Common Myths: Apple Seeds Are Toxic to Dogs

Why a few apple seeds won’t harm your dog

While it my be true that apple seeds contain a compound that produces cyanide, the fact is, eating a few seeds by accident is completely harmless both to ourselves and our dogs.

Despite what you may have heard, apple seeds do not contain pure cyanide. Instead, they contain a natural plant compound called amygdalin which is made of sugar and cyanide. When your dog chews the seeds and digest them, its body’s enzymes break down amygdalin into highly toxic hydrogen cyanide.

That much is true but your dog swallowing whole seeds is perfectly safe. The hard outer shell protects the seed from digestive juices, allowing it to pass safely through your dog’s body intact. The seeds must be finely crushed or chewed to release the amygdalin.

But here’s the thing no one seems to want you to know.

Dogs generally do not chew seeds; they tend to swallow them whole. Because they have carnivorous jaw structures designed for tearing meat rather than grinding plant matter, small items like seeds usually pass right through their digestive tract completely intact.

Swallowing whole seeds means their tough outer shells won’t break down. Your dog will pass them in its stool without absorbing the toxins.

More to the point, it takes a vast quantity of apple seeds to harm your dog.

Australian vet Dr Andrew Spanner BVSc(Hons) MVetStud who has a veterinary practice in Adelaide, Australia, was so perplexed at the misinformation regarding apple seeds and cores, he did a bit of research. He discovered that:

• Every plant-based food on the planet contains some level of toxins.
• A medium sized dog would need to eat 85 grams of apple seeds and completely chew them up — and that’s the key here, it would need to chew them up — to get a toxic dose of cyanide.

So Dr Spanner weighed the seeds from seven apples (54 seeds at an average of 8 seeds per apple) and reached 3 grams. That’s 0.4g per apple so the average weight of each apple seed is 0.055g.

With me so far because this is where it gets really interesting?

To poison your dog, it would need to eat — and grind up remember — the seeds from no less than 200 apples.

Not only that, cyanide does not accumulate in the body over time. Instead, the body rapidly processes and eliminates small amounts through natural detoxification pathways with a short plasma half-life of 20 minutes to 1 hour. So in a very short space of time, any negative effects of a dog eating — and completely chewing — the seeds of those 200 apples at at average of 8 seeds per apple would be quickly metabolised by the body. That’s what your dog’s liver gets paid the big bucks for!