When eating almonds?

[Tiam]

I've often heard in wild food eating, to avoid anything that smells or tastes like almond, that is not almond, like the plague. Yet, daily consumption of Almond as a health aide is recommended. Who, here, with the knowledge, can explain this to me?

[ApatheticNoMore]

Here's a wild guess, free association, cyanide, almonds, these are linked somehow (because I've read a bit about food origins - and many many perfectly healthy foods especially nuts are kinda related to toxic things - and almonds and cyanide go together somehow). What was the linkage again? Some almond trees have cyanide or something? Almonds used to have cyanide and it was bred out of them? Ok google to the rescue (googling "almond" + "cyanide") - almonds DO have small amounts of cyanide, and apparently every almond tree has on it a few "bitter almonds" that have larger quantities of cyanide.

"The fruit of Prunus dulcis is predominately sweet, but a few bitter almonds may be found on each tree.[16][17][dubious – discuss] The fruits from Prunus dulcis var. amara are always bitter as are the kernels from other Prunus species like apricot, peach and cherry (to a lesser extent).

The bitter almond is slightly broader and shorter than the sweet almond, and contains about 50% of the fixed oil that occurs in sweet almonds. It also contains the enzyme emulsin which, in the presence of water, acts on a soluble glucoside, amygdalin, yielding glucose, cyanide and the essential oil of bitter almonds, which is nearly pure benzaldehyde. Bitter almonds may yield from 4–9 mg of hydrogen cyanide per almond.[18][19] Extract of bitter almond was once used medicinally, but even in small doses, effects are severe, and in larger doses can be deadly; the cyanide must be removed before consumption"
[Wikipedia]

And more cyanide itself supposedly smells like almonds:
"“Hydrogen cyanide is a colorless gas with a faint, bitter, almondlike odor. Sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide are both white solids with a bitter, almond-like odor in damp air.”
http://jstorplants.org/2010/07/26/cyanide-and-almonds/

and on plant evolution and cyanide in plants an article titled "Beware the smell of bitter almonds":
"Disabling the genes that code for cyanide production is also straightforward. It took only one genetic mutation, for example, to turn the toxic bitter almond to the benign sweet almond."
http://www.physorg.com/news198949368.html