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.)
Cody'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.
Bitter 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).
My 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.
Like 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.
I've come to the conclusion that pain relief drugs are always a racket, and as my pain becomes exquisite in old age, I'm choosing to allow nature run its course, rather than go to great expense and effort to destroy my internal organs, by subscribing to them on amazon or something.
The American War on Drugs and ___ Epidemics are, in actuality, pandemics of pain, suffering, and people willing to pay any price.
Say again? How exactly is this so if it does really relieve certain types of pain?
Also, choosing to let nature run its course is usually a surefire path to needless misery with no benefit. Pain relief drugs don't necessarily destroy your organs. You're badly overblowing that and even if it were the case in a very gradual way, it could still be a better option than being destroyed anyhow and much more painfully by "nature running its course".
> ate a box or two of those, so many that I had painful bellyaches and worse.
Yes. That's what happens with a lot of sweets, and has absolutely nothing to do with "poisons".
Many things aren't good when consumed in massive quantities. All the way to water. Somewhere between 1-4l in an hour, hyponatremia kicks in. Goes all the way to falling into a coma. (Depends on body mass, amongst other things)
> 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.
A simple AP chemistry class will do the same trick. Or just gardening at home. Or probably two seasons of House, M.D.
What's keeping us alive isn't lack of knowledge, but a functioning society where people shy away from murdering for their gain.
> 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.
In 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.
I 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.
Naturally occuring polymers like 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.
Growing 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.
iirc 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.
Twenty 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."
“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]”
Otherwise known as Muriatic Acid when used in pools, hydrochloric is an aqueous solution of HCl gas, which is a very acidic gas, highly soluble in water. It is usually supplied in its saturated solution of approximately 37% concentrated HCl gas dissolved in water. It's a smoker, as soon as you open the bottle of concentrate, vapors of HCl begin to escape and if you get a whiff it's pretty rough.
HCN can be supplied in gas form (pressure cylinders) if needed, but most cyanide is supplied as a solid salt like NaCN or KCN, which are "basically" non-acidic forms of cyanide.
These crystals can be dissolved in water (makes a very toxic solution) without the release of very much HCN gas, but the solution must be maintained in a relatively alkaline condition, otherwise if it is acidified the solution will liberate HCN and it smells like an acidic gas alright.
A little bit like HCl but even rougher.
Well in my back yard during college there was a big cherry laurel and once the little fruits were ripe it would be infested with birds who were wolfing them down. It's hot even in north Florida and after a while some of the fruits would get fermented to a certain percentage of alcohol. The birds were really partying then until it got to the point they would fall out of the tree drunk.
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'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.
Not much to say. Couldn't buy gunpowder as a 12-year-old, but the drug store would sell you saltpeter (KNO4?) if you said your mom was using it to cure ham and sulfur (I think it was used on wounds) and it was easy to make charcoal and grind it to a powder.
Mix the three together and stuff it into a small closed-end tube made from newspaper and scotch tape, with a piece of powder-infused cotton string for a fuze and you had yourself a rocket.
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.
Cody'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.
I have no idea how that guy is still alive after all the things he has gone out of his way to expose himself to.
Your body actually produces a small amount of cyanide endogenously, if it makes you feel any better. It has some role in cell signalling.
I think apple seeds are the most common (non-stone-fruit anyway) example of this.
I recently had a friend-of-a-friend's apple seed liquor. It smelled of almonds...
Bitter 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).
This is not the case, however, for bitter almonds.
even 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.
My 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
It's interesting to think that we didn't use to have those peel-away inner caps on all sorts of products.
Does anyone else still worry about cyanide when finding a grape with a puncture?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Chilean_grape_scare
Like 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.
It is trivial to both procure the machines as well as hone the technique to reseal those packages. Safety seals are largely security theater.
Tylenol is "pain relief theater".
I've come to the conclusion that pain relief drugs are always a racket, and as my pain becomes exquisite in old age, I'm choosing to allow nature run its course, rather than go to great expense and effort to destroy my internal organs, by subscribing to them on amazon or something.
The American War on Drugs and ___ Epidemics are, in actuality, pandemics of pain, suffering, and people willing to pay any price.
>Tylenol is "pain relief theater".
Say again? How exactly is this so if it does really relieve certain types of pain?
Also, choosing to let nature run its course is usually a surefire path to needless misery with no benefit. Pain relief drugs don't necessarily destroy your organs. You're badly overblowing that and even if it were the case in a very gradual way, it could still be a better option than being destroyed anyhow and much more painfully by "nature running its course".
Odd take.
> ate a box or two of those, so many that I had painful bellyaches and worse.
Yes. That's what happens with a lot of sweets, and has absolutely nothing to do with "poisons".
Many things aren't good when consumed in massive quantities. All the way to water. Somewhere between 1-4l in an hour, hyponatremia kicks in. Goes all the way to falling into a coma. (Depends on body mass, amongst other things)
> 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.
A simple AP chemistry class will do the same trick. Or just gardening at home. Or probably two seasons of House, M.D.
What's keeping us alive isn't lack of knowledge, but a functioning society where people shy away from murdering for their gain.
I was surprised to find Amazon promoting customer reviews suggesting bitter apricot seeds can heal cancer.
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.
In 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
I 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.
Wait, can we just recycle plastic into margarine? Bubble wrap marmalade?
Naturally occuring polymers like 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.
So we can take a barrel of crude oil and turn it into nacho cheese? What would that entail.
One person was consuming them every hour and started to have difficulty breathing.
That's a Darwin Award candidate.
Seems like eating this whole bag could kill you? https://www.apricotpower.com/item/852-Turkish-Organic-Bitter...
Yikes!
I 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.
Growing 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.
iirc 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.
Interesting topic indeed but I have to say - the writing style completely nailed it! I love the humor and the figurative language. Great delivery.
I 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.
Twenty two years after publication, more is known:
How Almonds Went From Deadly To Delicious (2019) - 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
Good post. I'm reminded of this blog, which was really interesting while it lasted: https://naturespoisons.com/
Cigarettes contain a decent quantity of cyanide
that's just so they can claim to be somewhat healthy /s
so the tar perfectly mediates the balance of polonium and cyanide
Hope the author picks up their blog again. I enjoyed the chickens article too.
The 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.
phenomenal writing style, cant wait for the next one to drop. What's the natural next topic after chickens and cyanide
“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
Shout-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.
HCN gas does smell a bit like Hydrochloric Acid.
Not like almonds at all.
Otherwise known as Muriatic Acid when used in pools, hydrochloric is an aqueous solution of HCl gas, which is a very acidic gas, highly soluble in water. It is usually supplied in its saturated solution of approximately 37% concentrated HCl gas dissolved in water. It's a smoker, as soon as you open the bottle of concentrate, vapors of HCl begin to escape and if you get a whiff it's pretty rough.
HCN can be supplied in gas form (pressure cylinders) if needed, but most cyanide is supplied as a solid salt like NaCN or KCN, which are "basically" non-acidic forms of cyanide.
These crystals can be dissolved in water (makes a very toxic solution) without the release of very much HCN gas, but the solution must be maintained in a relatively alkaline condition, otherwise if it is acidified the solution will liberate HCN and it smells like an acidic gas alright.
A little bit like HCl but even rougher.
Well in my back yard during college there was a big cherry laurel and once the little fruits were ripe it would be infested with birds who were wolfing them down. It's hot even in north Florida and after a while some of the fruits would get fermented to a certain percentage of alcohol. The birds were really partying then until it got to the point they would fall out of the tree drunk.
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'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.
> making black powder as a child
Storytime, please?
[shrug]
Not much to say. Couldn't buy gunpowder as a 12-year-old, but the drug store would sell you saltpeter (KNO4?) if you said your mom was using it to cure ham and sulfur (I think it was used on wounds) and it was easy to make charcoal and grind it to a powder.
Mix the three together and stuff it into a small closed-end tube made from newspaper and scotch tape, with a piece of powder-infused cotton string for a fuze and you had yourself a rocket.
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