Natural Food Store Tries to Poison Shoppers
Britain’s Food Safety Agency has rebuked natural foods retailer Julian Graves for selling 10-packs of apricot seeds, or noyaux. The retailer was touting the anti-cancer benefits of the almond-like seeds (which live inside the hard brown kernel), but they’ve since pulled the product.
The company forgot that a stone fruit’s seed protects itself with a cyanide-generating enzyme. The chain will sell the kernels again when the FSA offers safety guidelines. Heat supposedly neutralizes the enzyme, but I’m not tempted to test the theory and eat several dozen roasted noyaux. I did put some into apricot jam and no one’s died yet.
Holistic medicine has a lot of appeal, but scientific knowledge has benefits as well.
