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How Long Does It Take To Pass A Cherry Pit
It takes about 2 days for a cherry pit to pass through your digestive system. Cherry pits are indigestible and won’t cause any harm to you while traveling through your system. If you squeeze or bite the pit and seed (and then eat them), you run the risk of swallowing poison.
In this short post, we answer how long the pit of the cherry takes to go through if you swallow one by accident, as well as three health dangers of doing so. It takes two days for a cherry pit to pass through if you swallow one; it stays in your digestive system no longer than two days. Directly swallowing the cherry pit will not damage your body, since it will pass through the gut causing no harm, but if you chew on a cherry pit, it may release a toxic chemical, amygdalin, that may cause the body to produce hydrogen cyanide, which causes cyanide poisoning.
When a cherry pit is chewed or bruised, the enzymes in the plant are exposed to the amygdalin chemical from the pit leading to hydrogen cyanide production (2, 5). The solid pit contains amygdalin – the chemical your body converts into hydrogen cyanide if consumed. The pit exposed your body to amygdalin, a substance that becomes a toxic chemical after you inhale it. Poisoning may occur if pits and seeds are crushed or chewed prior to ingestion, which releases the amygdalin.
While it is usually safe to swallow a whole pit, crushing or chewing a pit and seed (and then swallowing them) may cause harm. Or, if a fruit is eaten whole, the tough, undigestible pit and seeds within it travel down your gastrointestinal tract and out through your stool, undamaged and undamaged, returning to soil, where they can germinate and grow. If anyone accidentally swallows the pit, it passes through the system intact and comes out in the stool. There is no need to be alarmed if you accidentally swallow one: intact pits simply pass through the system and come out on the other end.
While you are supposed to be vomiting the pits out when eating cherries, sometimes you might swallow some by accident. You realize that you inadvertently dropped a few whole cherries in there, not taking the pits out, and you now swallowed some. Accidentally munching on some of the pits and swallowing them can cause symptoms such as headaches, seizures, and breathing difficulties. To get sick from cherry pits, you probably need some serious efforts, as a man in England discovered after chomping on a cherry pit and eating the nuts inside.
We all know the toxic amygdalin content in cherry pits has been proven harmful for human health, as it may cause cyanide poisoning, but thankfully, eating cherry pits does not cause any harm to health. While this might sound alarming, eating a cherry pit generally does not result in toxicity as the seeds remain inside an indigestible shell, according to NCPC. While you might not be concerned about swallowing the seeds from a watermelon, the pit of the cherry might cause you pause, as it contains a chemical the human body converts into cyanide. Unlike fruit meat, cherry pits are not digestible, according to the National Capital Poison Center (NCPC) and will pass through your system whole and intact.
The hard stones at the centers of cherries are filled with prussic acid, also known as cyanide, which is toxic. Cherries contain compounds that are high in cyanide (called cyanogenic glycosides) and are found within a tough outer skin called a pit or rock. Cyanide poisoning occurs when someone ingests cyanide, a chemical compound found in plants like cherries, apricots, almonds, and raspberries.
People who eat plants or chemicals that contain cyanide typically develop symptoms of cyanide poisoning within 30 minutes to two hours of eating. People who consume cyanide cyanide may experience symptoms even though they have consumed only a small amount of poison. Because one small drop of cyanide is not so big, but two times the same poison will affect a larger part of your body.
| Types | Time Required |
| Cherry Pits | 2 days |
| Apple seeds | 2 months |
| Orange Seeds | 2 hours |
When swallowed in significant amounts, that Cyanide can kill, but ingesting just a single content in one pit is not as big of an issue. When swallowed, one pit stays in the digestive system and the poison does not spread itself. The size and shape increases the danger of asphyxiation, because you may not realize that you have ingested a pit until it has reached the throat.
A hard, rock-like husk is often called a pit too. People may assume this stone is a seed from a fruit, however, that is not correct. Stone fruits have seeds at the centre of the fruit, surrounded by a hard pit, also known as the stone.
Unlike other stone fruits, cherries are too small for most wild animals to gruesomely consume, leaving out seeds. You can grow cherries in your own back yard using pits from your local cherries, but it takes more time for the fruits to produce using that method. When eating one or more apples and/or cherries, I consume each individual seed, either by chewing apple seeds, or, using cherry pits, either by carefully breaking off the pits with tongs and removing the kernels, or by grinding apple seeds in a blender with the liquid (juice).
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I did not know that apple seeds were toxic, and ate the entire apple, seeds included, nearly daily for 2 weeks. I ate the seeds in the pits and the core, and have been eating between 100-150 apricot seeds per day since the end of May 2011. I ate Apple seeds, cheery seeds, orange seeds, grape seeds, these are poisonous only if you eat lots of them, such as maybe the seeds from 50 apples. Since I had access to an abundance of peach seeds, I decided about a year and a half ago that I was going to try eating about two or five a day.
Some believe that the seeds and the peach pits are toxic, as they contain chemicals that create cyanide, whereas others think that the seeds are healing. Cherry seeds are not toxic, but they can produce stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach cramps if eaten. Intoxication or poisoning due to eating the cherries, apricots, and peach seeds has been reported among children. Although cherries are also a choking hazard to children younger than eight years, pits may be chewed along with the fruit.
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The main reason for these symptoms is because cherries are a fruit which contains significant amounts of dietary fiber that our stomachs cannot easily digest, and cherry pits or seeds therefore pass completely unharmed through the digestive system of our bodies, leading to these symptoms. While accidentally eating a pit or stone is usually not something that you need to worry about, prevention is the best option — which means thoroughly chewing the fruit and not swallowing any stones.
What happens if you swallow a cherry pit?
Like all foods, swallowing a cherry pit is going to make it go through your throat to find its way to the stomach. This is not the same with some fruits; cherry pits cannot be digested and will go through your system straight ahead while keeping their original form, as per the National Capital Poison Center (NCPC).
Should I worry if I swallowed a cherry pit?
The consumption of cherry pits whole is unlikely to be toxic if they are eaten whole. The holes, however, produce hydrogen cyanide when you chew them, which can cause serious health problems. An accident in which one or more pits are accidentally chewed and swallowed can cause several symptoms, including headaches, seizures, and breathing difficulties.
Does it hurt to pass a cherry pit?
Several reasons make it unlikely that you will be hurt by swallowing small amounts of pits unintentionally, which is stated by Poison Control. First, humans aren’t prone to crushing or chewing stones to release the chemical (called amygdalin), especially when they accidentally swallow them.