Modern Marvels/Nuts

Nuts
Season 13 Episode 28
Airdate	August 2, 2006
Written by	Peter Kruener
Directed by
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Modern Marvels — Season Thirteen

Nuts is the twenty-eighth episode of the thirteenth season of Modern Marvels.

Nuts have been harvested for over eight thousand years despite the often difficult task of cultivating them. Today, technology has eased that process greatly and helped make the industries of a variety of nuts thrive.

Notes

• Many foods which are commonly called nuts aren't actually nuts. Some, like the peanut are legumes and other snacks. The distinguishing difference is that nuts are actually seeds. They can be planted.
• There is evidence of nut harvesting as far back as 8,000 years ago in Iran.
• Most of the nut harvesting in the U.S. is currently done in California.
• Nuts used to be picked from their trees by hands. Not technology has allowed for mechanical shakers. The impact of the shaking can be felt in the ground.
• Today, technology allows for kernels and other unwanted pieces of walnuts to be removed automatical using lasers to detect the pieces and air sprayers to separate them from the walnuts. These unwanted pieces then get crushed up to be used in baking, ice cream, and for walnut oil.
• Today walnuts and almonds are California's leading agricultural export.
• 50% of peanuts produced will go into peanut butter.
• Peanuts are native to South America.
• Peanut butter originated in the late 1890s. But it wasn't invented by George Washington Carver. Carver's peanut research did lead to advances that would allow for the invention of peanut butter. Carver did come up with some alternative uses of peanuts.
• Plumpy'nut is a food product made from peanuts used for relief effort in famined countries. Malnutriented children do not want to eat, but plumpy'nut is a product that they will eat quickly. The product is even better because of its 3+ year shelf life.
• The macadamia nut has the hardest shell to crack. It takes 300 psi to crack the shell of the nut. Though now machines crack the shells, historically they have been opened with hammers or rocks going back centuries.
• Only about 15% of the macadamia is edible. Therefore it is expensive to harvest and expensive for consumers.
• The shells from nuts have many uses. At the macadamia factory they are burnt and used to produce energy from steam. The shells from walnut and used as a substitute in sandblasting equipment and used to clean the spaceshuttle.
• The coco de mer is the world's largest nut which takes seven years to develop and weighs more than seventy pounds. It only grows on the Seychelles Islands off the coast of Africa and is too heavy to move and so never leaves the island.
• Pecans are the most famous nut originating in North America. Indigenous varieties exist from Illinois to central Mexico.
• Pistachios are the youngest commercial nut industry in the U.S. which only began in the 1960s. Previously, Iran was the primary producer.
• Pistachios must be sorted by hand according to color and size before they are roasted.
• William Whitehouse as the first person to bring pistachio nuts to the U.S. He smuggled them from Iran in 1930 and then began planting and breeding them.
• Nut oil can be used as a bio-fuel and used in diesel engines.
• Today scientists believe there are over 30 million varieties of nuts.

Trivia

• P.T. Barnum began selling peanuts at his travelling circus in the 1870s. Prior, they had only been a snack for soldiers in the American Civil War.
• The types of walnuts most commonly eatten are the Persian Walnut which are native to southwest China, central and southwest Asia, and the Balkans.
• The husk of walnuts contains a dark yellow dye that will stain a person's hands (which is quite difficult to get off). The dye is used sometimes in dyeing fabrics.
• Almond oil is often used by massage therapists as a lubricant.

Quotes

• Almond milk, made from crushed almonds and water, has been a popular drink since the middle ages. But be careful which almonds you use -- in the presence of water, bitter almonds produce the deadly poison cyanide.
• The 300 pounds per square inch of pressure that are required to crack a macadamia shell is more than eight times the pressure of an average man's grip.
• Knowing of George Washington's passion for pecans, Thomas Jefferson gave him several pecan seedlings from his Monticello orchard. More than two centuries later, pecan trees still tower over Mount Vernon.