Only for you do I do my research into such things.

Have you ever wondered how they can charge so much for cashew nuts?  I love eating them but I rarely get to purchase a can of just cashews.  So I buy mixed nuts that have them in it.  Why the expense?

First off they are a tropical tree.  They need hot, dry areas with plenty of moisture, but not soil that retains the water.  They are native to Northern South America but have readily been planted in Portugal and India and are doing well in those countries.  Also some countries in Africa.

The cashew tree is not a tall tree and my research found them to grow about 30 ft tall at the tallest, but they spread out over quite an area.  The largest cashew tree known to grow covers an area 81,000 square feet!  That’s correct, 81,000!  That is almost as big as a football field in two directions.

Ok, back on track.  Why so expensive?  First off is the fact that they must be imported.  Cost goes up!

More about the cashew.  A single seed (not a nut)  grows on the outside of a fruit called the cashew apple!  It looks like an apple growing upside down.  The seed part grows out the lower end of the fruit.  One seed per fruit.

Cashews have to be harvested carefully as they have a coating of a substance very similar to what we know to be on poison ivy.  So in order to remove the outer shell from the seed inside the person cracking the shell must wear rubber gloves and long sleeve shirts.  The shell can not touch the seed inside either or the seed will get the sticky poison on it and make it un-usable.

The growers and crackers have learned that freezing the pod makes it easier as the poison won’t come off on their skin when dealing with frozen seeds.

So, one seed per fruit plus difficult handling equals Price goes Up!

As with most nuts, the cashews need to be roasted, salted etc to make them more better to eat.  So this too makes the price go up.

My research also said trace amounts of the toxic stuff found on the outside shell is also found inside the seed which makes them not a good thing to eat for those allergic to nuts etc.

The oils derived from the cashew seeds are used as medicine for healing the hard and cracked skin of your heel and abscessed teeth.  The seeds are dried and pulverized and made into antivenin for snake bites.  And the outer hulls are boiled and mixed into paint resins.

So the next time you are enjoying a big old cashew, just think about how it got to you and how the price was determined by someone very determined to make sure you were happy.

Oh and the cashew apple!  They make juice out of it and a lot of folks even make wine from the juice!  But there is a caution with the wine users.  The toxins are still in there and it causes your body not to absorb nutrients from other foods you may eat.  Of course you would tend to be a skinny drinker if you drank a lot of it a lot of the time.  Would it be worth it?  I doubt it.  I would like to try some one day.  Put that on my bucket list.

Bears Butt

June 15, 2012