HealthyLife is a part of www.WeRIndia.com, an all India – centric website (https://healthylife.werindia.com) and is solely owned and operated by WeRIndia.com. It is a Indian nutritional portal providing educational articles.This nutritional port was launched on February 5th, 2015.
Natural Poisons in Fruits and Vegetables
Eating fruits and vegetables is healthy as they supply nutrition and less calories. We are familiar with benefits of most popular fruits and vegetables.
But do you know some of the famous fruits and vegetables also contain poison?
We are not referring to pesticides and herbicides sprays here. We are talking about natural poisons that are present in common produces.
Sometimes unknowingly we might consume seeds of certain fruits and feel sick.
Reason for this is, the chemical constitution of seeds that can be the reason for symptoms of sickness.
Apart from microorganism infection that could be reason for food poisoning, certain natural chemicals found in fruit and vegetables can be poisonous too.
One apple a day keeps doctors away! The King of fruit is good for health and contains nutrients and fiber. It is source of Vitamin C, A and lots of antioxidants.
Well this is true when you eat apple flesh. On the other hand, apple seeds contain amygdalin chemical that produces cyanide once ingested.
This is the reason when you consume many apple seeds get pain in stomach.
Cyanogenic acids are poisonous and consuming seeds results in headache, confusion, anxiety, dizziness, increase heart rate and kidney failure!
Avoid apple seeds and remove seeds before consuming apple.
Almonds are actually seeds. Almonds are known for proteins and almond milk, sweets etc. Generally almonds are used in bakery and for other cooking purposes including sweets.
Almond milk is replacing regular milk and popular with vegans.
Did you know almonds are processed seeds of bitter almonds? If it is not processed it can be poisonous.
It contains cyanogenic acids similar to apple and consuming bitter almond can be deadly. Before entering market, bitter almonds must be processed to remove poison.
Heating process removes poison from bitter almonds. In US it is illegal to sell 100% bitter almonds.
Almonds sold in US are now heat treated to remove poison.
Everyone likes cherries. Sweet cherries are popular in summer and are costly too.
Red cherries, sour cherries, rainer cherries are highly popular.
Cherry pie or adding cherries to ice-cream, cocktail is popular way of consuming the famous fruit. Cherries belong to same family as pears, peaches and almonds.
Do you know – cherry pits are poisonous?When you eat cherry avoid chewing cherry seed. Do not crush, suck, chew or bite on cherry seeds as it contains poisonous prussic acid a form of hydrogen cyanide.
In fact, cherry plant leaves and seeds also contain cyanide compounds.
Peach contains many nutrients including Vitamin A and C in addition to good antioxidants.
Consuming peach reduces body inflammation. For some peach skin can be irritating and affect gastro intestinal track. Reason is the small hairy texture on skin surface of fruit.
However, the danger not with peach skin. It is with seed-pit.
Like almonds and apple seeds, peach pit also contains amounts of cyanide.
Cashew “fruits” are oval shape structure is hypocaripium develops from pedicel.
The original fruit are kidney shaped with hard shell containing the edible seeds.
Cashew that we eat are processed and are not entirely raw. Raw cashews contain a compound called urushiol which is like the poison we found in poison ivy plants.
Eating raw cashew can cause stomach irritation, nausea, headache and vomiting.
Cashew poisoning is rare. If you develop these symptoms after eating cashew it could be because of traces of urshiol that is left behind during the improper processing.
Have you heard about Toxic squash syndrome? Not all cucurbits are poisonous.
Sometimes cucumber or some squash varieties may taste bitter because of the stress that plant goes through during growth.
Lack of temperature or water or due to cross pollination can result in bitter fruit.
Bitterness is because of compound called cucurbitacins. If you taste the bitterness after eating cucumbers and it is very unpleasant and nasty, spit it out and stop eating it as it can cause severe illness and side effects.
Abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, dizziness, vomiting and severe hair loss are some of the symptoms of illness and side effect of toxic squash syndrome.
In case your garden there are volunteer cucumber, zucchini or acorn squash avoid eating them as they are not familiar plants and not grown by you.
