11–20 of 61 posts
Stonefruit 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.)
Cigarettes contain a decent quantity of cyanide
Stonefruit 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.)
This is not the case, however, for bitter almonds.
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.
Stonefruit 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.)
"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.
Stonefruit 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.)
This is not the case, however, for bitter almonds.
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.
“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…
“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…
It'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...
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.