> Alex rightly points out that apple seeds do contain cyanide. Turns out, it’s not a huge risk for normal apple consumption.
You don't have to eat them. There's no benefit to eating them. They don't taste good. They provide a negligible amount of nutrition, if any, and harm you very mildly. The stem of an apple is edible, but for what? A gram of extra fiber after you manage to gnaw through it?
You can eat banana peels, but you probably wouldn't want to. It's a terrible texture and flavor. They decompose well, so there's no meaningful environmental benefit. Yes, they have nutrients. You can eat a second piece of fruit instead.
And this is not universally good advice. The seeds, leaves, and stem of the pawpaw is filled with toxins—enough that folks have died from it.
I don't think the author is trying to make a point, but rather to show that we do things because we were told them. But it's important to also realize that the cultural reasons are sometimes backed up with hard-earned lessons or to save us from having to learn for ourselves that watermelon rind isn't pleasant to eat without preparing it in other ways.
As a person who always eats the whole apple, stem and all (have done so for years), I'll object to your "apple seeds do not taste good" statement - tastes differ, to me they are delicious, certainly on par with other "normally edible" seeds like sunflower seeds! Of course I wouldn't eat them in any great quantity because of the poison issue.
By "they don't taste good" I wasn't trying to imply that they taste bad, though maybe they do to some folks. At least to me they don't taste like anything (they lack a good flavor). For me and probably many folks, the flavor isn't something that attracts me to eating the seeds.
Most of the insecticide sprays are on the skin. You can eat the seeds, maybe don't bite them as they taste nasty. Eating the core is not the most pleasant part, and the top and bottom might be be most difficult to rinse the sprays from.
I'm sure you could prepare almost anything to taste great. You can do whatever you think you'd enjoy. My point isn't to discourage you from doing it. If you want to eat apple stems or orange peels or horse chestnuts, knock yourself out. My point is that it's probably not smart to do so unless you know what you're doing and have a good reason to.
I ate Kiwis for years before someone told me most people DO NOT eat the skins. I looked at my bag of kiwis, and the even the damn monkey mascot was holding a spoon...mocking me...
Also eating skins turns kiwis from a fruit you have to spend time to preprocess (halve + grab spoon) to an immediate snack.
This may sound insignificant to many but for the extremely lazy like me, this is the difference between going to waste and being consumed for many fruits.
When I wash kiwis I rub the hairs off, and then cut them into thick slices, leaving the skin on. Trying to skin or eat them with a spoon is just a pain, and I don’t find the skin unpleasant.
I’ve seen a lot of people also just wash/rub the hairs off and bite straight into them, though I find this can make a mess if they are too soft.
Kiwi fuzz irritates my throat, so I rub a lot of the fuz off, and then use a straight bladed knife to "shave" the rest off. The skin gives a tart contrast to the fruit center. I'm sure there's lots of valuable nutrients in the skin too
Don’t worry, my kids eat the skin too. I guess we forgot to tell them not to and they didn’t find it unpleasant. I tried a bite for my own edification and I did not find it pleasant.
That said, I usually eat peanuts with the shell and all. Though don’t eat too many that way, the shells are definitely not getting digested, so chew well. Also there is probably a higher chance of dirt or other stuff you don’t want to eat being on the shell, but I don’t usually eat peanuts anyway so never been a problem for me.
I had a college who would meticulously cut that black thing at the bottom of the apple and also quite a bit of actual apple flesh, like 1cm or even more around it. When I asked him why he cut so much, he said that the black thing is remnant of apple flower and when apple tree is in the bloom it is the most sensitive so they apply most pesticides then and the concentration is highest around that black part. By cutting it away with little bit of flesh he removes most of the pesticides that are in the apple. It didn't help, few years later he died of cancer.
Lots of fruit skins are very edible (kiwis etc.), but they are covered with pesticides. All conventional fruits are.
If you look at the "Dirty Dozen" vs. "Clean Fifteen" lists of fruits/veggies that come out every year, you'll notice that the cleanest fruits are almost always ones that grow with a thick skin or covering, or are covered by soil: banana, pineapple, avocado, corn, (shelled) peas, watermelon, carrot, potato, etc.
And the dirtiest ones have a thin or no skin: greens, stone fruit, blackberries, strawberries, apples, pears etc.
The clean fruits aren't really any cleaner, the study just tests the "edible" part minus the outer skin. If you eat the skin of conventional Clean Fifteen, you might as well be eating a Dirty Dozen.
I always eat the whole thing, especially an apple, skin seeds and all. It’s natural to me. Also kiwi with it’s skin.
I only peel mango, it’s skin is not tasty…
Grapes are commonly peeled in Japan, and people will look at you strangely if you eat them skin on. However, Japanese grapes are huge and have a thick, astringent skin that peels off easily.
Likewise, when Japanese people go overseas and start peeling grapes, people look at them strangely. Eventually they figure out that Western grapes are small, hard to peel and the skins are thin and nearly tasteless, so they adopt our barbarian habits too.
Updated to add: Japanese grapes like Kyoho are actually hybrid cultivars of Western grapes (Vitis vinifera) and Concord grapes (Vitis labrusca), which is why they're so different.
I've had this conversation and the way I explained it is that our grapes are closer to the boba in bubble tea. It's not quite right (they don't pop quite as much) and boba isn't Japanese, but it gets the point across.
Like my parent said, the grapes in East Asia are thick-skinned, and people either peel them or suck out their flesh. The ones sold in Europe are very thin-skinned, and peeling is largely impractical. I'm relating the latter to boba.
big purple concord grapes grow wild in the US and are thick skinned and you squeeze or suck out the grape inside, skin significantly more tart than the sweet grape, pretty sure those are the tannins that you get in wine from skin contact even those those are different grape varieties.
I've visited a number of European winegrower family farms and they frequently also grow table grapes for their own consumption. The table grapes they eat are much much less sweet than vinifera grapes where the yeast consume all the sugar into alcohol and which are basically too sweet to enjoy.
I'm 45 and only recently realised the grapes in the UK are "seedless". Grapes with seeds was not a pleasant experience when I accidentally ate one whilst in Croatia.
I live near a Korean pan-Asian convenience store, and I've been enjoy the variety of beverages and ramen available there. Oceania today exports foods with significant influence by Italian cuisine, in particular.
There are some fruit drinks which contain whole fruit, like green grapes. It's sort of on the spectrum if you imagine canned grapes, which come in a "light syrup" but the beverage is a thinned-out version of that, not tart or sugary like American grape juice.
But you pour the can out, and a couple of fresh grapes come out as well. I suppose they are peeled. I was a little disappointed when the pear juice didn't include sliced pears. But there are many more fruits to try!
Fun fact: a lot of people think artificial grape flavoring doesn't taste like grapes. And that the "Welch's concord grape jam" variety of jams is artificially flavored.
If you're going to eat an apple this way, some notes:
- Start from the blossom end (the bottom). This makes the core more palatable for multiple reasons.
- The blossom remains themselves may have mold in very rare cases. Take a look before you start eating.
- Some apples have much, much harder core walls and are not really edible this way. Others are quite soft. So it will depend on variety.
- Don't bother eating the stems and seeds. It's pointless.
I really only do this when I don't have a place to put the apple core, e.g. on a road trip if I don't have a trash/compost bag. (Can't throw it out the window because it will attract wildlife to the roadside.)
When I realized you can just eat kiwi with the skin on (if it's a very hairy one, brush them off under running water) and in no time it actually tastes better (adds some lovely contrast), it became my favorite zero-ennui fruit. It almost feels like a cheat code for something so tasty and large to require so little effort!
Now, I never thought that kiwi skins are not edible of course, but I just assumed they're somehow unpleasant because everyone seems to peel or spoon them.
People in the Amazon do eat tarantulas. They do roast them over an open flame first though to burn off the hairs as they can be harmful and irritating.
Umless specifically indicated as untreated, citrus peel in soaked in very nasty antifungal waxes. In the EU they are specifucally warned about not fit for consumption.
Citrus peels taste good. They're used for cooking in every culture that grows citrus. Eating them raw is only bad due to farmers poisoning the food they sell.
People throw away so much strawberry in an effort to cut the leaves off. Just eat the leaves. Next time you go to eat a strawberry, try eating the leaves too - they're very mild in flavor, and you waste no strawberry!
In at least some varieties of strawberries, the top of the berry has the least flavor and sweetness, and the bottom has the most, so I don't feel like I'm losing much.
Most mass-produced strawberries people eat today are basically white on the inside and relatively flavorless to the real thing anyway, I don't think most people miss out if they eat or not the top of the berry.
I just rip the leaves off, which is very easy with the variety we eat here. I never would have thought to cut them off. Are your two strawberries different?
Surprised this comment is so low, was searching for it. Many fruits that you commonly peel can even contain both waxes and pesticides to keep insects out. You aren’t even able to wash it effectively.
Things like cantaloupes, oranges, etc are famous for harboring bad bacteria and pesticides. Does not seem worth the risk to me…
I used to watch people collect dandelions and weeds in NYC parks to make into tea and consume in other ways. I’m sure there are some benefits but I’m also sure they don’t outweigh the risks from pollutants.
I tried following an authentic Southern pickled watermelon rind recipe, and they were so sickly sweet I couldn't stomach them.
I should try again sometime with a regular cucumber pickle recipe, just replacing cucumbers with watermelon rinds, but I don't think my family wants to humor me again.
I mean, deer (and cows and goats and sheep, but not horses) are ruminants. They can eat all sorts of things humans can’t digest: grass, tree leaves, most weeds, etc).
The evolution of the rumen was one of nature’s best tricks.
I am reminded of the saying in my family: Anything is edible if you're willing to eat it.
My late father-in-law ate entire apples-- core and all. I've tried but I can't stomach the texture or how much more the fibrous parts of the core get stuck in my teeth. It doesn't disgust me, I just don't prefer it.
Not to miss an opportunity to talk about apples:
I started eating three apples / day for lunch last year. I hadn't realized how dirty apples are. I assumed the washing they get in processing gets them pretty clean. It does not. I wet them and clean the stem and flower areas with a paper towel. I'm shocked at how dirty the towel ends up.
I'm a sweet apple kind of guy. Envy apples are the bomb. I used to like Honeycrisp but the rumors of their being bred into shitty tastelessness are true. They're terrible. Shockingly, sometimes Red Delicious, which I'd previously relegated to the "buy as a last resort" list, are actually pretty good now. Fuji, Gala, and Cosmic Crisp are all decent specimens.
My wife likes Pink Lady but I think they're just a little too tart. She can also put away the Granny Smiths which I find to be horrifyingly sour. Ick!
Anybody have feelings about other apple varieties a person like me might be into?
I don’t know much about apple variety names, but if you love apples and plan to visit Aomori prefecture in Japan during apple season, I highly recommend stopping by a market or grocery. I used to live in northern Akita and there was a farmer from Aomori that would come by with freshly picked apples to sell at one of the supermarkets. They had many varieties and they all tasted amazingly sweet and unique. I have yet to find an apple anywhere close to those since moving back to the states. The most recent new variety that I tried that I liked was Kiku. It’s like a sweeter version of a Fuji apple with a very similar texture. Based on your preferences, I think this would a fun one to try.
I don't eat mushrooms-- can't stand the texture. I heard a podcast episode re: death cap mushrooms and it was chilling. A guy in the podcast talked about tasting a death cap then spitting it out and rinsing his mouth. He said they had a good taste.
Soluna is like eating crispy wine and is currently at the top of my list. Prior to finding that, Lady Alice improves on Pink Lady, and it was my rockstar favorite. Envy is my go-to year-round when I can’t find rarer varietals; I’ve eaten hundreds of them. Cosmic Crisp is a fine last resort when Honeycrisp is too bright. Consider also trying Rubinette, Arkansas Black, Zestar. My notes say Wild Twist is a former Lady Alice but I definitely rank it just below L.A.
On the flipside: Kanzi “disappointment with every bite”, Ambrosia “pie apple because the raw texture sucks”, Autumn Glory DNF, Kissabel “lost its joy and turned grassy, DNF” Sugarbee “kinda one note, chewy, technically better than Red Delicious” Sweetango “knockoff Honeycrisp”, Evercrisp “painfully crisp, annoying to eat, fades to zero, looks like it was factory-polished, DNF”, Dazzle “all the flavourlessness of a Red Delicious with a nice crisp”, Ginger Gold “ten seconds of wonder and then mushes into disgusting texture and flavorlessness”
I still cut out the core when I slice an apple. I don't know the anatomical terminology well, but the "plastic-ey" texture of, I believe, the endocarp is what I don't like. It reminds me a bit of the plastic-ey tooth-clogging bits of popcorn.
Aren't the seeds of the apple supposed to contain cyanide? Article points this out too and risk doesn't seem worth it. I used to eat the whole apple long time ago until someone pointed that out and from my googling, it was correct. Now I try to eat all of the apple except the seeds and stem.
I like putting my apples in the fridge. Love me a cold and crisp gala apple. On very rare occasion, the gala I get are mushy. But otherwise, they are my favorite.
You would need to eat the seeds of SEVERAL HUNDRED apples in one sitting, and you would need to grind them up finely beforehand to get full amygdalin absorption.
We're talking about almost a cup, or 100+ grams of apple seed here.
Your body continually neutralizes cyanide with the enzyme rhodanese, so there's also no danger of cyanide accumulation from eating a few apples a day.
This is quite funny timing as just a few days ago my partner, who eats kiwis almost every day, tried eating the whole kiwi. She used to scoop it out but now says she'll never go back. It's also way more convenient as there are no tools required.
Well, they're all editable, only question is if you like it and if the fruit skinn itself is good. I eat most kiwis with the skin on because it's a nice tart/acidic contrast to soft sweet insides, but some kiwis have extremely thick and acidic. Most pear cores are soft and sweet, but very few apple cores, nor worth it.
On a related note, a friend of mine removed both the skin and even the center core (the seeds part) of cucumbers. I think all that's left is about 30% of the cucumber.
I found that truly bizarre. Her reasoning was that it was too watery (???)
To be fair there are some sorts where the seeds can be overwhelming, but that's not what you usually get in the supermarket.
In cucumbers you can normally buy removing the seeds/ watery core in my opinion only makes sense when you for example make Tzatziki, as otherwise it can get rather watery.
A guy I was hanging around with in India (Himalayas) asked me why I was peeling the mango. He said you should eat it with the skin. So I continued doing that. One day, at the top of one mountain, I sat down to eat my mango. This Indian guy with his girlfriend walked by and asked why the hell I was eating the mango with the skin on.
One time I decided to slice up a mango like a melon and just eat the flesh off the skin. A bit later I realized I had an awful itchy rash all around my mouth. That's when I learned about urushiol in mango skin! Would not recommend
I started eating mango skin a few months ago. When it's thin and bland, it's not bad. Gives a nice crunch to the eating experience. But often it's way too thick and sometimes strongly bitter.
> Alex rightly points out that apple seeds do contain cyanide. Turns out, it’s not a huge risk for normal apple consumption.
You don't have to eat them. There's no benefit to eating them. They don't taste good. They provide a negligible amount of nutrition, if any, and harm you very mildly. The stem of an apple is edible, but for what? A gram of extra fiber after you manage to gnaw through it?
You can eat banana peels, but you probably wouldn't want to. It's a terrible texture and flavor. They decompose well, so there's no meaningful environmental benefit. Yes, they have nutrients. You can eat a second piece of fruit instead.
And this is not universally good advice. The seeds, leaves, and stem of the pawpaw is filled with toxins—enough that folks have died from it.
I don't think the author is trying to make a point, but rather to show that we do things because we were told them. But it's important to also realize that the cultural reasons are sometimes backed up with hard-earned lessons or to save us from having to learn for ourselves that watermelon rind isn't pleasant to eat without preparing it in other ways.
As a person who always eats the whole apple, stem and all (have done so for years), I'll object to your "apple seeds do not taste good" statement - tastes differ, to me they are delicious, certainly on par with other "normally edible" seeds like sunflower seeds! Of course I wouldn't eat them in any great quantity because of the poison issue.
The logical next step is to eat the tree.
And then an airplane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito
"He was awarded a plaque, made of brass, by the publishers to commemorate his abilities. He ate his award".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_poisoning#Chronic_expo...
By "they don't taste good" I wasn't trying to imply that they taste bad, though maybe they do to some folks. At least to me they don't taste like anything (they lack a good flavor). For me and probably many folks, the flavor isn't something that attracts me to eating the seeds.
Most of the insecticide sprays are on the skin. You can eat the seeds, maybe don't bite them as they taste nasty. Eating the core is not the most pleasant part, and the top and bottom might be be most difficult to rinse the sprays from.
Banana peels are delicious if cooked correctly. You can make a surprisingly tasty "facon" with them.
I'm sure you could prepare almost anything to taste great. You can do whatever you think you'd enjoy. My point isn't to discourage you from doing it. If you want to eat apple stems or orange peels or horse chestnuts, knock yourself out. My point is that it's probably not smart to do so unless you know what you're doing and have a good reason to.
i wanted to try that, but aren't they like super full of poisons to kill bugs?
Please tell us more! What do you mean by correctly?
I too am intrigued, so I found the following:
https://itdoesnttastelikechicken.com/banana-peel-bacon/
Sounds simple enough - is there anyone who has done this? Bacon is a hard one to replicate!
Maybe it's like bacon in the same way that spaghetti squash is like spaghetti? (Shape only)
You can make curry with them (either just the peels, or whole unripe bananas).
I ate Kiwis for years before someone told me most people DO NOT eat the skins. I looked at my bag of kiwis, and the even the damn monkey mascot was holding a spoon...mocking me...
Also eating skins turns kiwis from a fruit you have to spend time to preprocess (halve + grab spoon) to an immediate snack.
This may sound insignificant to many but for the extremely lazy like me, this is the difference between going to waste and being consumed for many fruits.
Half + spoon? What is this sacrilege? Peel with knife like a potato and then eat the whole thing.
Why would you peel potatos? The skin is the best part!
When I wash kiwis I rub the hairs off, and then cut them into thick slices, leaving the skin on. Trying to skin or eat them with a spoon is just a pain, and I don’t find the skin unpleasant.
I’ve seen a lot of people also just wash/rub the hairs off and bite straight into them, though I find this can make a mess if they are too soft.
Hardy kiwis are also eaten whole, like a berry.
yeah, I do this too. minimize the fuzz and the skin itself improves the overall flavor in my opinion.
Kiwi fuzz irritates my throat, so I rub a lot of the fuz off, and then use a straight bladed knife to "shave" the rest off. The skin gives a tart contrast to the fruit center. I'm sure there's lots of valuable nutrients in the skin too
Try a different variety. Some don't even really have hair.
Don’t worry, my kids eat the skin too. I guess we forgot to tell them not to and they didn’t find it unpleasant. I tried a bite for my own edification and I did not find it pleasant.
That said, I usually eat peanuts with the shell and all. Though don’t eat too many that way, the shells are definitely not getting digested, so chew well. Also there is probably a higher chance of dirt or other stuff you don’t want to eat being on the shell, but I don’t usually eat peanuts anyway so never been a problem for me.
It depends on the variety, some kiwi skins are tick and hairy, while others exteriors are thin and smooth.
I enjoy the tickly sensation of a fuzzy kiwi but immensely dislike the crunch of croutons. People are weird.
I had a college who would meticulously cut that black thing at the bottom of the apple and also quite a bit of actual apple flesh, like 1cm or even more around it. When I asked him why he cut so much, he said that the black thing is remnant of apple flower and when apple tree is in the bloom it is the most sensitive so they apply most pesticides then and the concentration is highest around that black part. By cutting it away with little bit of flesh he removes most of the pesticides that are in the apple. It didn't help, few years later he died of cancer.
Lots of fruit skins are very edible (kiwis etc.), but they are covered with pesticides. All conventional fruits are.
If you look at the "Dirty Dozen" vs. "Clean Fifteen" lists of fruits/veggies that come out every year, you'll notice that the cleanest fruits are almost always ones that grow with a thick skin or covering, or are covered by soil: banana, pineapple, avocado, corn, (shelled) peas, watermelon, carrot, potato, etc.
And the dirtiest ones have a thin or no skin: greens, stone fruit, blackberries, strawberries, apples, pears etc.
The clean fruits aren't really any cleaner, the study just tests the "edible" part minus the outer skin. If you eat the skin of conventional Clean Fifteen, you might as well be eating a Dirty Dozen.
I always eat the whole thing, especially an apple, skin seeds and all. It’s natural to me. Also kiwi with it’s skin. I only peel mango, it’s skin is not tasty…
Grapes are commonly peeled in Japan, and people will look at you strangely if you eat them skin on. However, Japanese grapes are huge and have a thick, astringent skin that peels off easily.
Likewise, when Japanese people go overseas and start peeling grapes, people look at them strangely. Eventually they figure out that Western grapes are small, hard to peel and the skins are thin and nearly tasteless, so they adopt our barbarian habits too.
Updated to add: Japanese grapes like Kyoho are actually hybrid cultivars of Western grapes (Vitis vinifera) and Concord grapes (Vitis labrusca), which is why they're so different.
That's crazy, theres tons of taste in grape skin
Cf. red wine
I've had this conversation and the way I explained it is that our grapes are closer to the boba in bubble tea. It's not quite right (they don't pop quite as much) and boba isn't Japanese, but it gets the point across.
Whose grapes are you likening to boba? I’m struggling with the comparison - even a loose one.
Is there a grape variety I’m entirely ignorant of?
Like my parent said, the grapes in East Asia are thick-skinned, and people either peel them or suck out their flesh. The ones sold in Europe are very thin-skinned, and peeling is largely impractical. I'm relating the latter to boba.
big purple concord grapes grow wild in the US and are thick skinned and you squeeze or suck out the grape inside, skin significantly more tart than the sweet grape, pretty sure those are the tannins that you get in wine from skin contact even those those are different grape varieties.
I've visited a number of European winegrower family farms and they frequently also grow table grapes for their own consumption. The table grapes they eat are much much less sweet than vinifera grapes where the yeast consume all the sugar into alcohol and which are basically too sweet to enjoy.
I'm 45 and only recently realised the grapes in the UK are "seedless". Grapes with seeds was not a pleasant experience when I accidentally ate one whilst in Croatia.
that's genetic modification for you. nature doesn't make seedless fruits
My dad would peel the skin of every fruit, including grapes, which is how I learned to do it.
Skin on fruit is full of fiber, along with potatoes, etc. I only ever take the skin off things if it really bothers me.
Are you/your dad Japanese? I feel like we're missing most of the context here.
I live near a Korean pan-Asian convenience store, and I've been enjoy the variety of beverages and ramen available there. Oceania today exports foods with significant influence by Italian cuisine, in particular.
There are some fruit drinks which contain whole fruit, like green grapes. It's sort of on the spectrum if you imagine canned grapes, which come in a "light syrup" but the beverage is a thinned-out version of that, not tart or sugary like American grape juice.
But you pour the can out, and a couple of fresh grapes come out as well. I suppose they are peeled. I was a little disappointed when the pear juice didn't include sliced pears. But there are many more fruits to try!
Yes I love those grape drinks! Very similar to thinned out canned fruit cocktail syrup/fruits.
Fun fact: a lot of people think artificial grape flavoring doesn't taste like grapes. And that the "Welch's concord grape jam" variety of jams is artificially flavored.
Nope, that's just what some grapes taste like. There's a Korean variety, and Concord at least. Wiki says it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_labrusca
The grapes that grow in my back yard are Concords, and that shouldn't be surprising because Concord is a couple of towns over.
They taste just like Welch's.
If you're going to eat an apple this way, some notes:
- Start from the blossom end (the bottom). This makes the core more palatable for multiple reasons.
- The blossom remains themselves may have mold in very rare cases. Take a look before you start eating.
- Some apples have much, much harder core walls and are not really edible this way. Others are quite soft. So it will depend on variety.
- Don't bother eating the stems and seeds. It's pointless.
I really only do this when I don't have a place to put the apple core, e.g. on a road trip if I don't have a trash/compost bag. (Can't throw it out the window because it will attract wildlife to the roadside.)
When I realized you can just eat kiwi with the skin on (if it's a very hairy one, brush them off under running water) and in no time it actually tastes better (adds some lovely contrast), it became my favorite zero-ennui fruit. It almost feels like a cheat code for something so tasty and large to require so little effort!
Now, I never thought that kiwi skins are not edible of course, but I just assumed they're somehow unpleasant because everyone seems to peel or spoon them.
You can shave the hairy ones.
Haha literally ate kiwi with skin on for the first time today. It’s a lot nicer, you just rinse it and eat it!
My favorite thing is leaving the skin and slicing them. Each slice has the perfect amount of skin and pulp, it’s crunchy, it’s heaven!
I have never had a problem with kiwi skins (except when the kiwi is unripe; a natural mat with acids and possibly oxalate. NOPE).
But are you claiming you eat the whole fruit, or you throw out the tiny thorn?
I usually throw out the tiny thorn.
I like that you can take a bite directly through a kiwi
Big grape.
A gooseberry, in fact.
If you eat enough kiwis with skin, tarantula abdomens start to look like something tasty.
I read that online, I trained myself to eat whole Kiwis and lo and behold: It is true!
Our brains are so wonderfully strange!
Possibly not an illusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnids_as_food
That was interesting other than the golden orb weaver, all the other spider species noted as edible are tarantula.
I assume because of their size relative to other species?
People in the Amazon do eat tarantulas. They do roast them over an open flame first though to burn off the hairs as they can be harmful and irritating.
I eat the whole orange, grapefruit, lemon or lime.
I like the bitter to offset the sweetness.
Umless specifically indicated as untreated, citrus peel in soaked in very nasty antifungal waxes. In the EU they are specifucally warned about not fit for consumption.
My condolences to your tooth enamel.
At least now I know psychopaths walk among us.
Citrus peels taste good. They're used for cooking in every culture that grows citrus. Eating them raw is only bad due to farmers poisoning the food they sell.
Stupid zoomers
People throw away so much strawberry in an effort to cut the leaves off. Just eat the leaves. Next time you go to eat a strawberry, try eating the leaves too - they're very mild in flavor, and you waste no strawberry!
You pince of the leaves. Where do you imagine the waste?
Or you use a strawberry huller. These used to be common kitchen implements, but I've not seen one in a while.
With people making an effort to cut them off instead, presumably.
In at least some varieties of strawberries, the top of the berry has the least flavor and sweetness, and the bottom has the most, so I don't feel like I'm losing much.
Most mass-produced strawberries people eat today are basically white on the inside and relatively flavorless to the real thing anyway, I don't think most people miss out if they eat or not the top of the berry.
Only in America.
Yes, that’s where the pesticide are. Can’t get enough pesticides.
Yeah you’re going to want to start by washing your produce
I started chewing the leaves. There's a hint of strawberry in them.
I just hold it by the leaves in my fingers and take a huge bite of the entire berry with my teeth ending right before the leaves.
I just rip the leaves off, which is very easy with the variety we eat here. I never would have thought to cut them off. Are your two strawberries different?
Same, sometimes this lead to me eating a bit of the leaves, sometimes I leave a bit of strawberry, but no one died yet, so I continue :)
White part under them tastes like nothing
Yeah I don’t buy strawberries if they have a white top
Looking at the pesticide scores, one should not eat any fruit/vegetable without peeling if it has any.
Surprised this comment is so low, was searching for it. Many fruits that you commonly peel can even contain both waxes and pesticides to keep insects out. You aren’t even able to wash it effectively.
Things like cantaloupes, oranges, etc are famous for harboring bad bacteria and pesticides. Does not seem worth the risk to me…
I used to watch people collect dandelions and weeds in NYC parks to make into tea and consume in other ways. I’m sure there are some benefits but I’m also sure they don’t outweigh the risks from pollutants.
That is why you wash your food before eating it same as you do with legumes and rice (that likely also have had pesticide on them).
But peanuts and white rice, the most common ones have already been 'peeled'
In South Korea (where I used to live for a while) it's quite common to wash fruit with soapy water at home before eating them.
Unfortunately a lot leaks in. Grapeskins are particularly porous for instance. So are most of the dirty dozen iirc.
Skins are healthy, but only if organic and/or clean fifteen.
I eat whole cherries, I am too lazy to spit out the pits do I swallow them whole. So far it has not been any issue at all and I eat a lot of cherries.
I do like to save watermelon rinds and cook them into soup.
Anyone have a use for banana peels?
I tried following an authentic Southern pickled watermelon rind recipe, and they were so sickly sweet I couldn't stomach them.
I should try again sometime with a regular cucumber pickle recipe, just replacing cucumbers with watermelon rinds, but I don't think my family wants to humor me again.
I like turning the rind into pickles. Very good!
For banana skins, you can turn them into a vegan bacon. Many recipes online that are all pretty much the same result. I like them too.
Yes, British TV chef Nigella Lawson cooks with them. https://youtu.be/kOF0Id92XRY?is=YOb6iPmPaMBeHLkJ
Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole. Neat.
We throw away a butt-ton of watermelon rind in the summer. I never thought to see if they could be used for something.
Now that is actually novel! To me, at least. You cook them into a regular soup as an additive? Or you make watermelon rind soup? How’s it taste?
It's a variant of a Chinese wintermelon soup like https://thewoksoflife.com/winter-melon-soup-pork-ribs/ ! It's a great sponge for the soup flavors.
Banana peel oleo saccharum... you can add it to drinks and cocktails for a punch of banana.
Throw them in with the banana in the blender
Cherimoya skins regularly consumed cause Parkinson’s like symptoms.
Some fruit skins are okay, others are not.
And some are only okay if home grown or organic bc the skin is otherwise loaded with pesticide residues
Gotta love my durian skins. If not I'll settle for rambutans.
Eating an apple the right way: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/42b8Zah8-jM
I almost always eat citrus skins after eat the citrus. With Pomelos its like second breakfast.
https://www.britannica.com/story/can-apple-seeds-kill-you
Also, don’t feed them to dogs especially small dogs.
Highly unlikely to be a problem but people die from water poisoning so…
I mean, deer (and cows and goats and sheep, but not horses) are ruminants. They can eat all sorts of things humans can’t digest: grass, tree leaves, most weeds, etc).
The evolution of the rumen was one of nature’s best tricks.
Grass fiber isn’t digestible by humans, but the rest is. Juice, roots, flowers, seeds
I've eaten the peel on a pineapple before. Not so bad actually.
I thought eating the skins on kiwis was normal
Golden kiwis + skin = my favorite fruit-experience OAT
I am reminded of the saying in my family: Anything is edible if you're willing to eat it.
My late father-in-law ate entire apples-- core and all. I've tried but I can't stomach the texture or how much more the fibrous parts of the core get stuck in my teeth. It doesn't disgust me, I just don't prefer it.
Not to miss an opportunity to talk about apples:
I started eating three apples / day for lunch last year. I hadn't realized how dirty apples are. I assumed the washing they get in processing gets them pretty clean. It does not. I wet them and clean the stem and flower areas with a paper towel. I'm shocked at how dirty the towel ends up.
I'm a sweet apple kind of guy. Envy apples are the bomb. I used to like Honeycrisp but the rumors of their being bred into shitty tastelessness are true. They're terrible. Shockingly, sometimes Red Delicious, which I'd previously relegated to the "buy as a last resort" list, are actually pretty good now. Fuji, Gala, and Cosmic Crisp are all decent specimens.
My wife likes Pink Lady but I think they're just a little too tart. She can also put away the Granny Smiths which I find to be horrifyingly sour. Ick!
Anybody have feelings about other apple varieties a person like me might be into?
I don’t know much about apple variety names, but if you love apples and plan to visit Aomori prefecture in Japan during apple season, I highly recommend stopping by a market or grocery. I used to live in northern Akita and there was a farmer from Aomori that would come by with freshly picked apples to sell at one of the supermarkets. They had many varieties and they all tasted amazingly sweet and unique. I have yet to find an apple anywhere close to those since moving back to the states. The most recent new variety that I tried that I liked was Kiku. It’s like a sweeter version of a Fuji apple with a very similar texture. Based on your preferences, I think this would a fun one to try.
All mushrooms are edible, but some mushrooms are edible only once.
Point taken.
I don't eat mushrooms-- can't stand the texture. I heard a podcast episode re: death cap mushrooms and it was chilling. A guy in the podcast talked about tasting a death cap then spitting it out and rinsing his mouth. He said they had a good taste.
Absolutely horrifying.
This is what everyone poisoned with them say. And really often why they don't make the link between those and their illness.
There are old mushroom hunters
and there are bold mushroom hunters
but there are no old bold mushroom hunters.
All mushrooms are edible only once, unless you're into coprophagia
Soluna is like eating crispy wine and is currently at the top of my list. Prior to finding that, Lady Alice improves on Pink Lady, and it was my rockstar favorite. Envy is my go-to year-round when I can’t find rarer varietals; I’ve eaten hundreds of them. Cosmic Crisp is a fine last resort when Honeycrisp is too bright. Consider also trying Rubinette, Arkansas Black, Zestar. My notes say Wild Twist is a former Lady Alice but I definitely rank it just below L.A.
On the flipside: Kanzi “disappointment with every bite”, Ambrosia “pie apple because the raw texture sucks”, Autumn Glory DNF, Kissabel “lost its joy and turned grassy, DNF” Sugarbee “kinda one note, chewy, technically better than Red Delicious” Sweetango “knockoff Honeycrisp”, Evercrisp “painfully crisp, annoying to eat, fades to zero, looks like it was factory-polished, DNF”, Dazzle “all the flavourlessness of a Red Delicious with a nice crisp”, Ginger Gold “ten seconds of wonder and then mushes into disgusting texture and flavorlessness”
Thanks for the commentary. I'll check out some of those.
> ate entire apples-- core and all
If you eat it from the North Pole to the South Pole, there is no core.
The core is only there if you eat around the equator.
Give it a try.
The core basically disappears if you cut an apple in disks (or each from the bottom).
I still cut out the core when I slice an apple. I don't know the anatomical terminology well, but the "plastic-ey" texture of, I believe, the endocarp is what I don't like. It reminds me a bit of the plastic-ey tooth-clogging bits of popcorn.
Aren't the seeds of the apple supposed to contain cyanide? Article points this out too and risk doesn't seem worth it. I used to eat the whole apple long time ago until someone pointed that out and from my googling, it was correct. Now I try to eat all of the apple except the seeds and stem.
I like putting my apples in the fridge. Love me a cold and crisp gala apple. On very rare occasion, the gala I get are mushy. But otherwise, they are my favorite.
You would need to eat the seeds of SEVERAL HUNDRED apples in one sitting, and you would need to grind them up finely beforehand to get full amygdalin absorption.
We're talking about almost a cup, or 100+ grams of apple seed here.
Your body continually neutralizes cyanide with the enzyme rhodanese, so there's also no danger of cyanide accumulation from eating a few apples a day.
I don't know if my father-in-law spit out the seeds or not. I'd heard the cyanide thing as a kid and always avoided eating them.
Well certainly not for every fruit... especially after you learn that durian is an edible fruit
This is quite funny timing as just a few days ago my partner, who eats kiwis almost every day, tried eating the whole kiwi. She used to scoop it out but now says she'll never go back. It's also way more convenient as there are no tools required.
I eat the apple skin (of most apples) but I do not eat the core.
Well, they're all editable, only question is if you like it and if the fruit skinn itself is good. I eat most kiwis with the skin on because it's a nice tart/acidic contrast to soft sweet insides, but some kiwis have extremely thick and acidic. Most pear cores are soft and sweet, but very few apple cores, nor worth it.
On a related note, a friend of mine removed both the skin and even the center core (the seeds part) of cucumbers. I think all that's left is about 30% of the cucumber.
I found that truly bizarre. Her reasoning was that it was too watery (???)
To be fair there are some sorts where the seeds can be overwhelming, but that's not what you usually get in the supermarket. In cucumbers you can normally buy removing the seeds/ watery core in my opinion only makes sense when you for example make Tzatziki, as otherwise it can get rather watery.
It's very common to use a peeler to peel the skin, then keep peeling until you get to the seeds and just use those peeled strips.
good post. much appreciated
You can eat whole boiled eggs too. Shell and all.
Mango skin, leaves, and sap contain compounds related to urushiol, the allergen in poison ivy.
A guy I was hanging around with in India (Himalayas) asked me why I was peeling the mango. He said you should eat it with the skin. So I continued doing that. One day, at the top of one mountain, I sat down to eat my mango. This Indian guy with his girlfriend walked by and asked why the hell I was eating the mango with the skin on.
One time I decided to slice up a mango like a melon and just eat the flesh off the skin. A bit later I realized I had an awful itchy rash all around my mouth. That's when I learned about urushiol in mango skin! Would not recommend
Huh, that's neat, so get used to eating mango skin, and eventually you can eat poison ivy? Kind of handy, thanks!
I started eating mango skin a few months ago. When it's thin and bland, it's not bad. Gives a nice crunch to the eating experience. But often it's way too thick and sometimes strongly bitter.