You don't have to eat them. There's no benefit to eating them. They don't taste good. They provide a negligible amount of nutrition, if any, and harm you very mildly. The stem of an apple is edible, but for what? A gram of extra fiber after you manage to gnaw through it?

You can eat banana peels, but you probably wouldn't want to. It's a terrible texture and flavor. They decompose well, so there's no meaningful environmental benefit. Yes, they have nutrients. You can eat a second piece of fruit instead.

And this is not universally good advice. The seeds, leaves, and stem of the pawpaw is filled with toxins—enough that folks have died from it.

I don't think the author is trying to make a point, but rather to show that we do things because we were told them. But it's important to also realize that the cultural reasons are sometimes backed up with hard-earned lessons or to save us from having to learn for ourselves that watermelon rind isn't pleasant to eat without preparing it in other ways.

You should only ever eat fruit skins if the fruit is organic and the skin is clean.

At this point I think its safe to say there are hundreds of scientific studies out there telling you why. This is one example[1].

I quote from their abstract:

    Notably, the distribution of pesticides in the apple peel and pulp layers is visualized through Raman imaging, confirming that the pesticides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer (∼30 μm depth). Thus, the risk of pesticide ingestion from fruits cannot be avoided by simple washing other than peeling.

Likewise, when Japanese people go overseas and start peeling grapes, people look at them strangely. Eventually they figure out that Western grapes are small, hard to peel and the skins are thin and nearly tasteless, so they adopt our barbarian habits too.

Updated to add: Japanese grapes like Kyoho are actually hybrid cultivars of Western grapes (Vitis vinifera) and Concord grapes (Vitis labrusca), which is why they're so different.

It is easy to forget, but plants aren't inherently safe. Produce has been made so by breeding, historical wisdom, and by laws and customs and systems. While some of these things are overcautious or corrupt, others may be keeping you safe without you realizing it. Eating things you aren't expected to eat is playing with the safeties off, to some degree.

I wouldn't think you'd get into too much trouble eating the skins of things you'd find in the grocery store, but green potatoes would certainly be an exception. I'd mostly want to wash a akin I intended to eat very well, as I'd mostly worry what might have been sprayed on that part on the assumption I wouldn't eat it.

The further you get away from expectation - stems, seeds, leaves - the further you are from built in safety measures and the closer you are to eating a random plant. Even knowing that people consider something medicine is not a free pass. Medicines come with dosages and side effects. Drugs powerful enough to help you are usually also poweful enough to hurt you, and this is often similarly true with plants.

All of that is not exactly to dissuade you from trying things, and toxic bits of things are usually obvious and not too dangerous in small quantities. Still, it's worth starting small and doing the odd search first. You never know when a particular breed of apple, grown under particular conditions, will have unusually potent seeds, and you want to have some understanding of how quickly certain toxins accumulate and clear. We do have a lot of accumulated knowledge on food safety, and it is worth consulting if you are going to step off the usual path.

On the other hand, lots of things known to be beneficial and safe are considered unpalatable due to being rough and unsweet, but you can certainly develop a taste for them. Wheat bran and potato skins are among my favorites.

I read that online, I trained myself to eat whole Kiwis and lo and behold: It is true!

Our brains are so wonderfully strange!

Now, I never thought that kiwi skins are not edible of course, but I just assumed they're somehow unpleasant because everyone seems to peel or spoon them.

I like the bitter to offset the sweetness.

- Start from the blossom end (the bottom). This makes the core more palatable for multiple reasons.

- The blossom remains themselves may have mold in very rare cases. Take a look before you start eating.

- Some apples have much, much harder core walls and are not really edible this way. Others are quite soft. So it will depend on variety.

- Don't bother eating the stems and seeds. It's pointless.

I really only do this when I don't have a place to put the apple core, e.g. on a road trip if I don't have a trash/compost bag. (Can't throw it out the window because it will attract wildlife to the roadside.)

I created a lab for intro biology around testing for HCN in various plant tissues. The interesting thing is not all apple seeds actually seem to produce HCN. Granny Smith seeds seem to always produce it (and relatively speaking a lot), while some little lunch box sized Fuji apples I bought at a farmers market don't produce any at all.

Anyone have a use for banana peels?

I found that truly bizarre. Her reasoning was that it was too watery (???)

My late father-in-law ate entire apples-- core and all. I've tried but I can't stomach the texture or how much more the fibrous parts of the core get stuck in my teeth. It doesn't disgust me, I just don't prefer it.

Not to miss an opportunity to talk about apples:

I started eating three apples / day for lunch last year. I hadn't realized how dirty apples are. I assumed the washing they get in processing gets them pretty clean. It does not. I wet them and clean the stem and flower areas with a paper towel. I'm shocked at how dirty the towel ends up.

I'm a sweet apple kind of guy. Envy apples are the bomb. I used to like Honeycrisp but the rumors of their being bred into shitty tastelessness are true. They're terrible. Shockingly, sometimes Red Delicious, which I'd previously relegated to the "buy as a last resort" list, are actually pretty good now. Fuji, Gala, and Cosmic Crisp are all decent specimens.

My wife likes Pink Lady but I think they're just a little too tart. She can also put away the Granny Smiths which I find to be horrifyingly sour. Ick!

Anybody have feelings about other apple varieties a person like me might be into?

Also, don’t feed them to dogs especially small dogs.

Highly unlikely to be a problem but people die from water poisoning so…

Some fruit skins are okay, others are not.

And some are only okay if home grown or organic bc the skin is otherwise loaded with pesticide residues

Nope, that's just what some grapes taste like. There's a Korean variety, and Concord at least. Wiki says it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_labrusca

There are some fruit drinks which contain whole fruit, like green grapes. It's sort of on the spectrum if you imagine canned grapes, which come in a "light syrup" but the beverage is a thinned-out version of that, not tart or sugary like American grape juice.

But you pour the can out, and a couple of fresh grapes come out as well. I suppose they are peeled. I was a little disappointed when the pear juice didn't include sliced pears. But there are many more fruits to try!

This may sound insignificant to many but for the extremely lazy like me, this is the difference between going to waste and being consumed for many fruits.

I’ve seen a lot of people also just wash/rub the hairs off and bite straight into them, though I find this can make a mess if they are too soft.

Hardy kiwis are also eaten whole, like a berry.

That said, I usually eat peanuts with the shell and all. Though don’t eat too many that way, the shells are definitely not getting digested, so chew well. Also there is probably a higher chance of dirt or other stuff you don’t want to eat being on the shell, but I don’t usually eat peanuts anyway so never been a problem for me.

I like putting my apples in the fridge. Love me a cold and crisp gala apple. On very rare occasion, the gala I get are mushy. But otherwise, they are my favorite.

On the flipside: Kanzi “disappointment with every bite”, Ambrosia “pie apple because the raw texture sucks”, Autumn Glory DNF, Kissabel “lost its joy and turned grassy, DNF” Sugarbee “kinda one note, chewy, technically better than Red Delicious” Sweetango “knockoff Honeycrisp”, Evercrisp “painfully crisp, annoying to eat, fades to zero, looks like it was factory-polished, DNF”, Dazzle “all the flavourlessness of a Red Delicious with a nice crisp”, Ginger Gold “ten seconds of wonder and then mushes into disgusting texture and flavorlessness”

If you eat it from the North Pole to the South Pole, there is no core.

The core is only there if you eat around the equator.

Give it a try.