I love peanuts but I have never seen a peanut plant growing and I have certainly never consciously observed a field of peanuts. I love roasted peanuts, monkey nuts in their shells, chocolate coated peanuts, satay sauce, peanut butter, peanut oil. Given half a chance I would become a peanut addict but I have trained myself not to pop bags of peanuts in my trolley each time I go to the supermarket. I understand that they are quite fattening so I view them as a guilty pleasure to only be enjoyed once in a while.
Peanuts originated in South America in the north western region of that continent. There is evidence of their consumption in that area - going back over 7500 years. The Spanish conquistadors brought peanuts back to Europe in the sixteenth century and now they are grown widely in sub-tropical zones across the world. The biggest commercial harvests are grown in China and India followed by Nigeria (4.5 million tonnes per year) and the USA (2.8 million tonnes per year),
The plant itself is quite unusual. Amidst the greenery of a healthy knee-high plant grow yellow flowers which will wither, leaving behind buds known as pegs in America. Ultimately. they send out thin descending shoots to the soil below and that's where clusters of peanuts start to form. In fact they are not really nuts at all - they belong to the legume family.
I think we should know as much as we can about the things we eat - where it is grown or how it is raised. Excessive use of pesticides and fertilisers, irrigation systems, farm workers' involvement, transport etc..
Almost fifty years ago I spent three weeks picking raspberries by The Cromarty Firth in Scotland . In a weedy field by the campsite I found potatoes growing so I picked some to boil on my camping stove. Ore day a Londoner asked me where I was getting the potatoes from. I said, "That field over there!" and he said, "Yes, but where are they?"
I took him over to the field, located a potato plant and slowly yanked it out of the earth with its creamy white spuds still attached. The Londoner's eyes widened with amazement. He had never seen a potato plant before and he had no idea that the tubers grew like that. That memory has always stuck with me - the idea that someone might eat potatoes most days and yet not know anything about how they grew.
That is very interesting. I knew peanuts grow underground but not about the trailing bits with the nut on the end going underground.
ReplyDeleteThis is an educative blog. Don't forget your homework laddie!
DeleteMy mother used to cook a ground nut curry which is made with peanuts (as in nuts which grow in the ground rather than crushed nuts). I think that was a West African term. I love digging up spuds. It's like magic. But to not know how they grow? That's a bit strange.
ReplyDeleteI believe that groundnuts are in fact peanuts. It's just another name.
DeleteIn German, peanuts are called Erdnuss, literally "earth nut" - a nut that grows in the earth.
DeleteLike you, I've neve seen a peanut plant. Someday I'd like to see a peanut plant. Potatoes? Well I love potatoes.
ReplyDeleteCanadians are big consumers of peanuts and peanut butter.
DeleteI love a peanut, to be sure, but never knew they grew underground.
ReplyDeleteProves you can teach an old dog a new trick.
Now git up on yer hind legs and beg Fido!
DeleteI love all things peanut, too, and like you, I try to make informed decisions about what I put in my shopping trolley (and eventually, in my body). If possible, I buy organic food, and with animal products, I rather not buy something if it does not carry the "Haltungsform 4" (best of four classes of how animals are raised), and I firmly believe anything that comes from an animal should be much more expensive than fruit and veg, not the other way round.
ReplyDeleteI knew that, botanically, peanuts are not nuts but legumes, but had no idea about the shoots. During my one and only (so far) US holiday in Florida, I saw many peanut fields, and people selling boiled peanuts directly by the roadside in small paper bags - something I have not seen since.
I have been to Florida but never saw that. Maybe I wasn't looking properly.
DeleteSame as what Andrew said. I thought they just grew on the roots like spuds do. I love peanuts too and being high in protein they are good for you. I don't have enough teeth to chew them but as soon as I do I'll be eating peanuts again.
ReplyDeleteAre you getting dentures River or visiting a wizard?
DeleteDentures. Wizards are in short supply these days.
DeleteI always knew they weren't proper nuts but what strange things we learn to eat and love.
ReplyDeleteI guess we cannot know everything.
DeleteI have a distant cousin in USA who grows peanuts, I was totally surprised to find they form underground.
ReplyDeleteThey are not too deep but still just below the surface.
DeleteFascinating, thanks for sharing. I knew they grew underground but had assumed on the plant roots.
ReplyDeleteIt is an odd plant isn't it Martine?
DeleteI too am a peanut fanatic. However I din't know that they grew UNDER ground. I thought they were called ground nuts because they grew on the ground. One's never too old to learn something new.
ReplyDeleteWe're addicts. Who is your dealer Graham?
DeleteTesco, Coop and Waitrose. Such dreadful implications.
DeleteOne advantage of having grown up on a funny farm, with real farms and gardens around. I have seen how many things grow. I have seen cows, pigs and chickens grow, but not how they are transformed into the "finished product." One of our graduate student interns has a master degree in agriculture, he was on the meat grading team.
ReplyDeleteIs the meat grading team connected with judging the assets of college girls? Perhaps they have a gay section too - comparing the merits of college boys.
DeleteI'm wondering what triggered this interesting post about peanuts!?!
ReplyDeleteI had just been to the supermarket and had succumbed to my addiction - bringing home a bag of salt and vinegar flavoured nuts and a bag of honey coated nuts. Mmmm... They are all gone now.
DeleteKnowing about the food we eat is important as you said.
ReplyDeleteWe can eat to live longer, and grow good gut microbes by eating more plants.
Yoghurt with fruit for breakfast along with porridge or non-sugar cereal.
Plants, especially broccoli & spinach, along with nuts & seeds.
My cousin's son died last week from swallowing a 'street valium' that
was probably cut with rat poison.
Many of our young are dying from these blue tablets.
We need a new health and well-being movement; nutrition is the key.
My cousin's son was 29, and was found dead on his sofa, his head fallen back.
How dreadful that your cousin's son died like that - not fighting for his country or mining coal or even from an unavoidable disease. He died on his sofa like that. What a waste. If I was religious I would say a prayer for him.
DeleteYour sorrow is as good as any prayer, Neil.
DeleteI did not know Dylan well but I played with him as a happy toddler.
Baroness Susan Greenfield said the most complex thing in
the known universe weighs just 1.4 kilograms and is more easily
bruised than a peach.
The human brain.
It is a tragedy beyond telling that the young ruin their minds with drugs.
Baroness Greenfield speaks about the neuroscience of consciousness.
A summer swim in a Scottish loch, a rainbow, meeting up with an old friend, watching ants, eating fried egg with chips and baked beans - all of these things are better than taking drugs but what do I know? I am just an old fuddy duddy.
DeleteR.I.P. Dylan
I thought you were writing about the upcoming junior doctors' strike and what they earn! Seriously, I love peanuts and cashews too, but unfortunately they don't like me!
ReplyDeleteYou should be kind to them.
DeleteI plead guilty to a lifetime of eating peanuts without any idea why they are also called ground nuts. Thank you for educating me.
ReplyDeleteThe court have decided to let you off with a suspended sentence.
DeleteBetween George Washington Carver and Jimmy Carter, Americans in the southern US should know about peanuts!
ReplyDeleteGeorgia seems to be the main peanut producing state. It's not all about the peaches Kelly!
DeleteWhen I was a young boy, our parents used to let us pick out something to plant in the garden every year to keep us involved and one year I chose peanuts. For the most part, they were a complete failure though I think I was able to pick a handful of them to eat out of the entire row.
ReplyDeleteIowa is not known for its peanuts. However, I suspect that if you tried next year you'd do a lot better Ed.
DeleteAmazing! Here I had always thought both peanuts and potatoes grew in the produce section of our grocery stores. I learn something every day.
ReplyDeleteDo I detect a note of comic irony there? Very droll.
DeleteI have only ever seen peanut plants once, around 50 years ago during a visit to Kew Gardens, with explanatory material showing how the flowers end up pushing trailers into the ground to form the nuts. And, as I recall the Groundnuts Scheme was one of the major disasters of the postwar Labour government. As for the guy not knowing where potatoes come from - that, I'm afraid, is so typical of so many people now who think that meat an veg grow on supermarket shelves, and wouldn't know what a farm was if their life depended on it.
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful that Kew taught you that and that you remembered it too Will. Kew is an amazing place isn't it? I spent my 65th birthday there.
DeleteAt that time I lived in Sussex, and Kew Gardens was a favourite place to visit - it cost just 3d in old money for entrance. My big disappointment was that I never got to go up the pagoda, it always seemed to be closed.
DeleteInteresting bit od nonsense relating to people not knowing where food comes from: I am currently reading a fiction novel in which a young woman believes the feathered chickens running around on farms are not the same breed as the ones we buy to eat, "I've seen them eatin' chickens in supermarkets and they're all bald."
ReplyDelete