Got brought here when reading an article you wrote dealing with apricot seeds. It can be seen here: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/193/are-apricot-seeds-poisonousSays that it is from back in 1974… wow crazy. Just wanted to add to your response that you say that apricot seeds can kill you but you recommend dosage keep yourself from dying. I’d like to point out that a good rule of thumb, as it seems to me, is just do as nature says. Clearly nature wants you to eat the seeds so that you’ll well… you know. Well in nature if you’re eating the seeds you’re also, most likely, eating the fruit. If you eat, as you say, a handful of seeds… you’ll die. But in nature a hand full of seeds would be a wheel barrow or at least a 5 gallon bucket of fruit. An impossible amount to consume at one time. So the rule of thumb would be don’t eat more seeds than you’d be able to eat the fruit of those seeds. This is the portion which the lady who wrote you describes in her life as for most of her life she ate the seeds along with the fruit and clearly she is still here.
Also as a note there are some interesting arguments connecting amygdalin to fighting cancer. In fact it is touted as nature’s cure for cancer. Given the very bitter taste of amygdalin it has been working its way out of human diets over the past 100 years just as cancer has climbed. Your article is very interesting as this lady says she’s acquired a taste for them over the years. I cannot imagine that as the seeds almost taste of aspirin to me. It does go to show though that just as she has learned to like it we could have, over the past century, learned to not like it. The Europeans typically like more bitter things than we do here in the USA. I know not why, but it’s clear than on a whole we’ve become a “sweeter” culture here. Most medical professionals dismiss amygdalin as quackery. However, their opinion are skewed in that it is relatively ineffective as a cure for existing cancer. Amygdalin proponents speak about its preventative nature though. That it is a preventative medicine which if taken in large enough doses to kill large cancerous lumps could endanger the patient as Mr. Adams points out. However, it may have an effect on isolated cancer cells in the body or early growths around scar tissue etc. Getting rid of it before there is a measurable problem. I think there is compelling enough evidence to take a stab at it. I’m fairly young and cancer free. A one pound bag of seeds is $20. A pound should last some time I imagine. Maybe even over a year. Pennies a day and if, after it all, I don’t get cancer it could be from good genes, the seeds, or both. If I get cancer I’m only out a thousand dollars over a lifetime. Seems like mostly upside to me… especially if it works. I promise I’m not a paid agent of some apricot seed cartel. I doubt there could ever be such a thing. That is the glory of it. You cannot patent the apricot or the apple.
If you’re going to get poisoned from the seeds you need to digest them. Nature doesn’t want you to eat them in that case, if you by “nature wants” mean “this is the most advantageous outcome for the producer of the seeds”. If you by “nature wants” mean, “people enjoy it, so it must be advantageous to them”, that’s nonsense too.
Yes nature wants you to eat and then to die before you digest them.:o
Then a new apricot tree will grow from your rotting corpse.