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Backyard Cyanide
- jonah 2y agoStonefruit pits contain cyanide. (Including almonds.) I made apricot preserves one time and the recipe called for slivered pits to add a bit of flavor. Research it, it appears that you'd need to eat several hands full to poison yourself. And since it doesn't bioaccumulate, eating tiny bits is probably okay. (YMMV/not a doctor/don't rely on this/etc.)
- stronglikedan 2y agoI think apple seeds are the most common (non-stone-fruit anyway) example of this.
- inciampati 2y agoI recently had a friend-of-a-friend's apple seed liquor. It smelled of almonds...
- stvltvs 2y ago"The dose makes the poison" but I'm not in a hurry to make myself a test case for no good reason. Tastier preserves might be a good enough reason.
- supernewton 2y agoYour body actually produces a small amount of cyanide endogenously, if it makes you feel any better. It has some role in cell signalling.
- nick238 2y agoCody's Lab on YouTube drank 17 mg of cyanide for a video, but not surprisingly it's now private. Quotes include: * It tastes like baking soda * I've got a tremor [in my arm] and my breathing is slightly more rapid Cyanide fortunately can't accumulate, so it's far less spooky than heavy metals (lead, chromium, mercury), perfluoroalkanes (PFAS), or some other strange organic molecules that might cause cancer.
- cactacea 2y agoI have no idea how that guy is still alive after all the things he has gone out of his way to expose himself to.
- BoatyPrint 2y agoHe has danced very close the edge with his experiments. However, he appears to be very knowledgeable with what he does.
- skyyler 2y agoThe mercury mouthwash video was really something.
- nartho 2y agoThis is not the case, however, for bitter almonds.
- riffraff 2y agoeven with bitter almonds a grown up needs to eat quite a bit, many old recipes ask for a few bitter almonds in a preparation. A child could die with 5-6 whole bitter almonds, but they are really, really bitter so it's not that easy to accidentally do that.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoMy grandmother introduced us to a world of old-school delicacies, including Jordan almonds, candy-coated in a thick hard shell, and in pastel colors. On more than one occasion, I ate a box or two of those, so many that I had painful bellyaches and worse. It may not have been cyanide, but it was an instructive childhood lesson in "too much of a good thing". It's scary to think how much knowledge of poisons was in our home with my father's profession, and mother's hobby of murder mysteries. When the 1982 adulteration scandal hit the news, I honestly had mixed feelings about the message it sent to consumers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders
- euroderf 2y agoIt's interesting to think that we didn't use to have those peel-away inner caps on all sorts of products.
- kens 2y agoDoes anyone else still worry about cyanide when finding a grape with a puncture? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Chilean_grape_scare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Chilean_grape_scare
- progmetaldev 2y agoLike you, I more than once ate a large amount of Jordan almonds, both times after grabbing bags left on tables after a wedding. I'm 45, but the Tylenol tampering was still alive and well in my conscious even as a teenager, and to this day. I still check the safety seal and will bring anything back to the store if it's more than a few dollars, if the seal looks broken.
- carlob 2y agoBitter almonds contain amygdalin which is cyanogenic. You can't make a number of preparations without them (some types of marzipan or almond pastries and Disaronno come to mind).
- criddell 2y agoI was surprised to find Amazon promoting customer reviews suggesting bitter apricot seeds can heal cancer. https://www.amazon.com/Apricot-California-Pesticide-Herbicide-Free-Resealable/dp/B07J66WVXY https://www.amazon.com/Apricot-California-Pesticide-Herbicid... The AI-generated summary of reviews ends with: > The seeds are also mentioned as having cancer-healing properties. Click on the "Health benefits" link to get many more suggestions of their cancer curing properties. One person was consuming them every hour and started to have difficulty breathing. IMHO, Amazon probably shouldn't be helping to spread this kind of misinformation.
- felipemesquita 2y agoIn NileRed’s video “Does cyanide actually smell like almonds?”[0] he purchases some bitter almonds to measure the amount of cyanide in them. He is also worried about the baseless health benefits claims. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYagO-nup6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYagO-nup6c
- progmetaldev 2y agoI love that channel. Especially turning (I believe) nitrile gloves into hot sauce. Some of the chemistry he performs, I would never think of even existing. It's like people that say margarine is one molecule away from plastic, without understanding that all of chemistry works like that.
- sitkack 2y agoWait, can we just recycle plastic into margarine? Bubble wrap marmalade?
- userbinator 2y agoNaturally occuring polymers like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid are indeed very similar to synthetic ones, in that they both contain long hydrocarbon chains of varying length.
- carabiner 2y agoSeems like eating this whole bag could kill you? https://www.apricotpower.com/item/852-Turkish-Organic-Bitter-Raw-Apricot-Seeds-32-oz?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwvr--BhB5EiwAd5YbXuhUF2GReYy8iByONzcIbPsxterHRpnb3fuh_eRHpCgUINE_q8cvChoCfYsQAvD_BwE https://www.apricotpower.com/item/852-Turkish-Organic-Bitter...
- jonah 2y agoYikes!
- 11235813213455 2y agoCigarettes contain a decent quantity of cyanide
- stronglikedan 2y agothat's just so they can claim to be somewhat healthy /s
- cwmoore 2y agoso the tar perfectly mediates the balance of polonium and cyanide
- didgeoridoo 2y ago“Much literature has historically claimed that hydrogen cyanide smells of almonds or bitter almonds. However, there has been considerable confusion and disagreement over this, because the smell of household almond essence is due to benzaldehyde, which is released along with hydrogen cyanide from the breakdown of amygdalin present in some plant seeds, and thus is often mistaken for it.[12][13] In an experiment to test what hydrogen cyanide smells like, the chemistry Youtuber NileRed described the smell as "not at all like an almond" but like "weak bleach or chlorine" or "swimming pools".[14]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chneu 2y agoShout-out to NileRed. Nigel has a whole series of edible chem runs. The pop rocks one is pretty good. His schtick is that he orders ridiculous equipment for all his videos. He's worth a watch.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoIt's common to say that sulfur/natural gas smells "like rotten eggs" but I've probably not smelled a rotten egg in isolation for 40 years. But since I'm familiar with sulfur-type smells I could probably figure it out. I expect a future of bad and rotten eggs in our supermarkets...
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoI'm familiar with the smells of sulfur (at least memories from decades ago), natural gas additives (mercaptan) and having chickens that like to lay in random hidden places, rotten eggs. I don't think that there's much overlap in the scent profiles. Maybe a diluted rotten egg is similar to that smell of making black powder as a child, but not much.
- eszed 2y ago
- memhole 2y agoHope the author picks up their blog again. I enjoyed the chickens article too.
- neuroelectron 2y ago[flagged]
- yard2010 2y agoInteresting topic indeed but I have to say - the writing style completely nailed it! I love the humor and the figurative language. Great delivery.
- declan_roberts 2y agoI live in a rural area and I'm surprised at how well grazing animals intuitively avoid these poisonous plants. I see goats grazing in fields with hemlock. They'll give the hemlock a sniff and then avoid it while greedily eating everything else around it.
- m463 2y agoGrowing up, I remember throwing my dog food. It was just amazing, the food would arch up, intersect with his mouth, and just... disappear. except grapes. They would arch up, intersect with his mouth, and... hit a tongue and roll off onto the floor. turns out grapes (and raisins) are toxic to dogs. How they figure that out during the millisecond encounter with the tongue is mind-boggling. oh, another one: one time when young I gave my dog a corncob to chew on, my theory being it would be like gnawing on a bone. and it he just ate it. it disappeared. we monitored him, he was fine, but scared me to death.
- florbo 2y agoiirc it's the concentration of tartaric acid that's toxic to dogs. You got lucky your dog didn't like grapes! A lot of dogs will just eat them, btw, so don't think they all will instinctively avoid grapes.
- Johnythree 2y agoI'm puzzled by this claim. I wouldn't call it a myth, but all the same... I grew up on a vineyard. Each harvest time the grapes would hang down heavily and almost touch the ground. Our pet dogs would park themselves beneath and greedily consume a whole bunch. They would also scoff any dried grapes they found on the ground. The worst effect seemed that they all would get noticeably pudgy during the season.
- florbo 2y agoThe concentration of tartaric acid in each individual grape is unpredictable, along with each individual dog's tolerance level to tartaric acid. The only thing that's certain is that anything with tartaric acid is potentially toxic to canines due the development kidney damage after ingestion.
- lisabdunlap 2y agophenomenal writing style, cant wait for the next one to drop. What's the natural next topic after chickens and cyanide
- A_D_E_P_T 2y agoGood post. I'm reminded of this blog, which was really interesting while it lasted: https://naturespoisons.com/ https://naturespoisons.com/
- rickandmortyy 2y ago[dead]
- pfdietz 2y agoThe cyanide ion is made much less toxic by complexing with iron ions, so I wonder if this plant material could be detoxified in this way.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI remember reading in Guns, Germs and Steel, that they could figure out how every crop originated. Except almonds. Apparently, all wild almonds are deadly poisonous, and they couldn't figure out how they moved to the non-poisonous domestic variety.
- defrost 2y agoTwenty two years after publication, more is known: A study published this week in the journal Science sequenced the almond genome and shows that a single genetic mutation "turned off" the ability to make the toxic compound thousands of years ago — a key step before humans could domesticate almonds. "Wild almonds are bitter and lethal, even in tiny amounts, because [they have] this amygdalin," says study co-author Stefano Pavan, a professor in agricultural genetics and plant breeding at the University of Bari in Italy. (Pavan's primary co-author was Raquel Sánchez-Pérez, a senior biochemistry researcher at CEBAS-CSIC, an agricultural research center in Spain.) "This mutation is very important because it's the mutation that allowed almond domestication." How Almonds Went From Deadly To Delicious (2019) - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/13/732160949/how-almonds-went-from-deadly-to-delicious https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/13/732160949/ho... Mutation of a bHLH transcription factor allowed almond domestication - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav8197 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav8197
- anonymousiam 2y agoI learned in my high school biology class (during the genetics sessions) that I am among the minority that cannot taste or smell Cyanide. I remember being the only one in the classroom who wasn't disgusted by the foul taste of the Cyanide doped paper blotters people were putting on their tongues. All I could taste was the paper.