Re: I have been listening to your last show and you talk about eating the kernel inside the prune stone.

Most plants in the rose family – including the plum and its dried version, the prune – contain cyanogenic glycosides.

You may have noticed the ones in prune pits taste like an almond cookie.

The cyanogenic glycosides in prunes include amygdalin, sometimes called “vitamin B17.”

Small amounts of cyanogenic glycosides are beneficial – Earth itself may have been originally “seeded” by organic hydrogen cyanide molecules – but large amounts are toxic.

A plum tree under attack – by insects, pesticides, or weather – manufactures an excess of this cyanide group, so I personally take a conservative approach to ingesting prune pits.

It’s safest to limit them to one to three a week, eaten at breakfast with foods containing selenium like Brazil nuts.

Selenium balances cyanide (as well as mercury).

The prune itself is an important part of a Solar Nutrition breakfast.

Combining any vitamin C-rich tree fruit (other than citrus) with a soaked prune for breakfast activates the iron in a prune for a better bowel movement.

Tufts University rated the common prune as the number one antioxidant food above all other fruits and vegetables.

(Raisins were in second place and blueberries were rated third.)

Prunes also supply potassium to assist almonds in setting the full strength of hydrochloric acid for all-day protein digestion.

Without the exchange between potassium and hydrogen’s positive ions, there is no hydrochloric acid production in the stomach.

Here’s some things Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty) said about prunes and prune pits …

“Freckles and liver spots are oxide stains which can be removed by eating a mixture of cashews, prunes, figs, and vitamin C.”

“Eat prunes in the morning to clean the colon. Potassium starts the day and ends the day.”

“Prune juice aids in keeping the colon free of impactions.”

“Prune juice, cayenne, aloe, or mixed seaweeds eliminate the effects of cheese omelets.”

“Prunes move the dead waste in the colon. Pumpkin seeds move the stains of the dead waste, the sulfides.”

“A constricted bladder is a deficiency of potassium. Take prune juice. Take cranberry juice for a dilated bladder. You can mop up the water with prune juice or turn off the faucet.”

“Antimony is found in prune seeds. It challenges your manganese and potassium to shape up. Women should eat the bitter prune seed for antimony. It will automatically dilate the mechanism to be more vibrant.”

James A. Duke (The Green Pharmacy: The Ultimate Compendium of Natural Remedies from the World’s Foremost Authority on Healing Herbs, 1997) wrote…

“When Dan Rather’s producer called, he asked me what questions Rather should ask Dr. [David] Kessler [commissioner of the FDA]. I told him to have Rather offer Dr. Kessler a bottle of prune juice and ask if he considered it a safe, effective laxative. If he answered no, I suggested that Rather request that Dr. Kessler drink some and experience the results for himself. If he answered yes, I suggested that Rather ask why the FDA labeling regulations prohibit prune juice marketers from stating that prune juice is a safe, effective, gentle laxative.”

Audrey H. Ensminger, M.E. Ensminger, James E. Konlande, & John R.K. Robson (Foods & Nutrition Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition, Vol. I, 1994) wrote …

“Although most fruits have an alkaline ash, others like prunes, plums, and cranberries make a net contribution of acid to the body since they contain organic acids that are not metabolized by the body, but which pass unchanged into the urine.”

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