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Health
Mountain
Apricot Kernels (Sweet) - our response to media articles
The
Food Standards Agency recently released a press statement entitled
Possible Risks of Eating Bitter Apricot Kernels. This in turn was
based on the report of the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in
Food (COT).
Amygdalin
in apricot kernels is also known as vitamin B17 or Laetrile. Amygdalin
breaks down to hydrogen cyanide, glucose and benzaldehyde.
Both
the statement and report referred to bitter apricot kernels which
Julian Graves were stocking and have since withdrawn. These kernels
contained cyanide at 1450mg/kg.
One
outcome of the COT report was that the labelling of bitter apricot
kernels at this level of cyanide should recommend consumption of
no more than two such kernels a day. They are also going to consider
if a daily
intake of 5mg/day would be of concern, i.e. the dose of ten bitter
kernels day recommended on the Julian Graves pack before they were
withdrawn.
Tropical
Wholefoods kernels are sweet apricot kernels.
Small
amounts of cyanide in the form of the cyanogenic glycoside amygdalin
are also present in sweet almonds and sweet apricot kernels and
stones of other members of the genus prunus eg cherry. Bitter almonds
and bitter apricot kernels contain very much higher levels. The
flavour of sweet almonds and apricots kernels results from amygdalin
hence the scientific name for almond is Prunus amygdalus.
We
test every consignment of our sweet apricot kernels for presence
of cyanide and find the presence to be consistently <4mg/kg (which
is the limit of accuracy of the test). Hence you would have to eat
at the very least 725 of our sweet apricot kernels in a day to approach
a dose which the committee currently consider the to be the (TDI)
tolerable daily intake.
Purchasing
sweet apricot kernels in addition to dried apricots from our partners
in Pakistan adds to the viability of the program which provides
significant income for 600 family groups. The kernels which we market
have a similar taste and nutritional profile to sweet almonds to
which they are closely related.
| Tropical
Wholefoods is a registered brand of FM Foods Ltd, Company Registration
No: 2297114. Unit 5d Southwick Ind Est, Sunderland, SR5 3TX.
Directors: Adam Brett, Peter Fawcett, Richard Friend and Kate
Sebag. |
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©
FM Foods Ltd 2006 |
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