5 Fancy Black-Market Foods

• Irradiated mangosteens have been available at Uwajimaya in the International District for some time now. According to the sign above them, they were legalized in 2007. At about $14/lb, I only bought a few, but they were delicious.

• Sigh. You should do better research on absinthe history and modern versions. They do indeed contain thujone - as much as they ever did, which isn't much. The stories of insanity and hallucinations are urban myths, except in the cases of the severe alcoholics wherein it wasn't what they were drinking, but how much. The rest is prohibitionist scare stories. You're just parroting an old line long since debunked.

• Note to Siiri Samspon: The snarky overtones about raw milk implying that only someone with a tenuous grip on sanity would drink it are really reprehensible. The "tick-borne encephalitis and rabies" you talk about are extremely rare and only occur in minute percentages, and always from farms that don't monitor and maintain an organic diet for their cows. If people only drank raw milk, the health benefits would be staggering. Instead our supermarkets get pumped with milk pasteurized to within an inch of its life, with many of the otherwise-unattainable nutrients leeched out, including the fats and enzymes that help us digest dairy in the first place. But no, please, go on criticizing something about which you know nothing. Our corporate-run dairies need to sell another gallon jug of 1% milk Now With Vitamin D!

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