Info about Peanuts
Everything you've ever wanted to know about peanuts - but were afraid to ask.
The peanut is also called a groundnut, but try and tell your mom that you want groundnuts at the grocery store, and she'll look at you like you're crazy. Such is the lack of information about peanuts in society. Peanuts are not even nuts, they're legumes. Peanuts were first domesticated in Central America in Paraguay and Bolivia, and it's a plant that grows yearly to about a foot and a half tall The legume, the peanut itself, actually grows underground. Other names that you can call peanuts that might get some strange looks from people include earthnuts goober peas, and monkey nuts. Some even call them pygmy nuts. Many Central American cultures have depicted the unusual shape of the peanut in art and culture. The earliest specimens of peanuts were cultivated about 8,000 years ago. It wasn't until recently that the United States adopted the peanut when it was brought over from Africa through the Portuguese through Brazil, and that was in about 1800. Americans were deprived of peanuts for much of its history. The first people that brought peanuts into America were actually American missionaries. Peanuts were featured in many Chinese dishes by ethnic Chinese people living in America as immigrants. Most recently, China was the world's largest peanut producer. The major boom in peanut production in China resulted from peanut control moving from government to small family farms. The biggest producers in peanuts behind China are India and the United States.
There are four main types peanuts that are grown. The Spanish, Runner, Virginia, and Valencia varieties are the four main varieties of peanuts. The Tennessee Red and Tennessee White groups follow closely behind.
There are many uses for peanuts, and people use them for all meals across the board like for salted peanuts, peanut butter sandwiches, candy sweets, buttercups, peanut brittle, and shelled nuts. Peanuts are often included in mixed nuts because they are so much less expensive than other types of nuts. Peanut oil and peanut flour are also making a strong comeback on supermarket shelves because of their diverse uses compared to other types of oils and flours. Each country has different native dishes involving peanuts like Peru where a peanut sauce is poured over boiled potatoes, in India where they are made into desserts and sweet snacks, in Southeast Asia where they are made into spicy sauces, in South Africa where they are ingested by males as a sexual aphrodisiac, in the United States where they're put into a variety of packaged foods, and boiled peanuts which are manufactured in China.