Fruits are healthy, sweet, delicious and certainly a great source of nutrition for our health. Yes we all know about these basic facts, but did you know that there are also fruits that are dangerous or simply deadly to our health? You read it right! There are fruits that are poisonous or harmful for our body, ultimately leading to our death. Some of these fruits contain traceable levels of cyanide in them while some others cause certain chemical reaction in the body that can lead to extreme discomfort or death. So, read about these forbidden fruits and how they affect our body. Make sure you avoid them for a healthy and longer life.
Strychnine Plant Fruit
A native plant growing in Southeast Asia and Australia, the strychnine plant and its fruit are one of the most dangerous fruits in the world. The plant is toxic and the extracts from the plant are widely used to make rat poison in various European countries.
Due to the plant’s poisonous effect, it is also called as poison nut and snakewood. The berries or the fruits of the plant are equally poisonous as the tree. Ingestion of any part of the plant can lead to convulsions that may also lead to severe tearing away of the muscles from the bones, leading to cardiac arrest.
Yew Berry Tree
A very beautiful plant with berries that actually make you crave for them, the yew berry tree is widely used as a landscaping plant for its evergreen appearance and deep red cherries. You can have a glimpse of this plant throughout New Jersey. However, the fruit of this exotic plant has seeds that are highly poisonous in nature. The taxins and taxols present in the seeds of the berries are however used in making medicinal drugs for treating breast cancer in women. However, the consumption of the fruit and the seeds may lead to convulsions, collapsing of the body and finally, death. So never risk your life by eating this fruit.
Jatropha Fruit
A tree that grows all across the world in both tropical and sub-tropical climates, the Jatropha tree is highly poisonous! The tree growing in the Indian sub-continent is particularly more poisonous, especially as the yellow berries that grow on the tree attract children to eat them. The sweet berries have a black seed that are poisonous and when ingested can lead to diarrhea, vomiting and also damage to the kidneys.
European Spindle Tree Fruit
A tree that grows widely in parks, along the roadside, forests and in gardens, the European Spindle Tree fruit develops small pinkish-red fruit pods in the autumn season. When these pods ripen, they burst open, showing white seeds with a little orange coating on them. Although these fruits look beautiful and absolutely edible, they are filled with high amount of glycoside poison. If ingested, these fruits can cause dizziness, vomiting, kidney failure, hallucinations and finally, death. The symptoms of the ingestion of this poisonous fruit appear after almost 12 to 18 hours of the ingestion, as a result patient may not even remember eating the forbidden fruit.
Elderberries
A plant that contains cyanide-inducing glycoside, the elderberry plant when ingested in any form can lead to the formation of cyanide in our body. The glycoside present in the fruits, roots, stems, seeds and leaves reacts with our body’s digestive juices, forming cyanide which can lead to diarrhea, vomiting, coma or in the most fatal situations, death. However, once the seeds of the plant are destroyed during harvest, the fruits can be cooked and used to make jams, pies and syrups.
