Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- Looking at the pesticide scores, one should not eat any fruit/vegetable without peeling if it has any.by dbacar
- When I realized you can just eat kiwi with the skin on (if it's a very hairy one, brush them off under running water) and in no time it actually tastes better (adds some lovely contrast), it became my favorite zero-ennui fruit. It almost feels like a cheat code for something so tasty and large to require so little effort!
Now, I never thought that kiwi skins are not edible of course, but I just assumed they're somehow unpleasant because everyone seems to peel or spoon them.
by sho_hn - If you eat enough kiwis with skin, tarantula abdomens start to look like something tasty.
I read that online, I trained myself to eat whole Kiwis and lo and behold: It is true!
Our brains are so wonderfully strange!
by niemandhier - In broad strokes, the skins of things are high in nutrients, medicines, fiber, and toxins - natural, agricultral, and environmental. The degree to which each of these things is true depends very much on what specifically you are trying to eat, where it comes from, and sometimes its condition.
It is easy to forget, but plants aren't inherently safe. Produce has been made so by breeding, historical wisdom, and by laws and customs and systems. While some of these things are overcautious or corrupt, others may be keeping you safe without you realizing it. Eating things you aren't expected to eat is playing with the safeties off, to some degree.
I wouldn't think you'd get into too much trouble eating the skins of things you'd find in the grocery store, but green potatoes would certainly be an exception. I'd mostly want to wash a akin I intended to eat very well, as I'd mostly worry what might have been sprayed on that part on the assumption I wouldn't eat it.
The further you get away from expectation - stems, seeds, leaves - the further you are from built in safety measures and the closer you are to eating a random plant. Even knowing that people consider something medicine is not a free pass. Medicines come with dosages and side effects. Drugs powerful enough to help you are usually also poweful enough to hurt you, and this is often similarly true with plants.
All of that is not exactly to dissuade you from trying things, and toxic bits of things are usually obvious and not too dangerous in small quantities. Still, it's worth starting small and doing the odd search first. You never know when a particular breed of apple, grown under particular conditions, will have unusually potent seeds, and you want to have some understanding of how quickly certain toxins accumulate and clear. We do have a lot of accumulated knowledge on food safety, and it is worth consulting if you are going to step off the usual path.
On the other hand, lots of things known to be beneficial and safe are considered unpalatable due to being rough and unsweet, but you can certainly develop a taste for them. Wheat bran and potato skins are among my favorites.
by Dove - I ate Kiwis for years before someone told me most people DO NOT eat the skins. I looked at my bag of kiwis, and the even the damn monkey mascot was holding a spoon...mocking me...by RALaBarge
- Grapes are commonly peeled in Japan, and people will look at you strangely if you eat them skin on. However, Japanese grapes are huge and have a thick, astringent skin that peels off easily.
Likewise, when Japanese people go overseas and start peeling grapes, people look at them strangely. Eventually they figure out that Western grapes are small, hard to peel and the skins are thin and nearly tasteless, so they adopt our barbarian habits too.
Updated to add: Japanese grapes like Kyoho are actually hybrid cultivars of Western grapes (Vitis vinifera) and Concord grapes (Vitis labrusca), which is why they're so different.
- Yeah, erm.
You should only ever eat fruit skins if the fruit is organic and the skin is clean.
At this point I think its safe to say there are hundreds of scientific studies out there telling you why. This is one example[1].
I quote from their abstract:
[1] https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c01513Notably, the distribution of pesticides in the apple peel and pulp layers is visualized through Raman imaging, confirming that the pesticides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer (∼30 μm depth). Thus, the risk of pesticide ingestion from fruits cannot be avoided by simple washing other than peeling.by traceroute66 - > Alex rightly points out that apple seeds do contain cyanide. Turns out, it’s not a huge risk for normal apple consumption.
You don't have to eat them. There's no benefit to eating them. They don't taste good. They provide a negligible amount of nutrition, if any, and harm you very mildly. The stem of an apple is edible, but for what? A gram of extra fiber after you manage to gnaw through it?
You can eat banana peels, but you probably wouldn't want to. It's a terrible texture and flavor. They decompose well, so there's no meaningful environmental benefit. Yes, they have nutrients. You can eat a second piece of fruit instead.
And this is not universally good advice. The seeds, leaves, and stem of the pawpaw is filled with toxins—enough that folks have died from it.
I don't think the author is trying to make a point, but rather to show that we do things because we were told them. But it's important to also realize that the cultural reasons are sometimes backed up with hard-earned lessons or to save us from having to learn for ourselves that watermelon rind isn't pleasant to eat without preparing it in other ways.
by bastawhiz