oranges, and arranged a phylogenetic tree of oranges.

Whoa. I mean, so the citrus is oranges, pomelos, limes, lemons, citroens, the car. I'm trying to think, I'm trying to remember other things. Yeah, it's basically every, what I think of as a juicy fruit with that kind of geometric inside and the flesh. Yeah, like the sort of rough leathery exterior that you can peel and it comes off in one piece. Yeah. Oh, kumquats too. Yeah, and on that Lemons episode, we talked about citrons and mandarins and pummelos being sort of

the original big citrus. But even those and everything else, they all come from one ancestral citrus set of species, which evolved on the Indian subcontinent about 25 million years ago. And according to Scientific American, that's right when tectonic plates were moving to ram India into the rest of Asia and throw up the Himalayan mountains. And some of those early citrus got isolated in what's now southern China in the Himalayan foothills and evolved into the start of all citrus that we have today all over the world. Just imagine a bunch of screaming oranges as the continent is like veering towards China.

Yeah, like the mascot of Cuties or something. Like they're just like, whoa, whoa. Cuties is a brand here. Anyway, it's a brand of clementines. It's a brand of clementines, right? Yeah. Yeah, those are good. I mess with Cuties is a brand here. Anyway, it's a brand of clementines. Yeah, those are good. I mess with Cuties.

So India rams into China. You have the Himalayas kind of like, you know, as a result of that crash. Yeah, pushed up. And then get pushed up. But some of the oranges, I guess, that were on part of the continent on the other side of the Himalayas wind up in China and become an isolated genetic lineage of a lot of other citrus. Yeah.

It's like an isolated ancestor that led to oranges and also everything else. Like oranges is the research path that got us here. Right. Right. So what was the name of this like original citrus, the original flavor? There's no name. There's just like scientific kind of data names for it. Yeah, Sunny Delight. Wouldn't that be wild if it actually did taste like Sunny Delight? Which Sunny Delight does not taste like oranges. Doesn't taste like anything, any kind of citrus fruit that we know of. But like what if the original citrus actually is like, yeah, this is 100%

sunny D. Yeah. Every further species tried to add vitamins, you know, decrease the sugar. But yeah, and so, you know, lemons are a combination of a citron and a fruit called a sour orange. Limes also come out of these many hybrids of citrus. A link information, especially from the Washington Post, about how easily citrus fruits make hybrids with each other. It doesn't have to be farmers doing it. They'll just also do that in nature. And so that process led to all the limes. The other number here about that is 1,000 years ago. Because 1,000 years ago

is when people brought limes to Europe. Ah. So that's when we started to know English people as limey, correct? The next number is about that. But limes were not the first citrus brought to Europe. Apparently the Roman Empire, when they conquered and traded with the Eastern Mediterranean, they found citrons and found lemons. And then after that, other citrus slowly came to Europe. Apparently the pomelo and the sour orange and the lime all came to Europe around the 1000s AD, that century about a thousand years ago. So you know what's wild is there's not a single food that I can think of that lemons and limes

can't be added to and make something at least palatable, right? What even is there? What could you mess up with a lime? What could you really ruin with a lime? It's a good question and for some reason the phrasing made me imagine throwing a lime at someone's head, like beating them in baseball. Because no, no food gets messed up so I pivoted into violence. Right. I mean maybe if he sprinkled some lime on some Cheerios that might not be great. I honestly don't know.

I'd power through it. yeah, that's fine. Yeah, I can't, cause like there's plenty of things you can mess up with, say like milk, you know, or I don't know, pepper on something can mess it up or putting sugar on something can make it weird. But I don't know, limes, it feels like you could insert a lime into any situation and make it neutral or slightly better. Yeah, and visually they look like a party. It's just a very welcoming excite. Like, it's

good if they enter a situation in any form or way. Limes are always welcome to the party. It's like when Rodney Dangerfield walks into a room in a movie. Everybody just starts dancing for some reason. Yeah. Yeah. And squeezing them and slurping up his juices. And so the citrus party, it starts in Asia and spreads slowly across the world. And then limes don't reach the Americas until after the Columbian exchange. It could have been over the Pacific or over the Atlantic and other citrus got to the Americas until after the Columbian Exchange. It could have been over the Pacific or over the Atlantic and other citrus got to the Americas either through nature or before that, but

limes took a while. Speaking of people sailing around, the next number is twice as much because lemons have approximately twice as much vitamin C as limes. And we touched on this in the lemons episode too, but we didn't say the numbers specifically per gram by weight, the like flesh and juice of limes, it only has half the vitamin C of lemons. It's still a pretty big amount, but when the British Navy started fighting scurvy with citrus, they initially used lemons. And then at the end of the 1810s, they switched to limes because that was less expensive at the time and in their context. Unfortunately, this brought back some scurvy

because they were sending the same shipment size of limes to the guys. Yeah, but you know, it goes really good with tortilla chips and a little bit of salsa. So like scurvy, tortilla chips, I think a little scurvy is okay. Just a little bit, right? Like we're not, we don't want to like go full scurvy where your teeth fall out, but like just like a doche of scurvy is okay because limes are great. Hint of lime chips, hint of scurvy fleet. That's fine. It's all good.

I love, I love lime on chips. That's God. I wish I had chips right now. I'm going to leave the podcast and go get lime chips real quick. Hang on. I'll be back in an hour. I leave too. We just make people sit through silence of both of us going to stores.

Yeah. We got to do gonzo podcasting. This is what it's like. You are all encouraged to go out and get lime chips right now. And we're back. I wish. Yeah. And that not only caused the problem of a resurgence of scurvy in the British Navy,

but also the nickname limeys, which then got applied to all British people. So yeah, there you go. Well, sorry about that. Not my fault. I'm saying sorry anyway. Anyways, so limey because they're eating a lot of limes. But why didn't they get called lemony before? Cause they were eating a lot of lemons. Yeah, for some reason that didn't catch on as a nickname.

It's not clear why. Lemony. Cause they did it for decades and it really worked. Like they were excited about it. That must've been rough on the teeth though eating a lot of limes Right yikes. I think those guys also got rations of alcohol if I was one of them I would have just made a sour that style of cocktail You know like it's just yeah, because the alcohol was also like gross and made in bathtubs, you know, so Even it out limit make I'd make a lemon teeny. Is that a thing? A lime teeny?

It is for the British fleet, I guess. Sure. Why not? Right. So then they start getting called limey. Was that just for any English person or specifically like an English sailor? Started as the sailors and then it's just kind of become a jab. Right. As I understand it, they don't like, I didn't try it in London when we were there. If I went and waved to the nearest pipe smoking Englishman and I was like, hello, you limey gentleman, would he be upset? Should I not do that?

I believe they'd be moderately upset. I've heard it compared to calling a German person a kraut. It's like a pretty parallel to that. All right. I won't do it then. Yeah, yeah. The next number here is two. Very simple, two. Because that's the general number of lime varieties that you find in US grocery stores. The store usually just carries one, but there's one of two types that they usually carry. Is one of them key limes? Sort of, which we'll explore in detail. Because one variety is the Persian lime,

and the other variety is the Mexican lime, which is also known as a key lime. which is also known as a key lime. And do they indeed come from the area that was once known as Persia and the area that is known as Mexico? So the Mexican lime usually comes from Mexico and the Persian lime is named after Europeans understanding them to come from Persia, even though they originally came from east of that.

It was just the trade route. It's sort of like what we talked about with turkeys on the recent turkey episode. Right. It's like whatever that crate is labeled, you're like, oh, whatever is inside must be fragile. Right. And also the recent middleman is what it is. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah. It's like if I called most stuff UPS thing. Yeah, it's not from UPS, like in a fundamental way. Yeah. Yeah. And apparently an alternative name for Persian limes is Tahiti limes, because that is another route that they reached North America through, like from East Asia across the Pacific to North America. What's the qualitative difference between a Mexican lime and a Persian lime other than

the place in which they're grown? Is there any flavor differences? Is one rounder than the other? What's going on? To me, they both look like limes and taste like limes, but a Persian lime is larger. It has a thicker skin, it has a darker color, and a little bit longer of a shelf life. And Persian limes are the most common in US stores. Mexican limes are the most common in stores in other countries. Mexican limes are the most common in stores in other countries. And I know I said that fast, Mexican lime is smaller, thinner skin, lighter color, like

almost more toward a yellow color sometimes. And so the differences aren't huge, but we'll link a picture of a side by side of them intact and also cut open so you can see the moderate difference. Like if you put them side by side, you could tell the Persian limes bigger and thicker and greener. So Persian limes, still they are imported. Where are they typically exported from, Persian limes? They're often grown in the US, the Persian lime. Whoa.

And the Mexican lime is often grown in Mexico, but also across the rest of the world, India grows both, China grows both. There's a few large countries with relatively warm areas that grow these. As far as I understand, from your description, the Mexican lime does sound like the one that I usually get here in the Italian grocery store. And I tend to get a Persian lime in a New York state grocery store, especially because of the shelf life stuff. We just like leave piles of produce in our grocery stores and hope they hang in there,

you know? So it's a good move. With all that, that leads to a little bit fictional and were a brief agricultural trend between natural disasters. Okay, so mythical and apocalyptic. I like where this is going. Yeah, like when we say a key lime, that implies it was a lime grown in Florida, in or near the Florida

Keys. Oh, I thought you could insert it into a dais and summon a lime god. Right, it opens doors in Skyrim to a shrine where then a god comes out. Yeah, yeah. My lock picking skill is up. Right, a point and click adventure where in your inventory there is lime and then in the environment there is lime shaped slot and you try to put the lime in it and they're like, it doesn't work.

Yeah, I guess that might not be a totally known thing, especially outside the US. There is a chain of small islands called the Florida Keys. They're south of the rest of Florida and key limes are named after that, like the Florida Keys. They're south of the rest of Florida. Key limes are named after that, like the Florida Keys, but they were only grown there and nearby for a few decades around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, like late 1800s, early 1900s. That period both started and ended with massive natural disasters. Oh. Again, the Florida Keys or elsewhere? Yeah, there. And so now basically all those limes, except for like a few people with a tree in their

backyard, because they chose to, basically all quote unquote key limes are farmed in Mexico and are Mexican limes. So when you have a Mexican lime, that's a key lime, but it's not from Florida or from the Florida Keys or anything. But it was always the same species, like even when they were grown in the Florida Keys? Yeah, pretty much. And also the Mexican lime is like a little bit sweeter flavor-wise than a Persian lime. And that's part of why people make it into that pie, is the dessert sweetness. The sweetness, right. So what were the natural disasters? Were they like hurricanes? What was going on in the Florida Keys that wiped out so many of these lime trees? Yeah, it ended because of a hurricane and it started because of a deep freeze in a winter.

Okay, I see. So yeah, frozen limes. sounds delicious, but also it does kill the limes. Yeah, so oddly, the state of Florida, they've had a huge citrus industry for a long time. Resources about that, we're using our digital resources from Florida Memory, which is a project of the State Library and Archives of the State of Florida. Also resources from the National Weather Service and expertise from Ted Burroughs of the St. Lucie Historical Society. He was interviewed by the Treasure Coast Palm newspaper. Hmm. Florida, when it really got its citrus industry going, on the long ago CIF episode, we talk

about grapefruit being an early leader in the early 1800s. And then after the Civil War, veterans and businessmen flood the rural place called Florida to grow stuff like lemons and oranges and grapefruit. It was mostly lemons, oranges, grapefruit. And then what happens is 1894, there is a massive deep freeze for the whole winter into 1895. And this basically wipes out the Florida lemon industry. So like the deep freeze disrupted the lemon industry and that allowed lime to kind of like sidle on in just like the way that lime scooters disrupted the lift industry.

I don't know. My scooter. Lime is a brand of scooter. Yeah. There's bird and there's, I think, yeah, lime disrupted the bird industry and limes also disrupted the lemon industry after the big freeze. Yeah. And I had a razor scooter in middle school. That's probably related. Let's see. Right. Yeah. And so farmers said, all my lemons died in the freeze. I'm not going to plant lemons again. And they switched to Mexican limes, a species that was booming in the booming Mexican lime farming industry. And so suddenly Florida fills with farms of lime trees after

the 1894-95 winter. This also becomes like an iconic Florida citrus for a bit. Locals and tourists are talking up these key limes, like South Florida and into the Florida Keys people are growing a bunch of limes. So that really exists. You shouldn't poop on someone if they describe a key lime. It's kind of a thing. When should't poop on someone if they describe a key lime. It's kind of a thing. When should you poop on someone, Alex? I've been watching a lot of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. I think that just came through really strong.

So when you're Triumph, the Insult Dog. Yeah, for me to poop on, as he says. So 1895 sparks a Florida lime industry and then 1926 a hurricane wipes it out. Whoops. Yeah, too bad. So then the hurricane disrupts the lime industry. Man, citrus tech is rough. Brutal.

That's right. Yeah. 1926 was before we gave people names to hurricanes, and so this was just known as the Great Miami Hurricane. Oh, well. Because it slammed at a dead county. It kind of makes a lot, that does work better, I think, for hurricanes to be like the great location hurricane rather than Hurricane Jeremy, because Hurricane Jeremy kills 200 people.

It's just weird. It's like, like some big hurricane named Jeremy being like, Hey, it's me Jeremy coming on through. And then it's just, it kind of takes away from the impact of the hurricane. I always feel like that's strange. Like Hurricane Wanda comes in and destroys many, many lives. You know? Beatrice killed 2,000 people. It's like, jeez, damn Beatrice, calm down. Yeah, this is a bummer for people named that. Yeah. It turned out to be a minor storm,

but my grandma sent me newspaper clippings about Hurricane Alex years ago. And I'm glad that wasn't a bad one, you know? Right, yeah. It would be bad. I don't like it. Yeah, yeah. Like, man, be bad. I don't like it. Yeah. Cut it out. Yeah. Like, man, if you were named Katrina at the time, just can you imagine all the bullying?

It's a bummer for everyone named Katrina. Yeah. Perhaps not like the biggest bummer at the time, but I'm just saying like, what the heck? It's just strange to me. It's like, we're going to give this this deadly hurricane a cute name. Yeah, great. Miami hurricane feels more appropriate to the devastation. Yes, absolutely. And this was 1926. We did have some weather reporting and some communication, but this hurricane happened

to go through the Caribbean without directly striking any large islands, which means with pretty much no warning, it rammed into Dade County, Florida. We think it was at least a category four, killed hundreds of people, caused hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in today's money, and it wiped out almost every lime tree. And so, you know, the few that survived, farmers were like, this is going to just go in the next storm. It was like when they abandoned lemons. And so they pivoted to the other citrus Florida Gros. They're real quitters, these farmers. They're just like, ah, well, just going to pivot to another plant until that one also something bad happens to it.

Right. Corn, we're doing corn. Oh, the corn's gone? I'm a cab driver. I'm just out of farming. Forget it. So yeah, and they have not brought back those kinds of limes to Florida for the following 98 years. The tree still grows there. A few hobbyists plant it, but nobody farms it because they're worried about a storm doing that damage again. Yeah. I guess you could call the hurricane the great lime reckoning as well. That's cool too. We need, we really need more- Ooh, the limepocalypse.

That's fun. The limepocalypse. We need like more serious names for our hurricanes. Like hurricane mess you up. Like something that really kind of gets, cause like when people are like, hey, you need to evacuate from a hurricane Timothy, it's like, but if it's like, you've got to evacuate for like the lime destroyer. It's like, well, God, I'm probably as fragile as a lime.

Oh no. Yeah. Yeah. My, my organs are squishy and lime like. Yeah. Yeah. And the odd thing is Florida has planted a few farms of Persian limes since this. Because as mentioned, thicker skinned fruit, stronger shelf life, they think it's marginally

more storm proof. And so oddly, you'll get the other lime, not the key lime from Florida today, unless somebody goes and picks it from their backyard tree for you. today unless somebody goes and picks it from their backyard tree for you. Florida mainly grows grapefruit and oranges. Mexico is the number one lime producing country in the world. It's where you get what we call a key lime and usually use for the pie. I wonder if that's why I associate lime so much with Mexican food. Maybe it's a cultural... Because I grew up in San Diego, so I'm near the border. There's a lot of cultural crossover. So I wonder if it's just association, right? That's a culture that I absorbed as a kid.

Limes go with tortilla chips, they go with tacos, they go with burritos, et cetera. So yeah, I wonder. It's interesting. That's pretty much why. A lot of that Mexican line farming is for domestic consumption. Mexican cuisine has adapted to, we have tons of limes. It's a similar thing with avocados. They don't just farm them for Americans to eat.

It's a massive thing where they're grown. It's funny because as far as green foods go, like avocados, I don't mess with avocado. Mess with most other green stuff. Yeah, the texture and the taste is a little weird to me. I'm not an avocado person. It's like a butter thing in a bad way. Yeah, it's like a buttery meat thing and I'm just not expecting that from a fruit and it scares me.

Look at us. Oh, we're so aligned. Hey, we're aligned. We're anti-avocado. Yeah, that's not something to be proud of, but somehow I am. These regional things, it leads to our next takeaway number two. A lot of limes reach grocery stores by surviving Mexican cartel wars. Uh-oh.

Oh dear. And it's like ethical to eat limes. You're not doing anything wrong. It's just that- Oh, thank God. It's just that limes are such a massive industry in Mexico that the cartels, which we mainly think of as doing drug dealing, weapons dealing, illicit stuff. They just want money and have often added legitimate lime farming to either their portfolio or something they're exploiting. Is that bad though? Because don't we

want that? Wouldn't it be better if there was more of a shift towards legal stuff that's not harmful to make money? Because there's probably some complicated politics money or, you know, cause like I get, there's probably some like complicated politics of it, right? Cause if it's really profitable, maybe it increases their power or something, but like they already seem to have a lot of power. So like if the, if the limes are making the money and not hurting people, is that, is that a better,

is that an improvement over the situation? Like really put it all in the line here, Alex. Give your opinion. Really take a stance. You're right. And it's bad because they're hurting people. Like they're just exclusively doing this in a mafia type way where they're doing threats and extortion and they're not doing any like put on a business suit and tie and simply run a lime farm. They're doing threats and extortion and they're not doing any like put on a business suit and tie and simply run a lime farm. They're exclusively doing cartel mafia stuff. Is that how normally lime farms are run?

People with suits and ties like, welcome to my lime farm. Yeah, you have to wear Armani to do sweaty sunlit lime work. Yeah. This is a thing where if we all stopped buying limes, it would hurt the farmers and also the Mexican government and military as well as the lime farmers are fighting back against this. It's just an astonishing fight that people don't know about in the US. The latest headlines on it, this associated Press coverage, we're also leaning on a piece for The Guardian by Maffa Busby and reporting for Texas Public Radio by Stefania Corpi. First day of October 2024, Mexico inaugurated a new president, Claudia Scheinbaum, who by the way is the first female president of Mexico.

In her first two weeks in office, she stepped up an operation begun by her predecessor, sending hundreds more Mexican soldiers to the southern state of Michoacan to protect these shipments in and out of lime warehouses with government military force. So are limes like a pretty important export for Mexico then? Limes are a pretty significant part of the GDP? They are, and also just a basic part of the food supply. And this past August, lime warehouse operators organized a statewide shutdown in the state of Michoacan because of protection racket pressure from the Los Viagras cartel. They had received threatening

flyers saying, quote, nobody gets out of paying the quota. Don't try to look for a padrino, end quote. A padrino is a protective godfather. And they did that because the pressure was so great. They demanded that the Mexican government and army step in. Otherwise they weren't going to risk their own lives against the cartels for the lime business. There's no illegal goods going on here. Just the cartels want to milk it for protection money because there's profit there. I mean, that's sensible, right? It does seem reasonable to want protection from your government if you're going to try

to go toe to toe with dangerous cartels. Yeah. And as of us taping this, and I'm pretty sure releasing this, I can't find any coverage of a change in that arrangement. So right now, LIMES are getting out of Mexico, partly through the Mexican army protecting the logistics. And that arrangement is also an improvement on the previous decade or two. Starting in 2006, cartel forces pretty much had the upper hand against Mexico's military and government across the board, and that mainly means things for drugs and weapons and the movement of people. But from 2010 to 2013, two cartels pretty

much took over the lime industry. The Familia Michoacana and the Knights Templar started by destroying packing houses for limes. Then they demanded protection money from other packing houses and farms. They dictated the price of limes. They even started telling growers which days they could harvest their lime crop. What was the point of dictating which days to harvest? It seems like a control thing. They didn't want any limes harvested outside of when they knew they were being picked to be smuggled outside of this arrangement or something.

I see. Okay. And they never owned it, owned it in a business suit, I think partly because then they would need to reveal who they are and their other stuff could be found. So they just, in a piracy way, manipulated the lime industry. That must have caused some crazy fluctuations in lime prices at the time. It did. Lime prices often tripled or more out of nowhere in both Mexico and the US in a way that's

not really related to other inflation or economic factors. It's all cartel muscle stuff. It is inflation in a sense because you have a supply chain issue. So then like even if it's being influenced right by the cartel, then you are having some like artificial or manmade cause like change in the supply that still can cause like inflation, but it's just caused by the cartel caused inflation. That's true.

Yeah, that's another form of it. And in that case in 2013, the Mexican government and military were so struggling against the cartels they could not offer this kind of 2024 assistance where they send the troops. And so lime growers organize their own armed resistance. And it's hard to get details about this or like heroic leaders or something because it was also off the books. Well that would make you don't want to advertise yourself as the heroic leader taking on the cartel. I don't think that's a good idea.

Exactly. Yeah. And the Associated Press describes this vigilante group of lime growers as the single largest movement against the cartels outside of government operations in early 2010s Mexico. Wow. That's incredible when people organize like that. Wow. That's incredible when people organize like that. Yeah. And it seems like it was just modeled on the same cartel style of a violent group of guys. It was just people knocking each other's heads together. And apparently the lime grower militias won a lot of battles against the cartels, took back control over a lot of the lime industry. Then the cartels used operatives to infiltrate the militias of lime growers.

Oh my gosh. So then this devolved into just a general mass of nobody trusting anybody. Oh man. And the upshot is that lime production cratered and it was a really massive spike in lime prices all over the world. Yeah.

And this, when was this? This was in 2013? 2014, yeah. That was when it really spiked, yeah. Okay, right. Lime prices in Mexico City right next to this industry tripled. They were steeper elsewhere. The cartels began giving up on running the farms and just trying to steal shipments purely to sell them at their high price, like as a luxury good. To this day, the cartels can cause an increase in lime prices. Apparently they started one in 2022. The military has adjusted for it somewhat.

But if you're ever shocked by a very high or very low price of limes in your store, it's probably related to the Mexican situation and how this is going. I am married to an economist, so I have gone from being like economics, that's on C-SPAN. I'm gonna tune it out to understand that economics actually is very much tied to very interesting political situations, very interesting sort of human behavior things.

So yeah, that is really interesting. There's a lot of like weird stories that are behind seemingly random price changes and also just, you know, like a lime, right? It's this little innocuous fruit, but yeah, I mean, it makes sense that if that's a huge export and makes a lot of money that it's gonna be involved in these like pretty serious political events.

Exactly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also if folks support the show, they might have heard our recent bonus show about the inflation of a price of a burrito and the various components of the burrito inflating. And the lime is one of them. The lime price has doubled in the window of time from 2021 to 2024 that that restaurant was dealing with. I told my husband about that story.

So that would be great. Great to teach his students about inflation. So that's great. Great. We're helping. We're helping. Burritoflation. Let's do it again.

Yeah. I was thinking about like lime wars and because there's like an Ivrea which is near us, we have these orange wars where people like throw oranges at each other. Oranges at each other, oranges at each other in a mock war. And apparently the ophthalmologists, like the eye doctors, like have a huge day after that because people get a bunch of orange juice in their eyes and it's like all of this like eye irritation. So they are so busy, which is really funny. The orange war feeds my family.

It must continue. It's a cabal of ophthalmologists. You find out that the ophthalmologists are the ones stoking the tension in the town. It's like, you know what that guy said about you? He said you can't throw an orange. The world of citrus and conflict, it's amazing. And folks, that's two huge takeaways in a ton of numbers. We're actually going to come back after this short break with another Lyme medical issue.

As well as another amazing takeaway about them beyond that. Secretly incredibly fascinating is supported by MonkeyPod. MonkeyPod helps nonprofits get back to their mission by eliminating busy work with their all-in-one software. MonkeyPod brings financial and people management together into one platform. Nonprofits can manage their accounting and grants from the same software they use to send emails, collect donations, and track donors. Which is amazing, right? With MonkeyPod, you can find the information you need more efficiently and focus on what really matters. Your mission. I was talking about this last week as well. I used to volunteer

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Let's learn everything. So let's do a quick progress check. Have we learnt about quantum physics? Yes, episode 59. We haven't learnt about the history of gossip yet, have we? Yes we have, same episode actually. Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters? Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything? Bad news, we still haven't learned everything yet. Awwww. They're ruined! No, no, no, it's good news as well. There is still a lot to learn. Woohoo! I'm Dr. Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum. I'm Caroline Boper and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too. And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode. Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Which is why here on Just the Zoo of Us, we judge them by so much more.

We rate animals out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics, taking into consideration each animal's true strengths, like a pigeon's ability to tell a Monet from a Picasso or a polar bear's ability to play basketball. Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, and more join us to share their unique insight into the animal's world. Listen with friends and family of all ages

on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts. And we're back and we're back with a Lyme medical issue. That you're not supposed to put a Lyme in your mouth because it's easier to put it in there than it is to get it out. A whole intact lime. Yeah. Takeaway number three. Limes cause a special and painful kind of sunburn. What? Yeah. This is a disease that is nicknamed Margarita burn. And it's something special you can do to yourself if you're chopping a lot of limes outside and getting a lot of the juice all over your hands. Oh, yeah.

Okay. So I do know that when you have lemon juice or I mean, I guess it must also be lime juice. Sometimes people put lemon juice on their skin to light it, like to kind of bleach it, which is not great because that's also means that you're like, that's a lot of like the acid is kind of breaking down your protective skin layer. So then when you're combining it with the sun, it kind of like bleaches your skin a bit, but it's not good for your skin. That's not a good thing to do. Yeah. It turns out limes, lemons, and many other kinds of produce are full of a specific chemical that if it's all over your skin, especially for fair skinned people, makes you a lot more

sensitive to sunburn. We call this margarita burn because one of the most common cases is somebody is doing the party on their deck. Margaritas. Yeah, like chopping a bunch of limes wearing a fun hat. And then they don't wash the juice off and get sunburned. That is not the lime experience that I want. Well, also medically speaking, and our key source here is the Cleveland Clinic, medically

speaking a margarita burn is phytophotodermatitis. Phytophotodermatitis, of course. Dermatitis from plant stuff. And so the chemical is called furocoumarin. Ah. Furocoumarin. Yes, of course. Lots of plants are full of this.

Apparently the other weirdest way you can get this is if you eat a lot of celery soup to the point that your body is full of furokumerins. Oh no. And then you get sunburns. Oh dang. Maybe I shouldn't have had so much celery soup. My favorite. I think you have to eat like gallons of celery soup.

But celery... I wish you told me this sooner, Alex, before lunch. Right. You were souping as you do. I was mad souping. Katie's souping all the time. Katie's be souping. Katie's do be souping. I was mad souping. I was souping it up. It's Thursday, so it is celery soup day.

So you have like celery, figs, parsnips, carrots, most citrus, they all have furikumerins. And then the main reason this happens with limes, like we said, is people splash lime juice on their hands while making an outdoor party drink, and then they just don't wash it off. Like if you wash it off with water, even soap maybe, that'll take care of it. What is the, these like, what do you say? Furikumerins.urocumerins. Furocumerins.

Like, what is that doing to enhance the sunburn? It's basically just making your skin more sensitive to that same process. I see. So it's also a little funny that we named this at all. Like it's just sunburn, but a different way and heightened by a thing you wouldn't expect. So is it just like kind of disrupting the skin barrier so that the UV rays like gets in there worse? Yeah, that's it.

I see. Okay. People are basically just surprised by the specific, especially on their hands, terrible sunburn they can get. I'm linking a CBS News story about a man who got what's considered second degree burns on his hands from lime juice and sunburn. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see that.

Yeah, nobody needs to look at it. It's gross. But yeah, the simple solution is once you handle some lime juice, wash it off and then you won't sunburn so bad. It's really easy, but people don't know. They have no idea. Right. Well, next time I'm having a lime experience and I'm margaritening it up while I'm celery souping it up, I will wear sun protection. I'll wear gloves. I'll make

sure to wash off any lime juice, wear a big hat so that I do not encounter that problem. It's always good, especially if you use cosmetics to like check the sort of like directions on it, because there are cosmetics that do a similar thing, like a common cosmetic that people use are retinols, retinoids, and that can also, it increases cell turnover in your skin, which can be nice for your skin texture or whatever,

but that also makes your skin, which can be nice for your skin texture or whatever, but that also makes your skin much more sensitive to the sun. And so you can get a really bad sunburn if you don't, if you wear it during the day out in the sun and you don't use a layer of sunscreen over it. So yeah, there's a lot of things that you can do that can enhance the burn, which I've, I didn't know about the lime thing, so I appreciate that, but I've spent my life as a fair-skinned redhead just memorizing all the sun dangers. Yeah, it's worth doing.

And the last thing about this is a few very silly internet sources don't nickname this margarita burn. They nickname it Lime Disease. Oh, guys, come on. It's not the best use of the name Lime Disease, folks. There's a very bad tick-borne illness spelled L-Y-M-E, that's Lime Disease. L-Y-M-E, Lime Disease. Yeah. That's named after a town in Connecticut, Lime Connecticut. So that's, but don't call this sunburn thing Lime Disease. It's very minor compared to that.

Guys, I see what you're doing. Real cute, but knock it off. Yeah, cut it out. Stop it. And then one last thing that's a controversy for our main show. Takeaway number four. Key lime pie might be a New York City recipe that wiped out Florida's sour orange pies. There's a very heated debate about this, but one theory claims that key lime pie was invented by the marketing department of Borden Condensed Milk

in New York City. Borden Condensed Milk, they're behind some of the most insane conspiracy theories. Borden Condensed Milk might have- Along with ophthalmologists. They might have faked the moon landing. Yeah, yeah. You know how like clothes have those really scratchy tags

on them these days? Borden Condensed Milk Company. No. They were behind that. No. You know how like when you brush your teeth and then you drink orange juice and it's terrible taste? Borden Condensed Milk Company. No.

Yeah. And there's a couple of key sources here. There's a Gastro Obscura piece by Ann Eubank, and then a piece for Southern Living magazine by Melissa Locker, and a piece for Gothamist by Andres O'Hara. I tried to do Southern Living and Gothamist, so Florida and New York have a voice in this. Key lime pie, famous recipe. And some people don't know that one of the key ingredients is condensed milk. The rest is pretty much pie crust, a lot of lime juice and lime zest, maybe sugar, maybe butter, maybe a meringue topping or eggs. But condensed milk is one of the key things.

The other thing to establish is sour oranges. We mentioned them on the lemons episode. It's what it sounds like. It's a kind of orange, but it has a sour taste rather than a sweet one. It's what gets often turned into jams and marmalades rather than even straight up. Are those also the ones that can be kind of often just ornamental orange trees? Like there's a lot of like sour, bitter orange trees that people don't really eat that much unless it's jams. Or unless you're an invasive parakeet who freaking loves those things.

Yeah. And the trees grow very well. So a lot of wild ones popped up in the state of Florida in the 1800s. It does very well there. With those two things established, key lime pie, having condensed milk and sour oranges, here is the controversial theory about key lime pie. oranges. Here is the controversial theory about key lime pie. It's that white Americans in Florida developed a sour orange pie, which is what we think of as a key lime pie recipe, but with sour oranges. And then a condensed milk business, like lots of companies market themselves by giving away recipes. The theory is that Borden condensedensed Milk gave away a lemon version of sour orange pie that people proceeded to also turn into key lime when Borden did Florida marketing. That's the theory. I see. The idea is that they stole the sour orange recipe, flipped it into a lemon version,

and then people organically flipped that into a key lime version. Yeah, and it was like people and Borden, when Borden did some Florida marketing because Florida's population massively increases in the early 1900s. And so they were like, we got to advertise in Florida. And they said, I think there's limes in Florida from before the hurricane. And so here's a lime version for you guys. What are they like here? Limes? Flamingos? Limes? Something. Gators? Gator pie. And so if that theory is true, key lime pie is kind of from Florida, but kind of not. And there are also people trying to reestablish the sour orange pie as a food because that pretty much went away. Yeah, it'd be interesting. I mean, like, sour orange has to have a pretty distinct taste from

limes. So I would be curious to see if I would like a sour orange pie. Probably not, but I'd try it. I would try it too, yeah. And yeah, and there's like experts on both sides of whether this theory is true or not. Because the legend of key lime pie is that in the late 1800s, a lady known as Aunt Sally just came up with the key lime pie recipe, and that's that. I see. And then according to David Sloan, who's the author of the Key West's Key Lime Pie Cookbook, he has used Facebook to crowdsource help researching this and he claims he's turned up recipes for lime pies made in Florida before 1931. But this theory is coming from a James Beard award-winning food writer named Stella Parks, who wrote

a cookbook called Brave Tart, all about tarts and pies. Brave Tart. Okay. It's really cute. That's cute. tarts and pies. Brave tart. Okay. It's really cute. That's cute. In her research, the earliest key lime pie recipe she could find was from Borden Condensed Milk in 1931 with their lemon pie. And then she found 1940s Borden advertising turning it into a key lime pie.

And then Parks consulted with Key West historian Tom Hambrite, who says there's no local recipe for key lime pie earlier than 1949. And then that's probably influenced by the Borden recipe. And they say that the lime pie recipes from before this in Florida don't really involve the condensed milk. And it seems clearer that the condensed milk recipe would come from a condensed milk company test kitchen and not like a home cook in Florida. Right. So what was used instead of condensed milk before the big condensed milk got their grubby little mitts on it?

Yeah, apparently they're just different lime pies. And also they might use other dairy that's not specifically condensed milk, this kind of industrial product. Apparently condensed milk wasn't for sale in stores until around the 1880s. It was sort of a new thing. What even is condensed milk? I get that it's milk that's been condensed, but is it like you boil off a lot of the water? Yeah, condensed milk is just cow's milk that they removed most of the water from, more than half of it. And they often add sugar.

I see. Okay. So that makes a lot of sense for making a dessert, but it's still kind of industrial. Like a rustic home cook might not think of that right away. Right, right. But this is just being debated, especially by people in Florida, because maybe folks in Florida don't love the idea that key lime pie is a New York City recipe made of Mexican limes, but there were limes in Florida and it is a thing too.

So it's all the above. Yeah. I mean, it just seems like the pie recipe existed, didn't really need to have the condensed milk that was added. And then they just altered it to more suit the tastes of people in Florida given the popularity of key lines. So still seems Floridian. I think so too. Yeah, it's just a lot more complex and interesting than you'd think. So that's neat. Yeah. Yeah.

Good for Florida, you know? Good for Florida. Are the Florida keys supposed to be like keys to a lock or keys on a piano? The apparently the word key comes from like Spanish word for a small island. It's sort of like K. Ah, C-A-Y. All right. Well, I was wrong. So this is the first time I've been wrong. Never been wrong before. This is weird. And I have never been wrong ever. Pretty neat, pretty cool. It's nice. Pretty cool. Feels great.

Yeah. Yep. Thinking that means I'm always right. That's the thing. Yeah. You just changed the definition of wrong. Yeah. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode

with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, key limes are a little bit fictional and were a brief agricultural trend between natural disasters. Takeaway number two, a lot of limes reach grocery stores by surviving Mexican cartel wars. Takeaway number three, limes cause margarita burn, a special intense kind of sunburn. Takeaway number four, key lime pie might be a New York City recipe that replaced Florida sour orange pies.

And then so many stats and numbers about the history of all citrus, the history of the limey nickname, the kinds of limes you'll find in a North American grocery store, and more. Those are the takeaways, and I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode.

This week's bonus topic is the Australian Finger Lime and how that might save all of the world's citrus. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 18 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast separation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of digital resources from

Florida Memory, a project of the State Library of the State of Florida, also the National Weather Service and the Cleveland Clinic, science journalism from Scientific American, independent journalism from Texas Public Radio, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people and the Wapenshaw people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still

here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIFT Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There's a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 14. That's about the painting American Gothic. Fun fact there, the artist Grant Wood, who made that painting, his paintings often considered funny, but he explicitly described

only one of his other paintings as funny in his entire career. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Un-Shaven by the BUDOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.