Why prehistoric herders didn’t spit out their watermelon seeds | Hacker News Reader

Why prehistoric herders didn’t spit out their watermelon seeds

smithsonianmag.com

58 pointssohkamyung50 comments

Egusi is still common in West African cuisines. My town near DC has several west African restaurants, and many of them have an egusi stew on the menu. I really like it.

(DC is really well known for its Ethiopian restaurants, which are also excellent. And completely, utterly different from west African cuisine.)

Roasted and seasoned watermelon seeds are also a popular snack in China:

https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2016/09/sowing-the-melon-s...

Personally I've never understood why people spit them out in the US.

Because they're not roasted and seasoned?

Are you saying you just swallow the black seeds raw when you eat fresh watermelon? And if so do you do the same with all seeds like with apples, grapes, etc?

I'm not the person you asked, but yes, I do eat all those seeds raw with the fruit, usually. I won't eat something big like an apricot pit though. Cherry pits, sometimes. They're right on the size border of what I would swallow.

Large stone fruit pits (virtually all of them, but especially apricots) contain amygdalin, a substance that your body converts to (poisonous) cyanide as you digest it. Depending on the quantity you ingest, this can be lethal.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20196932/

Some hippies I know were powdering the apricot kernels (aka pits) and feeding them to themselves and their family “for organic health reasons” and almost killed their little boy accidentally as a result. They warned me so that I never did the same.

Apricot seeds are such a common snack around here that I feel there's something missing in your first paragraph. Maybe a qualifier or a special situation where they become dangerous.(Few others taste as good. Peaches don't for example)

It really depends on how many you ingest, and it’s generally only fatal for children. If I remember correctly something like 50-60 would kill an adult, but you’ll get quite sick long before that.

If you’re eating them as a snack, you should consider stopping as there’s no amount of cyanide that is healthy for humans. If it doesn’t make you noticeably sick, it’s still causing strain on your kidneys and liver to flush it out.

Google “apricot cyanide”, but here is a good overview: https://www.webmd.com/cancer/amygdalin-cancer-treatment

The pits of all stone fruits contain this chemical

Where do you live that people eat them? I thought it was common knowledge that they will kill you.

Allow me to quote from Wikipedia [1] where almost the entire article is about how they're harmful:

> The kernel contains amygdalin, a poisonous compound, in concentrations that vary between cultivars... they are toxic and potentially lethal when taken by mouth due to cyanide poisoning.

> In 2016, the European Food Safety Authority reported that eating three small bitter apricot kernels or half of a large bitter kernel would exceed safe consumption levels of amygdalin and potentially cause cyanide poisoning. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland advises against eating either bitter or sweet varieties of apricot kernel due to the risk of cyanide poisoning and advises consumption be limited to one to two kernels a day for an adult.

> In 1993, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets tested the cyanide content of two 220 gram (8 oz) packages of bitter apricot kernels imported from Pakistan that were being sold in health-food stores as a snack. The results showed that each package, if consumed entirely, contained at least double the minimum lethal dosage of cyanide for an adult human; the product was removed from stores.

Please stop eating them and tell the people around you to stop as well.

This isn't about crazy overconsumption killing you, this is about even a normal portion harming your health. Nobody should be eating these.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_kernel

I was going to say the parent poster was probably eating sweet, not bitter, apricot seeds; most of what you quoted is about bitter apricot seeds.

Looks like you can actually buy bitter apricot seeds on Amazon.com though; and the reviews are full of people hoping it will cure their cancer. Sad.

I'd be careful with cherry pits.

I do eat grape seeds. Apples, the core is too tough. With watermelon, I greatly prefer seedless. Like it’s not even close in terms of taste or texture. I probably eat about 2 whole watermelon a week in the summer time. It’s always a sad day if I accidentally buy a melon with seeds.

Yes absolutely! I just swallow watermelon seeds. In a slice of seeded watermelon they're not bothersome texture wise (to me), have a mild flavor, and contain good protein. It doesn't feel worth the effort to separate them in my mouth and spit them out.

I haven't encountered a grape with seeds in years, and I don't eat apple seeds because they are slightly bitter and contain amygdalin.

Yea I just swallow them. They are softer the the ones from grapes and don't have bothering taste. It also seems like awful amount of work to remove them.

Prehistoric watermelons were vastly different from the fruit we eat today. It's likely they were predominantly consumed for the seeds, and consumption of pulp was only after many many generations of selective breeding. Worth a read:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/150821-wa...

That's what the article says.

> Decades ago, Fuller put forth the idea that savory seeds, rather than sweet pulp, initially attracted foragers to certain wild melons and gourds. “The seed is high in edible fats, and it’s storable and transportable,” he says. “We often think of watermelon seeds or pumpkin seeds as snacks, but there’s no reason why in some cases they might be cultivated in part primarily for the seed.”

I never waste any seed from watermelons or melons, it's crunchy and tastes good

Same here. I actually miss watermelons with seeds. They are nearly impossible to find nowadays.

I mostly just swallow them.

hah but then they get out intact, you can't absorb their nutriments

I don't really eat watermelon for nutrition. :)

This statement is so dubious I don't know what to make of the rest of the article:

> And now, a team of scientists has sequenced one of the seed’s DNA—the oldest-yet genetic code recovered from a plant. The genome reveals the seeds belonged to a 6,000-year-old wild watermelon

Meanwhile, in 2003 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sediment-cores-yi... said

> Researchers have retrieved from sediment cores plant DNA that is nearly 400,000 years old--the oldest such specimen ever recovered.

and in 2012 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/120221-ol... said

> 32,000-Year-Old Plant Brought Back to Life—Oldest Yet

I'm sure there are other examples too.

There’s a difference between sequencing the genome of DNA, which the article talks about, and retrieving DNA strands intact. The latter is akin to getting the book, the former is akin to reading it. This is likely to account for the discrepancy.

These statements are all consistent.

- oldest plant DNA to be sequenced

- oldest plant DNA to be recovered (though I'm not exactly sure how "recovered" is defined here)

- oldest plant to be brought back to life

Consistent but disingenuous.

If you can bring it to life, you can sequence its DNA. Maybe they didn't, but that seems a bit strange. Same with recovering DNA molecules but not sequencing them.

These were found with just a quick search, and I'm sure there are more. The oldest animal DNA sequenced is far older than 6,000 years, so I'm doubting the article's claim.

I always wonder how they look this stuff up when they're writing the research article. There's no database for the 'oldest plant to be sequenced' and whatnot that you can just look up. If you look it up on Google, who's to say your source is up to date?

yeah, I'm sure there's plenty such claims that can be proven wrong. Unless it's already a well-known fact in the field.

Like in archeology, the "oldest ... to be ..." is often very well known because it has direct consequences for their methodologies and paradigms

Either way, I don't see why you would write off a whole bit of research for something that was probably just meant to be a side-comment to bring in some additional context for people outside the field

I would suspect the statements are provided by the scientists. They are likely the best people to make such claims too (though that doesn't necessarily convey high accuracy)

TIL "cucurbit"

For some reason I've never understood, it's a Thing to eat sunflower seeds while watching baseball, and spit out the shells. I see the shells near the local practice field, and I think you can see players & managers doing it in the dugouts in a TV game.

I believe it stems as an alternative to chewing tobacco usage, which for some reason is historically heavily used amongst baseball players: "Investigators have reported that 33% to 40% of professional baseball players and 45% to 55% of college baseball players use [smokeless tobacco] regularly." [0].

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC164901/

Yes, kids in baseball love to emulate every little thing they see big leaguers do. That's why in the 1980s and '90s Big League Chew was huge, but maybe parents thought it was a little too much like chewing tobacco and they sought a healthier alternative. Sun flower seeds are ideal since they're healthy and their consumption doesn't result in a bunch of littering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_League_Chew

It is customary to roast and eat, outer shell removed, pumpkin seeds (at least where I grew up) so I can totally imagine prehistoric herders doing the same to watermelon seeds.

We roast and eat pumpkin seeds with the shells still on.

ditto - now I'm imagining some form of peeling pumpkin seeds and the time wasted :p

In Canada at least we can buy shell off pumpkin seeds in bulk (salted or plain) but they're usually sold as "pepitas". Whole pumpkin seeds are just called "pumpkin seeds". Both taste good!

Where did you grow up? To my knowledge I have only ever eaten pumpkin seeds with the shells on.

Middle Volga region of Russia. The shells were quite tough and clearly inedible - maybe different varieties of pumpkin.

Interesting. That must be the case. It never occurred to me to shell them or even that they could be shelled.

In all 4* hotels in Beijing (swisshotel?) You can find peeled and roasted watermelon seeds. I was impressed to "discover" they are eaten, must be truly nutritious!

The watermelons in the article are some of the earliest precursors of the sweet watermelons we eat most commonly today but were probably bitter and might have had inedible if unprocessed/less palatable interior pulp like many of the current ones found across Africa.

This is the first I'm learning that people spit out watermelon seeds. Why? That's so extra.

I not spitting them either. Seems rude to spit out food while eating anyway.

Yeah I also swallow bones, gristle and olive stones for that reason.

Thankfully I can unhinge my jaw for each mango encounter.

Careful with the avocados!

I don't spit out bones either. Unlike melon seeds, I don't eat them. But, I use fork and knife to separate meat from bone. Or hold it gently in hand if impossible otherwise.

Spitting bones is disgusting. Also, seeds in melon don't bother you at all.

How about fish?

While I come from a culture where that is indeed rude, aside from sunflower seeds, pistachios, watermelon, and other similar activities in certain environments, there are many cultures where it is not considered rude.

Wait, are you putting pistachios with the shell in your mouth?

Lol. No, because I don't eat pistachios. I apparently made a mistake.

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