Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The Perilous Peach Pit

I love ripe, juicy, fresh peaches. The juice-running down-your-arm variety.
Slicing through one this afternoon, I actually cut through the pit, too.

Here's what the inside of the pit looked like.
Hey, how'd that almond get in the middle of a peach pit?" Did you know that peaches and almonds are related, and that there is a small bitter almond in the middle of a peach pit? Did
you also know that said bitter almonds contain cyanide? I didn't know this when I put the nut in my mouth, but the bitterness did make me spit it out, fortunately. Unfortunately, I had swallowed a small amount. I freaked out just a little bit upon reading the bit about the cyanide
on the internet. Then, just to demonstrate how neurotic I am, I called the poison control number.
The lady told me (pretty casually, I thought, while I was panicking) the small amount I had
eaten wouldn't have any effect. The experience shook me up, but we all learned something
new about peaches. I'll never look at a peach pit the same way again.

6 comments:

nancy said...

I didn't know that...lol...

hider101 said...

very educational! You made my day!

cakeblockd said...

same thing happend to me about 10 minutes ago i found this while freaking out googling different variations of the word almond inside of a peach + eat

Jamie Fisk said...

HAHA, I just found this out myself and recognized the taste of the cyanide as I was mashing it between my teeth, (I was half expecting it to be poisonous anyway) didn't think anyone else had ever tried it, I made sure to rinse my mouth out thoroughly, and spit every last little bit of the peach-pit-almond out (bitter almonds are actually a seperate variety that have more cyanide than peach seeds) it is amazing how reminiscent of almonds that flavor is, it nearly tasted like I had just dumped a bottle of almond extract in my mouth.

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Anonymous said...

So... How did the peaches get in my almond trees? Do I dare eat the peaches? I already opened the seed and tasted the pit and it DID taste like an almond. How many of these pits will kill you?

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