10 Everyday Foods That Can Kill You

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6. Apples

You are giving that apple juice the evil eye, aren’t you? Well, the truth is, it’s unlikely that you will do yourself much harm eating an apple and swallowing a few seeds but not much more than that. The enzymes in your body have this nasty tendency to change the compounds in seeds into cyanide. This is the most likely reason you never heard much about good old Johnny Appleseed after he plants a few hundred trees.

Apple seeds, also called pips, have a sugar/cyanide structure called amygdalin, which, like bitter almonds, turns into that deadly hydrogen cyanide when metabolized by your body. Much like bitter almonds, it only takes about 100 to 200mg of cyanide when eaten to kill an adult within minutes. As you could imagine, it would take far less to kill a child or a pet.

Again, you don’t have to wig out because you swallowed a couple seeds. Your body can handle very small amounts of cyanide. (This is a good thing for smokers as they are inhaling small doses of hydrogen cyanide with every puff) You should never chew seeds, however, as this releases the cyanide into your blood stream directly. If you don’t chew them, most seeds would simply pass out of the body whole.

Should you or your child chew or swallow quite a few seeds, you need to seek medical attention immediately as cyanide kills quickly by robbing the body of oxygen. You will probably be much more careful to core those apples before you eat them now, won’t you? Read more about surprising apple benefits.

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