Dozuki wrote:dragonrider wrote:Don't acorns contain small amounts of hydrogen cyanide as well?
Not sure, I just did a quick google scholar search to see what came up for Acorns.
-D.
While cyanogenic glycosides are fairly ubiquitous in nature, conflating this with the necessity of pre-processing acorns in order to render them edible reminds me all too much of various instances I've encountered where people have been unable to understand the difference between, for example, arsenic and cyanide when talking about plant toxicity. Acorns are inedible in their native state due to the high content of tannins, and (fortunately!) I have not detected any almond-like odour of hydrogen cyanide while processing acorns recently.
I would note that the use of lime for removal of tannins from a liquid acorn extract would also leave any cyanides present in solution as calcium cyanide. This should be quite readily detectable with some simple tests. Presence of any significant quantity of cyanide in acorns would be flagged up as a warning in the folk literature from their centuries-long (millenia, even) food use and I have not seen this mentioned anywhere.
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