Jean-Louis:

>And do you eat carrots and potatoes with the dirt, because in ancient
>times they couldn't wash it under the tap?

I remove as much of the dirt as I can do with my hands quickly, then eat
it. If it crunches too much in my mouth I sometimes leave the table and was
hit. Most of the time I am too lazy to do this - I want to eat, not to wash
and polish my food.

>most of the defense system of the fruit is in the skin, which contains
>toxic substances, so the skin is less useful to the body than the
>flesh. When we bite into a fruit, your mouth contains a mixing of the
>skin and the flesh, and the pleasantness is an average between both
>parts. At some point, the benefit of eating the flesh balances the
>harm done by the skin: it is the point of zero pleasure
>(instinctive stop). Imagine a hypothetic fruit whose flesh exactly
>contains the nutrients you need, but whose skin is extremely toxic:
>would you refuse to peel it because your ancestors weren't able to do so?

I don't know of toxic substances in nature. Any substance can be toxic if
you eat too much of it or your body doesn't want it now. The question for
me is not which toxic substances could be in the skin of a fruit but if
I am adapted to digest them. And this is judged by my instinct which tells
me, whether the skin tastes well or not. Antioxidants are needed in your
body to react with free radicals (e.g. from cosmic rays) and reduce some
oxidised substances.
By the way: I even eat the skin of thin-skinned avocadoes. Discovered it
some weeks ago.
If the flesh of your hypothetic fruit couldn't be separated from the skin
(good but not perfect example: tamarillo, where the skin is very bitter but
the flesh tastes good), I wouldn't eat it. Indeed. In most of these cases
if the skin becomes bad while eating you can try to eat only the inner part.
If I don't like the skin of an avocado anymore I switch over to peeling it.
Good example: avocado criollo and fuerte mexican from Orkos. For me the
skin of the criollo is the gag. Without it it would be just another fatty
tasting avocado.

Instinctive greets,

Stefan