Yes, I know. They are poisonous and you will drop dead if you so much as swallow one. NOT! In fact, I believed this fallacy since the time I was a small child. Many times throughout my life I wondered to myself how in the hell more people didn’t drop dead from cyanide poisoning since apple seeds were so damn ubiquitous. Maybe wondering that is proof I was a smart kid. Either way, it took me some days of trying to overcome my fear enough to take a bite of one. After I did that, I swore up and down that I was having some kind of reaction and wondered if I would fall over dead any minute. I didn’t.

And now, whenever I eat an apple, I also eat the seeds—anywhere from 5 to 12 of them depending on the apple. Apple seeds most definitely taste like “bitter almonds” too. I actually find them quite tasty, but if the flavor is bothersome, eating them at the same time as you eat the flesh of the apple cuts the bitterness. But, why do it, you might ask. One reason is to realize for yourself the lies you’ve been told. The other is because, I believe, they are good for you.

I became interested in this subject after reading G. Edward Griffin’s World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17. I highly recommend this book. Just click the link to pick up a copy from Amazon. It’s well worth it.

You can find a good overview of this controversy, on both sides, in a number of places on the web. A quick search on laetrile or amygdalin will bring up more than you can possibly read. A quick and easy way to get a taste of what it’s all about, though, is to view G. Edward Griffin’s video on the subject.

After doing a little bit of research on my own, I was able to note that certain areas of the world had less of an incidence of cancer than other areas. Africa for example, has a low incidence of cancer, while all the 1st world countries have a high incidence. Now that seemed backwards to me. Aren’t we supposed to be healthier? But if you take diet into consideration, it starts to make a lot of sense. In fact, at one point, I came upon a researcher with a smart idea. Why not look into different groups of people right here within the US that had lower incidences of cancer? What was different about them? For example, mormons have a lower incidence of cancer than do the non-mormon people living right next to them. Some of that might be attributed to the fact that they do not smoke cigarettes, but certainly not all of it. What’s different? Could it be their diets?

It seems to me that populations of people that consume nuts and seeds, and/or foods high in nitrilosides, (like cassava in Africa for example), have less of an incidence of cancer. Could there be something to this Vitamin B-17 thing?

While US researchers are looking into cases of “poisoning” where individuals clearly ate TOO MUCH of something (even WATER in excess will kill you) Asian scientists have no such problem with it. They are still studying the effects of amygdalin on cancers and finding that indeed it has an effect. You can find one such article here. You can also do your own search on “amygdalin” using Google Scholar. Look for more recent articles. Now these research articles may not seem definitive to you, that’s fine. But note that these researchers are not afraid to consider it, while here in the US it’s practically taboo. On top of this, the nitriloside/amygdalin/laetrile/cyanide scare of the 70’s and 80’s has many people literally AFRAID to eat something that is in fact NOT poisonous at all. That’s damn suspicious.

Now if the thought of eating an apple seed frightens you, I’m not surprised. I think this phenomenon is much worse if you were in fact a child during the 70’s and 80’s. It’s very difficult to overcome those long held beliefs. Nevertheless, they are simply false and it’s worth witnessing it for yourself. It’s kind of like finally putting on those sunglasses that let you read subliminal messages on the road signs, or swallowing the pill that lets you see the matrix.