Beware the smell of bitter almonds: Why do many food plants contain cyanide?

Deadly poison cyanide is naturally present in bitter almonds and many other plants used as food, including apples, peaches, apricots, lima beans, barley, sorghum, flaxseed and bamboo shoots.

Olsen, who studies white clover, cassava and other plants that produce cyanide, says the plants have an ingenious poison delivery system, one that evolution has designed to discourage herbivores from feasting on them.

Due to proper food processing techniques and strict regulations, cyanide-wielding plants pose little threat to the American food supply. But, in Africa, where cassava root has become a major part of subsistence diets, many poor people suffer from a chronic form of cyanide poisoning known as konzo.

Disabling the genes that code for cyanide production is also straightforward. It took only one genetic mutation, for example, to turn the toxic bitter almond to the benign sweet almond.

By Diana Lutz

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