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It would be a bad idea to crush apple or cherry seeds while making smoothies or marmalades (due, apparently, to the presence of hydrogen cyanide).

If a raspberry smoothie is made in a 550W blender, the seeds survive unscathed (pictured below). They can be strained and discarded.

raspberry seed

Does a super-blender (1300W-1500W) grind them? Does it become unsafe to ingest them?

Update

Normally an opinion, perhaps one that can be ascertained, is fine. But to confirm that there is no cyanide etc in some product, a reference would be nice. Or else a disclaimer for an empirical experiment you've been running (great teeth, powerful jaws) for years and have survived.

Calaf
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  • You may be interested in my answer to another question: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/109168/52931 it contains a link to a paper by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment about acceptable cyanide intake (cyanide poisoning is about exceeding our body's ability to detoxify cyanide). (If you crush cherry pits, the sharp edges may be the more dangerous aspect, btw) – cbeleites unhappy with SX Jul 15 '20 at 15:08

2 Answers2

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You can eat raspberries. You can chew them as much as you like, without dying. Your teeth (unless yours are suffering great defects) are perfectly capable of crushing the seeds.

Community
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Ecnerwal
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Pits from stone fruits trees from the Prunus genus such as cherries, apricots and peaches can pose a risk of cyanide poisoning if crushed and ingested in significant amounts.

From foodsafety.govt.nz

CYANOGENIC GLYCOSIDES - INFORMATION SHEET THE COMPOUNDS Cyanogenic glycosides or cyanoglycosides account for approximately 90% of the wider group of plant toxins known as cyanogens. The key characteristic of these toxins is cyanogenesis, the formation of free hydrogen cyanide, and is associated with cyanohydrins that have been stabilised by glycosylation (attachment of sugars) to form the cyanogenic glycosides. Examples of cyanogenic glycosides include linamarin from cassava and amygdalin from the seeds of stone fruit. The amount of cyanogenic glycosides in plants is usually reported as the level of releasable hydrogen cyanide. SOURCES The major edible plants in which cyanogenic glycosides occur are almonds, sorghum, cassava, lima beans, stone fruits and bamboo shoots.

Raspberries are from a different classification of plants that do not have elevated amounts of cyanogenic glycosides.

From wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry

The raspberry (/ˈræzˌbɛri/) is the edible fruit of a multitude of plant species in the genus Rubus of the rose family, most of which are in the subgenus Idaeobatus; the name also applies to these plants themselves.

Debbie M.
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    Apples aren't stone fruits and do apparently have a little too, but not nearly enough to cause problems in any realistic situation. I think the main proof here is just that there *isn't* anything saying there's amygdalin in raspberries. (And also the total volume of the seeds you eat is really really tiny.) – Cascabel Sep 04 '17 at 16:17
  • @Cascabel: anecdotally, someone I know of ate a cupful of roasted apple seeds and said he had some neurological effects. I would argue that if a plant "bothers" to produce the compound, it is probably not complete safe to eat the interior of the seeds although intact seeds are not dangerous in this respect since the apple "wants" its seeds spread by animals. – releseabe Nov 27 '22 at 06:10
  • I mean, yeah, it's not _completely_ safe, that wasn't the point of my comment. "Reasonable situation" there is meant to indicate that you're not in a situation like, well, eating a whole cup of roasted apple seeds, just incidentally getting some. – Cascabel Nov 27 '22 at 23:57