Anyone else’s toddlers have a hard time eating cutie oranges?

I know this is a weird question. For awhile I wasn’t cutting them, just separating the slices out for her.

The cutie oranges (mandarin) this time seemed a little bigger, so I cut each slice into thirds to be on the safe side. Well almost every time she eats them, shes had a piece where she makes an almost choking sound with (but she’s not choking exactly.. there was a time she was coughing with it but that was once), and she takes the chewed up piece out of her mouth and sets it aside.

She’s been obsessed with these oranges!! Asks for them twice a day. But it freaks me out every time she eats them bc of the noise she makes. Again, she’s not really choking, I think just trying to get it out of her mouth but I still don’t like it.

It makes me wonder if these are safe to give her? Or is it making it unsafe cutting it this way? She didn’t have a problem with the other bag of them we had that I didn’t cut up. She’s 2 and doesn’t usually have any problems like this with food!