Comment by wdrw

11 hours ago

As a person who always eats the whole apple, stem and all (have done so for years), I'll object to your "apple seeds do not taste good" statement - tastes differ, to me they are delicious, certainly on par with other "normally edible" seeds like sunflower seeds! Of course I wouldn't eat them in any great quantity because of the poison issue.

Bloody 'eck. This sounds like a chat around the back of the bike sheds off of the '70's onwards.

Yes, apple pips do have a tiny amount of cyanide in them (but why)

This is a from a reasonable source and relates to cherries: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-40738573

I think we can assume that apples and cherries are OK to eat. Apple pips are fine and why on earth would you want to crunch through a cherry stone.

  • >I think we can assume that apples and cherries are OK to eat. Apple pips are fine and why on earth would you want to crunch through a cherry stone.

    Black cherries (prunus serotina) I ate a whole bunch of during late summer. Much smaller than the Prunus avium (sweet cherry) which ripens around early June here. Allegedly the fruit does contain the cyanide producing compounds but without the enzymes. The catch is if you chew the pits (or eat the leaves/stems) it is poisonous. Poisons a lot of horses and other livestock: https://horsedvm.com/poisonous/black-cherry-trees

By "they don't taste good" I wasn't trying to imply that they taste bad, though maybe they do to some folks. At least to me they don't taste like anything (they lack a good flavor). For me and probably many folks, the flavor isn't something that attracts me to eating the seeds.