If you don't let your kid eat blackberries...

[OuchIsLife]

Before they have been washed what do you think will happen? Or what has happened?

Just curious as I've always let my kids eat them as soon as they've picked them and I'm not sure what harm would come to them.

It wasn't a criticism....I thought it sounded fab, just something that sounded like it was from another era...very wholesome

BoobyDazzler - now if you had offered some to their Granny there would b a crumble and some jam!

When I was a kid we used to pick blackberries then my mum would soak them in water over night. The next morning the water was full of worms/larvae/maggots 🤮. That's why I make my two year old wash them first. I don't panic and take them off her though and she has nibbled/licked some on the way home despite being told not to. So far she hasn't had any ill effects.

If that's the case just swallow a bird

I second dogs more likely to eat them than wee on them! My girlie can’t walk past a blackberry bush without eating as many from the lower vines as possible !

Then a cat ...

'Here Kitty Kitty...'

My nan did the same. They are full of white worms. I can't eat them now, the thought makes me sick (especially as I'm now vegan).

I ate unwashed blackberries as a child, I'm still here! Just make sure they are above dog wee height and not on the road.

We only ever pick the first blackberries to ripen, before the bugs have had a chance to find them. There's a hedgerow about 50 yards from our door and we go daily and pick a small handful each time. After about a week-10 days, we stop picking.

What makes you think the bugs aren't living in that bush waiting for the fruits to be almost ripe anyway? Or laid their eggs in it ready for ripening?

Yep. I don't pick any below knee height as dogs might have peed on them... but like a PP said, it is more likely that a dog has tried to eat them.
My dog wont eat them, but I have seen others try to delicately pick them off the bush.

A point my daughter made once re dogs or foxes weeing on the blackberries- her little boy was eating off the bush at a low height and I said about dog wee etc. (Didn't bother me but she had been a bit precious about it when she was younger) As she pointed out, the ones up above had probably been shit on by birds so........
I eat them straight off the bush, as do my children and grandchildren and we're fine.

I've been eating straight from the bushes for the past week, did wonder why I never saw anyone else doing it.

I do pick from above dog height, had no idea about the worms.

Flies lay eggs on them.

They were out all day trying to be Sky Brown, then ate black berries!

They came out of the blackberries.

To clarify - I'd soaked them with salted water, loads of worms and bugs came out, and were got rid of. Put the drained berries in a bowl and covered with a cloth, a couple of hours later it was obvious that there were an awful lot of bugs in the berries that hadn't come out when I soaked them. They were all walking / wiggling around on top.

When I was growing up, petrol was leaded, that's why we didn't eat berries from main roads. Stuff is never clean next to a road anyway, even if you can forget about lead these days.

Yes, I've seen many dogs cock a leg and piss up a hedge. No I don't want to eat dog piss. Or indeed any piss, if I can avoid it.

I just limit myself to eating a few blackberries if I see some good ones, give them a visual once over and check for a hole in the bit that was attached to the stalk. If no sign of any wigglies I can fool myself into thinking it's all clear.

Once had roasted chestnuts at a fair at night, ate most of the bag then went to the pub, got out the last of the chestnuts only to realise they were full of maggots!!

We only ever pick the first blackberries to ripen, before the bugs have had a chance to find them.

Grow up. This is just magical thinking. Before the bugs have had a chance to find them!!! It's just laughable.

As anyone who has ever tried to grow anything will tell you. Slugs will find stuff before it's even half grown.

Do you think your selected blackberries have a magical shield or something?!?!

Blackberries are often full of small maggots, I pick them every year and soak them for a few hours and there's always a good few drowned maggots floating on the surface who have crawled out once the Berry was submerged. I remember the horror of eating half of one as a kid and finding a wriggly worm so while I eat raspberries (lots wild here) as you can see the inside I can't bring myself to neat blackberries without first soaking to drown the worms.

Decades of experience in not finding them in the early crop.

The blackberry is the fruit of a bramble bush (though other prickly fruit-bearing bushes like raspberry bushes can also be called brambles). Bramble (the fruit) is just another word for blackberry. The fact that some are commercially grown doesn't mean they are a different fruit.

I take my DC blackberry picking every summer. We make sure to pick from brambles that are well away from roads and reasonable high up. They (and I) eat lots straight from the bush. I soak the ones that make it home, and yes, they do tend to have little insects in but for some reason it doesn't put off eating the unwashed ones!

We also go strawberry/raspberry picking at a local PYO fruit farm, but I discourage them from eating the fruit before we've got them home and washed - partly because it's dishonest to eat the fruit before it's been weighed and paid for, and partly because it's probably had pesticide/fungicide sprayed on and I prefer to try to wash this off as much as possible before they eat it.

Do you have thorns on your raspberries? I have never seen one wild, but my cultivated raspberries have no thorns.
My cultivated blackberry bush, Rubus Fruiticosus has no thorns, either.
My Brambles (weeds) are very thorny.

Decades of soaking them in salt water to see if they come out? Or not visible to the naked eye on picking?