[logfromblammo]

I disagree. Discarding the core is unnatural. The only part of an apple that I discard is the stem.

I also ensure that I do not crush all of the seeds with my teeth, thus honoring "the deal" between fruit-bearing plants and animals (even though sewage treatment plants may be involved after the fact).

I draw the line at plums, though. Those are pretty much the largest fruit seeds that I will swallow whole. Peaches, you're out of luck.

But when you put toilets and sewers in the equation, tossing the seed-bearing portion of a fruit to another animal is probably the most natural thing you can do. The animal receiving the food has no cause to object. The plant that bore the fruit has no cause to object (unless it is seedless). And the only reason a human might object is if it somehow upsets the environmental equilibrium, such as if 10000 humans are all throwing their uneaten apple cores in the same place.

...like tourists at a national park.

When you're in a "natural" area that somehow gets a lot of human activity anyway, you're actually better off burning your garbage, and either packing out the ash if local soil is basic, or spreading it and peeing on it if the local soil is acidic.

[mod]

Do you realize that plums and peaches and apples are all likely to be happy just to be carried off and dropped?

You don't have to eat freaking pits out of fruit.

[logfromblammo]

That's not true. It depends on the plant species, but some seeds require physical or chemical abrasion of the seed coat before germination can occur. Some fruits have germination-inhibiting plant hormones in the fruit flesh, and cannot sprout until that is either digested or rotted away.

Some seeds require seasonal cycles of cold and hot, but that doesn't involve animals except insofar as they may cause the climate to shift.

That's not really why I swallow the seeds. I do it because it makes less of a mess to clean up after a meal or snack. Someone else might have to walk their apple core to a garbage can, and worry about whether it will rot and stink in there. I just put the stem on my desk and throw it in the landscaping mulch later.