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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Both the statement and report referred to bitter apricot kernels which Julian Graves were stocking and have since withdrawn.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 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.
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