CONTENTS
Four reasons the ‘king of nuts’ and is far from luxe.
Quest for creamy: vegan labelling is contributing to the inflammatory takeover.
Can soaking false nuts keep them on my menu?
The healthiest and most affordable nuts.
Not all commonly eaten nuts are approved by anti-inflammatory doctors. I was shocked to find out a popular nut with luxury status (that is also increasingly added to packaged foods) has plant toxins, causes inflammation, and is not even a nut! You may think I’m talking about the peanut which is a legume and a top-10 likely allergen, but I think you’re savvy enough to know that peanuts should be swapped for other nuts wherever possible. Reducing foods that cause an immune response as well as cellular inflammation improves daily performance and overall health and wellbeing.
I am talking about the nut that vegans and vegetarians love the most: the cashew! Native to Brazil, the cashew is cultivated in the tropics around the world since being traded 500 years ago, and is not a tree nut but a bean. In this article, I explain all the reasons you’ll want to swap cashews for other delicious and more nutritious nuts. On my list of favourite nuts, cashews have been sent to the bottom.
“There are numerous reports … of outbreaks of rashes after consuming cashew nut butter or the nuts themselves. Cashews are actually in the same botanical family as poison ivy…and in my clinical experience, cashews dramatically increase inflammation, particularly in my patients with rheumatoid arthritis.” - Dr Steven R. Gundry says in The Plant Paradox. (Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune and inflammatory disease. An estimated 456,000 Australians (1.9%) have rheumatoid arthritis. One of many inflammatory diseases.)
Four reasons the ‘king of nuts’ and is far from luxe
Firstly, being Brazilian makes the cashew a New World bean and I explain why this causes inflammation and may increase disease in my previous blog. Basically, 500 years of eating (nor 10,000 years of eating by native Brazilians) is enough time for our complex bodies to adapt to toxic foods. However, to survive on foraging alone, some plants in seasonal amounts were eaten so there was enough food season to season. Plus, plant groups have different strategies for predators (like us) to help them survive. Some plants use more toxins than others to protect their seeds and future generations.
Secondly, the cashew is a unique plant because the cashew seed grows at the end of the cashew fruit instead of inside (and the sweet ‘apple’ is actually a fleshy edible stem not a botanical fruit at all). Traditionally, the cashew fruit gets eaten and the seed is discarded because it tastes bad. The cashew seed has a strong acid under the outer layer which burns the mouth and skin! The cashew plant has succeeded with its predator reward as a decoy and because the discarded cashew ‘baby’ can then germinate on the ground into another cashew tree.
Even today in preparing cashews the acid and outer layers must be removed and workers may get acid injury from preparing cashew ‘nuts’. This is especially seen as cashews are mainly still processed in developing countries that have greater people power working with their hands, and less machine power. A 2017 journal paper notes dermatitis for 88% of 112 women shelling cashews in a West African factory without protective gloves (30% with chemical burns, 98% with skin defects), who are illiterate women aged 25 to 42. Almost all the women had significant psychosocial impacts due to hand injuries, meaning their social relations had changed as well as their mental health with anxiety, avoidance behaviour and stigma. I’m pretty sure if ethical eaters like vegans who adore the cashew, don’t want animals to suffer in their food choices, they’d feel the same way about their fellow humankind. The irony is startling. We weren’t meant to eat cashews. It is only through modern food production methods and the disconnect of globalisation that cashew ‘nuts’ can be served to you and you don’t notice the dangerous acids compared to if you had a traditional lifestyle and local knowledge.
“The raw cashew nut is inedible due to the presence of anacardic acids within the cashew nut shell. These compounds cause an allergic skin rash on contact, necessitating specific processing techniques for the nut to become edible.” - Berry & Sargent in Postharvest Biology and Technology of Tropical and Subtropical Fruits, 2011.
“The outer layer of the cashew shell contains a caustic oil that must be burned off before the nut is touched. The nuts are then roasted again or boiled to remove other toxic substances and the second shell is removed.” - J. Gray in Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition, 2013.
Thirdly, since 10,000 years ago, the cashew trees did increase in Brazil with early human migration and records show it was for its sweet, seedless fruit pulp, and the tree sap to make medicinal dental paste. Today’s adored cashew ‘nut’ was not the most valuable part of the cashew tree but was eaten after roasting by native peoples. The cashew was originally spread by Portuguese colonists after Jesuit missionaries had figured out from the local cultures what plants were potentially medicinal, useful (such as timber) and also nourishing. For example, unripe pineapples became valuable as kidney stone dissolvers and valued to long-voyage sailors because pineapples could be picked unripe and not spoil soon after setting sail.
In the 16th century, over a dozen Americas plants were brought to Portuguese colonies around the world along with cashews. Then in the Portuguese colony in Goa, India the sweet fruit pulp was used for good digestion as well as to ferment alcoholic drinks. They leavened bread with cashew juice too (yeast wouldn’t be considered healthy for another hundred years). The sap was used to mark linen fabric like permanent ink. Later, the trees were used to control erosion in African Portuguese colonies. Again, cashew ‘nuts’ were a by-product that they didn’t want to waste. Plus, the slave trade allowed for the peeling of acid-burning nuts.
It was the expensiveness of almonds traded from the Middle East to India’s Mughal rulers that cashew kernels in India became a popular substitute. What are kings’ specialities The People want too. Emulating celebrity is not new. Cashew kernels were used in India to make marzipan and sweets for the last 500 years. As I have mentioned in my previous blog, then generational food cultures are hard to shift. Today in Australia, almonds are cheaper than cashews and so goes the changing trends of global trade (and the changing food trends of rich celebrities).
Also in history, when there were food shortages someone went to a lot of effort of trial-and-error to neutralise toxic cashews rather than starve. Today, steaming is one step. Plus, we live longer these days and are getting chronic inflammation diseases our ancestors did not get. Today, your chances of starving are slim and the cashew has sneakily risen to the status of luxury nut! Mainly because so much care must be taken to make cashews edible. Plus, like peanuts, the taste and texture is quite pleasant after all the difficult processing.
Fourthly and finally, in the past, toxic plant foods were eaten seasonally for a short time and so unlike today the disease burden was not daily. We expect cashews to be available to eat all year round and global supply chains make this possible. Exposure to plant toxins every day rather than say, 10% of the year (when they are in season). This makes a difference to your immune system, 80% of which is focused on protecting you from what goes from your gut into your bloodstream. Chronic inflammation is from your immune system battling intercellular ‘threats’ over a long period of time.
Being omnivores is the way humans have survived in a range of environments around the world and we didn’t let certain plants beat us at their game. A foodie like me is an adventurous eater I’m willing to try anything once but just not regularly. The cashew does appear in my food occasionally in a convenient pesto or dip but I no longer seek cashews out. My motto is to minimise risk of inflammation while still enjoying food. A true foodie is flexible, the true essence of what it means to be an omnivore or ‘flexible eater’.
Quest for creamy: vegan labelling is contributing to the inflammatory takeover
Vegans and vegetarians love that cashews can provide foods a creaminess usually reserved for animal dairy products. You may have even heard of cashew ‘cheese’ which is essentially softened and mashed cashew instead of dairy cheese. As a foodie, my tastebuds tell me that dairy creaminess is impossible to replicate with plant foods no matter how adamant the non-meat-eating community may be about this. These cashew products like ‘cashew cheese’ are more likely to be toxic lectin bombs that burden your immune system and cause fatigue at best, and over time, chronic disease at worst. Luckily, there are many other better nut choices to eat. I also still eat dairy but I choose less inflammatory milks such as A2 protein cow milk, sheep and goat milk. These make delicious cheeses and I think ‘cashew cheese’ is a waste of good tasting time.
Since I learned of the unsavoury past of the cashew, I’m very concerned to see cashew added increasingly to so many off-the-shelf foods like dips, sauces, yoghurts, puddings, crackers, muesli bars, breakfast cereals and more. Almost every muesli bar at major supermarkets is made of cheap peanut legumes, or if you go up to the next price level, cashews! These food producers are not nutrition-focused (though they want you to think so by their marketing). Most muesli bars are just using the cheapest, socially acceptable nuts available. You must look for muesli bars without these two fake nuts (a legume and a bean) to get your convenient healthy foods that are the least inflammatory to your body and therefore the most performance-boosting. My go-to muesli bars use almonds and I’m happy to pay more for less inflammation.
Pesto is one of my favourite Italian sauces with its bright green basil leaves. To my increasing despair, many brands have swapped traditionally used pine nuts for cashews to save costs. There is usually only one brand left on shelves in major supermarkets that I can buy to minimise inflammation.
I also love gourmet crackers made from wholefood nuts and seeds instead of highly-processed wheat or gluten-free flours. Too often cashews are one of the main ingredients because they are cheaper than other ‘white’ nuts without skins like macadamias and pine nuts. Their popularity is also purely aesthetic not nutritional.
I also love fresh dips because they make great lunch and snack toppings and even healthier condiment choices but again, so many combinations have inflammatory cashew to make more dairy-free products that mimic dairy.
The converted vegan and ‘vego’ movements remain a minority in Australia yet many brands are adjusting their recipes to please too many customers and the bottom line. Those like me who were fans of former versions are now looking for a new fave, or leave stores empty-handed and frustrated, especially if making your own remains the only option yet you don’t have time. A well told motto of product development is, ‘If you try to please everyone, you please no one.’
Even the nut butter aisle is running a gauntlet when majority of supermarket shelves are peanut legume butter. Some brands upsell blends with more expensive true nuts added to a peanut base, but often a small portion of the total product are true nuts. Other peanut-free blends have cashew! I use almond butter as a rule for reduced inflammation.
I no longer assume anything labelled ‘vegan’ is healthier. According to functional medicine doctors that are reversing chronic diseases with diet and lifestyle, many vegan food swaps like cashew may cause more inflammation than the traditional foods removed that have a much longer relationship with the human diet and digestion. Now if any vegans or vegetarians are reading this, don’t shoot the messenger! Cashews have been well marketed by the food industry and in the business of selling more cashews, not in the business of preventing disease especially when we can’t pin diseases from inflammation to one food. Modern food production has skipped many tried and true traditional food preparation methods in the rush for plentiful, cheap food.
Can soaking false nuts keep them on my menu?
In my previous blog, In my previous blog, I talk about how traditional methods can turn toxic plants into the nutritious food trialled over eons, but then skipped by modern food factories in the rush for cheap, plentiful food through mechanisation. Essentially, soaking is the step before fermenting or decomposing (it’s a fine balance). Fermented foods for humans are well known for thousands of years to be more nutritious and less toxic. It’s why ground grains like wheat flour (grass seeds) were left with water for hours or days to leaven as a sourdough that is more nutritious and more flavourful. Soaking nuts is a hyper-recent trend.
In my love of history and food I found archives for antique nut recipes and any early mentions of soaking. I skimmed translated documents of Ancient Roman recipes, medieval Middle Eastern and Chinese cookbook analyses, and writings of 16th century Portuguese missionaries in Brazil and India. I can say all the recipes were sophisticated, even 2,000 years ago, (because it was very expensive to record something by a literate person and so the recipes were commissioned by a wealthy person with refined and expensive tastes). These very old recipes had many ingredients including spices (often added for medicinal benefits as well as taste). Not one edible nut mentioned was soaked before cooking, including observing native Brazilians who had the longest relationship with the cashew tree.
The only soaking or washing of food that I came across was to remove bitterness. In the past, humans ate acorns from oak trees, but they need grinding and washing in water to remove bitter tannins and prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide). Foods that need careful preparation and harvesting have often been left behind in modern, mechanised food production. Young, unripe walnuts are bitter but were used in medicine, for example. Most tree nuts that we eat taste better, the longer time has passed since falling to the ground (or picked). Sweet almonds (the ones we eat) are not soaked through history but skins removed for less irritation. Bitter almonds (a different variety) were soaked to remove prussic acid but were used for medicine. Today, bitter almonds are still used in boutique traditional confections. Confections have a history of medicinal use, the sweetness masks the bitters doing the medicinal work. Traditional marshmallow was a medicine for example. Liquorice, too. Apple seeds have prussic acid as well. Bitter almond is related to the apricot and peach. It is why we don’t eat stone fruit kernels, the plant uses toxins to protect their babies but the tempting fruit ensures we carry seeds away from the mother tree. Seedlings under parent trees are blocked of sunlight and often don’t grow until their parents die, a very long wait for a tree. Beans and annuals do not have the same biological needs, they don’t need predators (like us) to carry away their seeds with a tasty fruit decoy.
I return to my question: did previous human cultures soak nuts to improve their digestibility?
If you aren’t as fascinated as me about history and food, skip the next paragraphs to read next what today’s functional doctors are saying about soaking nuts.
Approximately 2,000 years ago (not that long in human-food evolution but surviving records are slim), a Roman recipe book cooked peeled chestnuts with a little soda in water over a fire. He used pine nuts to make a herb go further when flavouring dishes as well as pine nuts in a fresh cheese, herb and raisin sauce. He recommended a pudding of pine nuts boiled with spelt, raisins and “peeled almonds immersed in boiling water and washed with white clay so that they appear perfectly white” then flavoured with wine and pepper. These are not the recipes for your everyday Roman but for his elite patrons. Pine nuts were added to various sausages. Pine nuts were added to vegetable dishes too. There is recipe of a poached custard, “crush very fine walnuts and hazelnuts, toast them and crush with honey, mix in pepper, broth, milk and eggs and a little oil.” Toasted almonds were used in fruity meat sauces looking like what I would call a chutney.
Five nuts, mentioned in this ancient Roman text, we eat today: pine nuts, almonds, chestnuts, walnuts and hazelnuts.
This makes sense as these nuts grew around ancient Rome and its surrounding lands that the Roman Empire had conquered at the time, including North Africa and the Middle East near the Mediterranean.
In a medieval Middle Eastern cookbook (1,000 years ago) there are nuts in many sweet recipes and a sweet almond paste, an early marzipan. There is no mention of soaking, only grinding. The medieval Middle Eastern cookbooks (the earliest surviving recipes recorded in the area) were especially thorough and so would have mentioned soaking if it was needed. Plus, they likely worked for caliphs to perfect the most tasty and nutritious dishes, so I am of the conclusion again that soaking nuts is not needed.
Today however, quite a few contemporary cookbooks by functional medicine doctors, and even nutritionists do soak nuts, all nuts, wherever possible, to neutralise anti-nutrients or plant toxins.
Dr Steven R. Gundry, former heart surgeon, transplant (and therefore immunity) expert, and author of The Plant Paradox, completely avoids cashews and peanuts but allows all other nuts. He does not have soaking or sprouting nuts as part of his health regimes. He allows up to 1/2 a cup of approved nuts per day (1/4 cup is the max serving size, twice a day).
TIP: Dr Gundry’s favourites nuts are macadamias, walnuts and pistachios.
Even obscure nuts like tiger nuts are approved to swap cashews. You won’t be bored by avoiding cashews. After my readings, I support Dr Gundry’s recommendations and not soaking nuts removes the barrier or otherwise I’d probably never eat them if I had to soak them everyday. Plus, if you soak nuts you. Need to eat them on a schedule or they start to rot. As a foodie, I am a spontaneous, intuitive eater.
Dr Will Cole, functional medicine practitioner and author of The Inflammation Spectrum, recommends soaking for at least seven hours with a tablespoon of salt per bowl of water with nuts, and then rinsed and used (or stored for a few days) or dehydrated in a dehydrator (or low oven will work too) to return a crunch factor you desire. You can also buy soaked and sprouted nuts but you pay more for manufacturers' efforts.
Dr Cole also recommends buying the ‘cleanest’ nut meaning raw, not coated in added industrial food oils nor heated, that may change their natural oils into inflammatory ‘trans’ fats. He explains that many plants with good nutrient levels also have anti-nutrients that block absorption in the gut.
“Soaking nuts, seeds and legumes can drastically change the way we digest these health foods and allow us to actually reap the benefits that they are designed to give.”
Dr Terry Wahls, a clinical functional medicine doctor who reversed her own paralysing multiple sclerosis, and author of The Wahls Protocol, advises rinsing water three times a day for three days max. You won’t see a change in the nut, but it will contain more digestive enzymes and less anti-nutrients. 115 grams of soaked nuts are included in all three of Dr Wahls modified paleo diets that reverse chronic diseases and auto-immune diseases too.
TIP: Dr Terry Wahls favourite nuts are almonds, walnuts, and hazelnuts.
Which nuts are the healthiest and most affordable?
AVOID NOSTALGIC PEANUTS
Peanuts are easy to grow, harvest and process compared to other nuts and are two to three times cheaper than other nuts per kilogram. You can see why this Top-10 allergenic legume has been infiltrating foods for decades, especially since the post-war recession last century. This is mainly why they are in every food including children’s snacks. As a child, I remember crushed peanuts atop my ice cream and peanut butter on my toast. I admit they are tasty but if you’ve ever tasted single-ingredient peanut butter crushed in a self-serve machine in health shops without added salt, it tastes like glue paste. You’ll realise peanuts are not tastier than other nuts it’s the added salt and texture that excites us, and nostalgia. Sugar and fat are added to peanut butter too, no wonder kids love it. Like it or not, peanuts remain a top-ten likely allergen that puts a burden on your body and reduces daily performance.
On a positive note, there are plenty of tasty tree nuts to give you dense nutrition per gram and a variety of tastes and textures. Even if you buy the cheapest nuts after peanuts which are commonly almonds in Australia, you are still winning on a budget. The great thing about nuts is their versatility. You can add nuts like almonds to any meal or snack as they don’t have a strong flavour and don’t take over. Other nuts have some classic food matches because they have a distinctly recognisable flavour like pistachios and hazelnuts (two of my faves). If you buy in bulk, you pay less per nut but remember to store in the fridge so the natural oils stay fresh and not rancid especially if you live in hot climates. Rancid spoiled oils in ‘approved’ nuts cause inflammation too.
ALMONDS
Once the nut of choice for rulers of the Middle East and India, almonds come in a huge array of textures, perfect for an easily bored but healthy foodie like me. Almonds come whole, skin-on, blanched, slivered, shaved, ground or floured. Silvered and shaved almonds are sold in the baking section and make great meal toppers as well. The more processing, the more nuts cost so I eat whole almonds wholeheartedly and I eat slivered and sliced almonds with more restraint for my food budget. I have the different forms in my pantry at any one time. I also add ground almonds to baking snacks from functional medico recipes who swap out potentially allergenic wheat flour. Almond prices range from $13-$40 per kg including organic.
HAZELNUTS
Hazelnuts are another affordable and nutritious tree nut with a delicious flavour and not just because it reminds us of Nutella chocolate spread. Hazelnuts are native to Asia Minor but have been traded around the world for centuries if not millennia such as via the Silk Road. I don’t use on savoury meals but there are quite a few cultural examples on SBS food recipes like a French dish of Roast duck fillets with orange and hazelnuts (Canard à l’orange et aux noisettes) By Gabriel Gaté. This may be a traditional food match where hazelnuts are picked from the end of summer and stored away in a cool cellar. Oranges are a winter crop and game meats are also more popular in winter when historically French people ate locally or not at all, and the snowy winter scarcity affected all living things including people. Pricing indicator: Lucky brand hazelnuts are $44 per kg in 125g bags.
WALNUTS
Walnuts are a gem of a tree nut with a subtle flavour and a hint of bitterness and so I think walnuts tend to go with everything. There are dozens of species of walnuts around the world. The most common grown for eating are the Persian walnut and the North American black walnut. The longer your DNA and immune system heritage have been in contact with a food the less inflammatory it is, so I try to buy the Persian species which is also called the English walnut; Juglans Regia, showing a long history of walnut trade. You know this ancient nut and tree were very useful to people because its name ‘regia’ means in Latin ‘regal’. Walnut is ‘the royal nut’ even before the almond. Royalty often got the best of everything so be assured the walnut is a true ‘king of nuts’. You may have heard that walnut timber is also highly prized throughout history. Prices range from $20-50 per kg for Australian or American walnuts.
“The walnut tree is one of the oldest fruit tree known for humans.” - Encyclopedia of Human Nutrition, 2023.
PECANS
Pecans belong to hickories, the same family as walnuts, made famous in recent times by American pie culture. The species native to North America were valuable to indigenous peoples as an abundant annual food supply. If your want to pronounce the name of this nut like the indigenous phonetics of the Algonquin peoples, it is ‘pee-carn’ not ‘pee-can’. Australians got lost in translation. Understandably most of the world’s pecans come from America. A New World nut that did exist elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere but became extinct during the glaciation when humans could move south, trees could not. Even though other New World nuts are more inflammatory, I believe this pre-glaciation history makes pecans less inflammatory due to a very long immune heritage (American Peoples migrated from the West 10,000 years ago). I eat other nuts more than pecans just to be on the safe side of my genetics. $30 per kg for Australian-grown pecans.
MACADAMIAS
According to nutritionists, macadamia may just be the most perfect nut. The thick hard shell of the macadamia is worth the effort for its delicate texture and sweet nuttiness. I am biased because macadamias are indigenous to Australia (one of the only Australian nuts to have successfully commercialised into orchards). Most cultivation takes place in Hawaii, their trees originated from Australian stock in Queensland, my home state. Buy for $38 per kg or for imported organic pay $70/kg. But a little goes a long way!
Fun fact: macadamias have almost no protein when generally nuts are believed to be high protein sources. They are rich in fats and fibre. Their fat type is similar to olive oil and avocado.
“The small Queensland town of Gympie has been identified as the origin of 70% of the world’s macadamia nuts.” - The Guardian, 2019.
PISTACHIOS
Pistachio is truly a luxe nut with a gorgeous green and pink shade and likely originated from Central Asia, the area west of China with all countries ending in ‘-stan’. Brightly coloured foods can be the best for you because colour equals nutrients (if the plant isn’t using the colour as a warning to stay away) so it is no surprise that,
“In regards to antioxidant capacity, pistachio was first ranked among nut oils, followed by hazelnut”
– textbook; Multiple Biological Activities of Unconventional Seed Oils, 2022.
To buy shelled $60-79/kg or with the shell on is half the price at $28/kg but you are paying for doing more work yourself and the shells aren’t edible and go to waste (or take a few years in your garden compost). Many trees trees protect their nut ‘babies’ with hard shells. Next time you buy the cheapest bag, weigh the discarded shells, subtract from the packet weight and calculate the cost for the remaining edible nuts, and perhaps you pay the same as buying shelled or more. I always buy shelled nuts for convenience.
PINE NUTS
Another gorgeous nut, that is botanically different from other edible nuts is the pine nut. I could write an entire blog just on these tiny precious kernels of goodness and taste. Pine nuts are harvested from inside certain pinecones from soft or white pine trees or conifers. The most well-known is the European stone pine, not a glamorous name for such a gem of a nut that is creamy and sweet. This little nut and European humans have been together for millions of years and other pines lost territory as humans made sure their beloved stone pine grew abundantly where it liked growing conditions. By comparison, in North America where humans only arrived 10,000 years ago, there are half a dozen edible pine nut species but they aren’t produced abundantly for global commercialisation. One problem with global demand is less edible pine nut species end up in supply and people can get ‘pine mouth’ where they taste nothing but metallic for several days. These would definitely be toxins from pine species that humans have not been eating culturally for as long as the European stone pine. My personal opinion is pine nut demand is so high it's no longer harvested sustainably (even Italy Europe's largest producer imports pine nuts from China which imports from all over Asia to on-sell) so I only eat as a treat. Pine nuts are majority harvested from wild forests rather than orchards. Pricing is $50 to $77/kg. Again, a little goes a long way!
BRAZIL NUTS
Another unsustainable, wild-harvested forest nut that should be carefully managed for international supply is the Brazil nut. Like any wild food, over-harvesting can collapse the population that may never recover.
“The International Union for the Conservation of Nature classifies the Brazil nut tree as a vulnerable species and in Brazil it is on the Ministry of the Environment’s list of threatened species.”
Despite this statement trade continues while the species is at risk of becoming endangered. Another reason to not eat Brazil nuts is toxicity of too much selenium. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. This motto seems to always apply in truth to what you eat. Brazil nuts are a fantastic source of selenium but don’t eat more than three a day as we only need micro-quantities, too many causes toxicity. If you also take a multivitamin with selenium you won’t need Brazil nuts. Sunflowers have selenium as well and are used in many convenience foods as pieces and as oil, sometimes even called ‘vegetable oil’ on ingredients labels. So again, don’t overdo your overall selenium daily intake.
Brazil nuts are the only mass-produced nuts hand-harvested by indigenous workers in the South American rainforest from giant trees with seed pods the size of lawn bowls. Unlike pine nuts which can successfully live in ‘farmland forests’, Brazil nut trees are not able to be orchards because of their unique pollination and seed distribution requiring a diverse undisturbed forest community to grow. Again, too much of a good thing is a bad thing for Brazil nuts. For this increasingly rare connection between people and wild trees to continue, we need to cherish our Brazil nuts. If you buy Brazil nuts give them the reverence they deserve. When the market demands too much and harvesters don’t leave a portion of the nuts in the wild to keep future generations of trees coming through, there will be no Brazil nuts. Trees age and eventually fruit less and although they may not die, any population without healthy individuals of all ages likely collapses, not if but when. In 2010, this concern made international headlines and whether local communities turn away a portion of Brazil nut money for future generations is a test many forest communities in the past have lost (sandalwood, agarwood, mahogany, kauri, ebony and the list goes on). I am amazed I can eat a wild Brazil nut harvested from the Amazon 2,000 miles away and I do not take this honour lightly. I don’t need to support the Brazil nut industry on sustainability grounds, it will have enough demand as it is without me contributing.
In conclusion, everyone can easily avoid inflammatory cashews and peanuts when there are so many tasty nuts. Vegans and vegetarians I urge you to forget mimicking dairy tastes with cashew. I don’t soak my nuts but it’s a personal choice. Soaking nuts is a new health trend followed by some anti-inflammatory doctors but not all. Soaking nuts is not a pre-industrialised human tradition like fermentations. Pine nuts and brazil nuts should also be avoided to prevent over-harvesting of wild forests. That leaves delicious almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, macadamias and more. Go nuts!
Image sources: creative commons licenses.