Rumor

Recently, a short video of "Cherry stones are poisonous" was circulated on WeChat, and "Chewing five cherries will poison an adult", which aroused many people's concerns.

Truth

Some fruit seeds do contain cyanosides. For example, ginkgo, almond and flax seeds contain cyanosides, and the content is still relatively high. The seeds of other fruits, such as apples, sand fruits, apricots, pears, plums, loquats and cherries, also contain cyanosides, but the content is slightly lower. Cyanoside itself is non-toxic, but when the plant cell structure is destroyed, β -glucosidase in plants containing cyanoside can hydrolyze cyanoside to produce toxic hydrocyanic acid, which can cause acute poisoning of human beings.

But in fact, the "cyanoside" in each gram of cherry kernels is only about dozens of micrograms after being converted into hydrocyanic acid, and the dose of hydrocyanic acid that causes human poisoning is about 2 micrograms per kilogram of body weight.

Assuming that each gram of cherry kernels can "produce" 5 micrograms of hydrocyanic acid, an adult weighing 6 kilograms will only have symptoms of poisoning if he eats 2.4 kilograms of cherry kernels. It is obviously exaggerated to say in the online video that "chewing five kernels will stun an adult". Occasionally swallowing one or two by mistake need not be too entangled, but eating cherry stones raw is definitely not recommended.