According to most authorities, peanuts originally came from South America. They are said to have started in the lower lying hills of Bolivia and then later in Peru and Brazil. To back this up, archeologists will tell you that there is evidence of them in South America as early as 3000 B.C. They found fossilized shells in excavations, Inca necklaces with gold Peanuts, and pre–Incan pottery. Anya von Bremzen, a three-time, award-winning food writer, says the Incan diet had a “miracle combination of carbohydrates from corn and protein from peanuts and other beans.” It was an agricultural economy at the time, based on the ability to store things – dry them out, put them aside, then reconstitute them as needed. These nuts fit right in.
The graves of ancient Incas found along the dry western coast of South America often contained jars filled with peanuts. They were left with those who had passed away to provide food in the afterlife. Tribes in central Brazil also ground peanuts with maize to make an intoxicating beverage for celebrations.
The Portuguese had a habit of carrying food around the world. They took the cashews to India. They took cassava (tapioca) to Africa. So, why wouldn’t it make sense that they also took this nut to places on their trading itinerary? India’s enormous raw peanut production can be traced back to Portuguese traders and explorers in Goa. Peanuts were certainly introduced through the Portuguese colony of Macao on the China coast. By the sixteenth century, they spread everywhere, including in Africa. We do not have accurate records, but it would seem that trader appetites, trade routes, and taste trends helped spread the nut.
The peanut became very important there, and there is good evidence that when African slaves were brought to Virginia and the Carolinas in the eighteenth century, they carried their food traditions, which, by that time, included mastery of the South American peanut. They brought their name for them as well, the Bantu word, Nguba. From this came the common southern word “goober,” as in “goober peas.”
Still, Spanish colonists in South America did their best. They devised ways to thicken a sauce with ground peanuts, and they invented sweet nut confections. Later they took New World foods to Spain, where they were not embraced with much passion. For a while, they were roasted, ground, and used as coffee by the Spanish. Later, after the Civil War, Americans would do the same thing.
A Frenchman named Condamine, who had lived in Ecuador in the eighteenth century, praised the peanut when he got home, but to no avail. Peanuts had a slow start in Europe. It wasn’t until the middle of nineteen. The century French cooks, taking advantage of its abundance, cheapness, and ability to withstand high neatness, started frying things in peanut oil.
Von Bremzen says that as the colonial society developed in the Americas, the wealthy moved toward almonds and walnuts for their cooking, leaving the cheap peanut for the poor. Due to the stigma of its budget price, it took a long while to find a place in the cuisine of high society.
George Washington Carver changed agriculture in the southern United States with his legendary work. At Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he pioneered at least three hundred uses for peanuts and byproducts. They became a significant crop and made the agricultural diversification of the South inevitable.
Still, it was only recently that it found a use in upscale foods. That may be because chefs and food writers finally found that many Asian cuisines used peanuts in a forward and creative way. For example, after Arab traders brought the peanut to Indonesia, cooks created the now classic satay (sate). It is dazzling to see and taste the scores of ways they find use across the continent.
The peanut is a legume, much closer to the pea and the bean than the pecan or the pistachio. Consumers eat more than all of the other tree nuts combined. The United States alone consumes more than one and a half billion pounds annually. Half of that amount is in the form of butter.
Peanuts are a significant world crop, with production approaching twenty-nine million metric tons. It ranks in the top twenty-five foods in the world. India and China grew about nine million tons, and the United States holds the number three spot.
In the United States, peanuts are the twelfth largest farm product, worth more than $2 billion a year. The average American eats six pounds per year. Peanuts need heat and sandy soil so the deep roots can increase and plenty of water at the appropriate times. They plant when there is no longer a risk of frost. In the United States, Georgia is the single largest producing state. Four main varieties grow and sell in America. They are Runner, Virginia, Spanish, and Valencia. These peanut varieties are usually served as raw peanuts or roasted in oil and salted.
As a legume, peanuts send nitrogen into the soil, and the crop is an essential player in crop rotation practices. They grow fast, flower early, and also self pollinate. After fertilization, a spike grows from the flower and goes straight down into the soil, where the nut forms.
In the United States, the peanut harvest is mechanized. The nuts are undercut, pulled up, shaken, dried, and then either stored in their shells (for up to six months) or shelled and put in refrigerated storage. A tiny part of the peanut production is brought right out of the field, boiled, and sold at once. The rest is processed as needed, either with the shell or without. Because of the high-fat content, rancidity is a potential problem. The popular peanuts served at ballgames in America are soaked in brine and then roasted in their shells.
Peanuts are shelled, sorted, sized, and packaged by a machine. Light-sensitive screeners inspect each nut, and a blemish gets the culprit banished. If they are to be blanched, they get a roasting or boiling, and the dark skins are brushed off. After this process, they are packaged for consumers at the snack market, bakers, candy makers, peanut butter factories, or oil mills.
We’ve mentioned that the United States peanut butter industry is a significant consumer. Worldwide, over half of the peanuts grown will go into a press to become cooking oils and industrial processes. The remaining nuts will compress for livestock food or fertilizer, and the shells themselves can have a use industrially.
The peanut is truly a near-perfect food. The human body could probably get by on peanuts alone. They contain daily nutrition needs such as protein, fat (most of that unsaturated), plenty of carbohydrates, and several essential vitamins and minerals.
Unfortunately, peanuts are probably the number one allergen. In the United States, about three million people are allergic to peanuts. Food processors that use peanuts must label their products carefully to avoid problems. Although rarely seen in the United States, Afiatoxins, which can cause severe health problems, can contaminate peanuts through certain molds. Safe processing is an essential part of minimizing the risk.
We now know beyond dispute that peanuts are good for you. They can help lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. They hold an important spot on the latest food pyramid as the food we can eat often and even regularly.
