The Truth About Peanuts
I have no respect for peanuts. Peanuts are failures. That’s probably why they’re always trying to kill children. First, they aren’t even nuts. Second, actually wanting to be a nut is setting the ambition bar rather low. Third, their real name is groundnuts, but they changed it, stupidly thinking ‘peanuts’ sounded classier. Then, when people wouldn’t let them change it again because a lot of labels had already been printed, peanuts started to brood and draw away from the other snack foods. Attitudes were struck, words were passed and suddenly, products started advertising how few peanuts they contained, or even boasted of having no peanuts at all in the mix. No other nut or nut-like edible has been singled out, not pecans or almonds or filberts – just peanuts. Were aflotoxins a direct result? Now, even the possibility of being near peanuts during the production process is enough to force food products to post a quarantine notice – and rightly so. To make them more acceptable, peanuts have been encased in chocolate or candy, or smothered in rich caramel with crunchy wafer biscuits, or pulverized into slurry that can be applied to bread, its flavor often masked with fruit preserves. After all this, they remain nothing but what they are – little vegetables of the bean family, stuck with a name that emphasizes their lowly status. If they were in another sphere of life, it is quite possible that peanuts would organize themselves, create a community and seek some redress for their grievances. Of course, that would call for Virginian, Spaniard and Valencian to all work together peacefully and productively but I think they are now so embittered by their lot in life that even the company of other varietals would only serve to emphasize their lowly status, not mitigate their sufferings. So their sly campaign of selective, stealthy and unexpected anaphylactic shock against the young and unwary seems fated to continue. We could attempt to break this sick cycle of mutual hatred, suspicion and harm by calling them ‘happy berries’ or ‘freedom seeds’ but I for one don’t want to. I think peanuts themselves created this situation and I think they should take responsibility for their own rehabilitation. Until then, for me, it’s all cashews. They have a name that sounds like a sneeze, and they are also not nuts, but they have never taken themselves off into isolation and they have never lashed out against the human race. The lesson cashews teach to peanuts is a simple one: the human hand of friendship and acceptance is always extended to a peaceful, honest, lightly salted legume.
