• The_Caretaker@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    Apple seeds contain very small amounts of cyanide. Eating an occasional apple core won’t kill you but too many apple seeds in a short amount of time will. I think this is why we instinctively avoid eating apple cores.

    • spicystraw@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      TL;DR: this is simply not true in practice

      To be at risk of cyanide poisoning from apple seeds, you would need to consume a significant amount of crushed seeds, with estimates ranging from 150 to several thousand. The exact number depends on the apple variety. Apple seeds contain amygdalin, a compound that can release cyanide. The cyanide content is around 700 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide per apple seed. A lethal dose of cyanide is approximately 50-300 milligrams. Therefore, you would have to eat roughly 1,000 apple seeds to reach a lethal dose. Some calculations suggest that consuming slightly more than 250,000 seeds would be fatal. Eating 29-38 apple cores, assuming each apple has 6-8 seeds, could cause serious harm. You’d have to eat upwards of 20 apples in one sitting and chew all the seeds to be affected.

  • qaz@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    My grandmother lived through the hunger winter and she remained adamant about not wasting any food.

  • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
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    18 days ago

    one time a kid in elementary school ate an apple and its core in front of me and i asked how he did it and all he said was “im russian”

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    18 days ago

    I honestly don’t understand why people don’t eat the core. It’s the same but a little more chunky. Why do so many people let perfectly edible and tasty food go to waste.

  • lath@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Don’t eat the apple seeds. Their content can turn into cyanide during digestion.

          • fartsparkles@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            Different apples have different amounts of amygdalin in a seed. For children especially, with the wrong apple variety, there is indeed a risk.

            Few apple varieties have actually been studied too.

            • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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              18 days ago

              . For children especially, with the wrong apple variety, there is indeed a risk.

              And yet there’s no documented cases of it happening…. Why…?

              You people are being alarmists over something your body can naturally remove. It’s a non-issue, There’s a reason why you can’t find a source to corroborate anything you’ve stated here.

              Unless you want to eat them like peanuts and masticate them beyond all recognition, no one is at risk dude.

            • don@lemm.ee
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              18 days ago

              Even with varieties containing the highest amount, kids would still need to be eating nearly 20 or so cores, so the likelihood of poisoning is only a concern for those who might eat that much all at once.

              The likelihood for the average person is being extremely low, since extremely few people will eat that much all at once.

        • kabi@lemm.ee
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          18 days ago

          Snopes: Luckily for those fond of their Granny Smiths, the body can detoxify cyanide in small doses, and the number of apple seeds it takes to pack a lethal punch is therefore so huge that even the most dedicated of apple eaters is extremely unlikely to ingest enough pips to cause any harm. Yet those who have heard apple seeds house a poison (usually remembered as arsenic, a quite different though equally deadly compound) cling to the frightening belief swallowing a small number of pips spells instant death.

          I can’t find an estimate right now, but you would have to eat at least a big handful of seeds, while making sure you grind them up in your mouth. It’s not wise to worry about this.

    • adhocfungus@midwest.social
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      18 days ago

      How else am I supposed to built up a tolerance for cyanide if I don’t microdose insignificant amounts daily?

  • federal reverse@feddit.org
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    18 days ago

    About a year ago, my grandpa experienced wondrous symptoms. So he went to the hospital. The doctor wasn’t sure what was wrong with him at first, so he had to stay for multiple days. After much discussing about possible causes, it turns out he’d eaten a piece of some random game that another family member brought along, and that he’d let thaw and then had refrozen it. That allowed the doctors to treat him successfully on, I believe, day 3.

    After leaving the hospital, he still wasn’t sure of the cause though — and you can’t just throw away perfectly good meat!; so he ate another piece of the defrosted game and, no surprise, went to hospital again. This time around, the diagnosis was a lot easier though.