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Eden Tosch of The Ayurveda Experience argues against eating seedless fruit (such as seedless watermelon, grapes, lemons, tangerines and oranges).

Eating the fertile, nutritious and rich part of a plant (or animal) will make us fertile and nourish us well. It is not a great leap to say that eating an infertile plant will affect our fertility and tissues negatively.

The Raw Food Girl blog takes up this claim:

Seeded fruits are pregnant with fertility and have the potential to reproduce whereas seedless fruits cannot reproduce. Seeded fruit has "Life Force" and when you consume the fruit you take in that energy source.

The question has also come up on BodyBuilding Forum.

Does eating seedless fruit cause infertility in humans?

Oddthinking
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    [Asking for a friend!] – Oddthinking Feb 26 '18 at 23:56
  • https://www.livestrong.com/article/402800-do-seedless-fruits-have-negative-side-effects/ – Daniel R Hicks Feb 27 '18 at 01:42
  • @DanielRHicks: I found the Livestrong article - I thought it would help for notability, but it doesn't address infertility. – Oddthinking Feb 27 '18 at 03:00
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    Yeah, most of the other stuff I found seemed to be copied from a few crackpot articles, with nothing substantial behind it. Apparently "seedless" = "GMO" in the eyes of many. – Daniel R Hicks Feb 27 '18 at 03:04
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    I can't find any scientific studies on the subject, and with good reason - why would anyone bother? The claims here are based on the idea that seed-producing plants have some mysterious life energy that makes people more fertile. What other ways are there to refute such claims?(Also, Ayurveda is misspelled.) – Sebastian Redl Feb 27 '18 at 09:20
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    @SebastianRedl: I share your misgivings; the idea of "fertility" being consumed seems to go against basic chemistry and the idea of a "Life Force" in fruit seems to go against basic physics. However, simply dismissing it out of hand isn't very persuasive. Are there animal studies? An appropriate expert explaining why it is wrong? (Thanks for the spelling correction. Please feel encouraged to copy-edit posts.) – Oddthinking Feb 27 '18 at 16:39
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    The whole point of this site is to examine this stuff rationally, from all sides, from base principles, rather than going with the gut answer that conforms most closely to our previously held beliefs. That's what being a skeptic *means*. – Ben Barden Feb 27 '18 at 17:00
  • As I said above, I could find nothing substantial to support the assertion. – Daniel R Hicks Feb 27 '18 at 18:29
  • @Sebastian I assume such a mysterious life force would be a mix of hormones. How come humans should react to plant contraceptives - or how they survive digestion - is a mystery to me but I can easily see a person not asking this. – John Dvorak Feb 27 '18 at 18:29
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    @Oddthinking My point is that I tried to find anything outside of woo pages that talks about this topic at all, and failed. I'm not trying to dismiss the claim here, I'm just curious how people would go about investigating it. As for the correction, I can't make such minor edits to other people's posts (6 chars minimum), and couldn't find anything else to correct. – Sebastian Redl Feb 27 '18 at 19:18
  • It's interesting to note that a number of plants are naturally seedless. Most potatoes, eg, are naturally seedless. My recollection is that Luther Burbank happened upon a technique to trick potatoes into going to seed, and from that he was able to hybridize potatoes. – Daniel R Hicks Feb 27 '18 at 23:32
  • @SebastianRedl: Ah, sorry. Thanks again for the correction. – Oddthinking Feb 28 '18 at 03:09
  • I note that I tend to spit out the seeds of the fruits named, so I don't get much nutrition from the seeds themselves. However, that doesn't prove the fruit's flesh doesn't contain some different nutrients/life forces. – Oddthinking Feb 28 '18 at 03:11
  • Seeds often have lots of nice health stuff in, like cyanide and ricin. –  Mar 05 '18 at 13:31
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    Not a full answer so posting as comment, but the first claim is effectively "If light charges solar-charged batteries, it is not a huge leap to say that darkness will drain them" Note that the second claim seems to be that the seedlessness does not boost fertility, rather than that it causes infertility, an big difference even if both are proved to be woo –  Mar 08 '18 at 13:06
  • May reword and reask this in biology? – Muze Apr 21 '19 at 03:06
  • @Muze At least they won't be reluctant to dismiss it as the woo that it is. – Paul Johnson Aug 23 '23 at 08:26
  • *It is not a great leap to say that eating an infertile plant will affect our fertility...* Magical thinking at its finest. – Paul Johnson Aug 23 '23 at 08:27

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