So last week at work I ate an apple core.

We have this intern who eats them all the time, and she was challenging the rest of us to eat one. So this other guy did, and then I did. Seeds and all. It’s really not that bad if you just start from the bottom and work your way around. You don’t even think about it.

Of course, after I’d already eaten the whole thing, she informed me that apple seeds have arsenic in them.

Further research by one of my fellow editorial assistants showed that only the organic form of arsenic is in apple seeds. And according to the intern, in an email she sent all of us later, “Excluding the peel and core of apples from the diet almost halves the amounts of Vitamin C and dietary fibre available in the whole fruit, but makes very little difference to the sugar content.” She also found this poem by Liberty Hyde Bailey:

“How to Eat an Apple”

Hold it, note its size and shape.
See the blush on its shoulder, inhale its fragrance.
Hold it to your cheek, bite it.
Feel its break and cool crisp flesh.
Know the flow of its sprightly juice
and the aroma that lies in its core.
Only then will you have eaten an apple.

So all these years I’ve been throwing out apple cores for nothing. Who’d’ve thunk?