The Food Book: The Stories, Science, and History of What We Eat, New Edition

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Introduction

From prehistoric hunter-gatherers to modern culinary superstars, food has occupied a prominent position in the human psyche. As a species, we depend upon food for survival, but how it is obtained, prepared, and consumed has shaped us as much as our quest for it has shaped plants, animals, and the environment.

Over the course of human history, food has become a potent topic, assuming enormous social, environmental, and commercial significance. The production of food has evolved into a massive global enterprise, and for many people a trip to the supermarket may be all the effort required in order to obtain the calories and nutrients needed to survive.

Feeding the masses

Traditional markets, such as in Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal, hark back to ancient ways of bartering produce. Like their modern supermarket counterparts, however, they serve a function as old as the human race: providing food for hungry mouths.

Hard-wired for nutrients

The ancient hunt for sustenance is mostly gone, but the quest for it is in our DNA, and our relationship with food remains as complex and vital as it ever was. From the time early humans learned how to harness the power of wild foods and began to make the right tools for hunting and butchering, cultivation and domestication, the process of evolution gained pace, allowing them to get enough nourishment not just to survive but to thrive.

Researchers believe that between 2 million and 3.9 million years ago, a shift took place in the diet of early humans in Africa, which propelled them to exploit new sources of food and forced them into different environments as a consequence. When paleontologists examined the tooth enamel of several species of early humans found in present-day Ethiopia, they discovered that some of them had added new types of plant foods to their diet. These plants, such as tubers, succulents, cabbage, and maize, were especially nutrient- and energy-dense, and this new source of food channeled more calories into brain development. In the process, our taste receptors evolved to detect poisons in plants, distinguishing between foods that tasted bitter and were deadly, those that tasted slightly less bitter and were nutritious, and others that tasted sweet and would provide a fast-acting energy boost.

Food meant the difference between life and death—between a growing, prosperous population and a struggling one—and it assumed great social, religious, and cultural significance. The quest to find, hunt, and grow food forced people to cooperate, to arrange society in such a way that it maximized food production. On a hunt, this meant that different members of a community assumed specialist roles in order to ensure the best chances of a kill.

Once herding and grain agriculture became established, more complex forms of organization and cooperation were required, pushing communities to innovate, invent, and become efficient not only at food production but at storing, transporting, and trading it. A surplus of food also allowed more children to survive to adulthood, triggering a population explosion. Thus, a subsistence existence gave way to a thriving society with many different aspects.

Along with archaeological and anthropological finds, such as cave paintings, utensils, bones, and chemical traces of foodstuffs, much of what anthropologists and historians know about early food production and consumption comes from a limited number of texts, such as early recipe books and trade accounts. From these sources, we now know that our ancestors were deep-sea fishing for tuna in southeast Asia, for example, as well as making cheese in what is now Poland and keeping bees in ancient Egypt.

Painted records

Cave paintings depict animals that early humans hunted for food in prehistoric times. In France’s Lascaux caves, horse was on the menu—at least until riding them proved more beneficial

How meat-eating affected the brain

Eating more meat was another crucial dietary change that provided further fuel for the expansion and evolution of the human brain. And as our ancestors’ brains developed, so, too, did their ability to innovate. Developing tools with cutting edges gave groups the ability to hunt cooperatively, enabling them to bring down large game instead of scavenging the kills of other predators. This progression occurred over a long period of time, beginning with the use of basic scraper tools around 2.6 million years ago, which allowed meat to be butchered, to the creation of thrusting spears, the earliest of which date back approximately 500,000 years.

How cooking changed the world

Once humans had harnessed fire, they began to cook their food, a development that heralded the beginning of a love affair with culinary experimentation, commentary, and, eventually, the art of entertaining. Most importantly, however, cooking unlocked different nutrients in certain foods by breaking down proteins, carbohydrates, and fats to make them easier to digest. It also killed germs that caused food poisoning, and even eradicated poisons from some plants. Only when a potato is cooked, for example, does it release its starches in a form that can be efficiently absorbed by the human gut.

It is believed that all of these factors contributed to our biological development in many different ways. Cooked food led to smaller jaws and smaller intestines, while increased calorie consumption led to bigger brains, but the changing relationship between humans and their food supply was also the catalyst for social and technological advances.

Ashes found in a South African cave reveal that early humans were using fire to cook food 1 million years ago.

Fine dining in the ancient world

The 3rd-century

ce

Greek writer Athenaeus of Naucratis provides modern readers with a fascinating glimpse of food in ancient times in his encyclopedic Deipnosophistae, otherwise known as The Sophists at Dinner. Essentially a collection of quotations from various dinner parties, Athenaeus captures fashionable talk about food, obesity, diet, recipes, condiments, and gravies, among other topics.

A century or so later, De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking) provided a collection of 400 recipes used in imperial Rome; it is more commonly known as Apicius, after decadent epicure Marcus Gavius Apicius, who was famous for his lavish 1st-century banquets. A cookbook for the cognoscenti rather than the common citizen, Apicius emphasizes the importance of good ingredients, and most of its recipes are for dishes that are richly flavored with herbs, spices, and sauces.

Expanding food trade

The great variety of spices available to the Romans hints at the trade routes they were establishing while they expanded their empire. They brought spices like pepper and cumin, which had long-standing traditions in such territories as Egypt and India, to Europe. It was not long before this early globalization of food accelerated beyond the wildest dreams of the ancient Romans. By the time the Venetian merchant Marco Polo began his explorations in the 13th century, the flow of goods between Asia and Europe along the network known as the Silk Road was already hundreds of years old, and the migration of culinary traditions already inevitable. Some sources claim that the noodles of China and the pasta of Italy may both have originated from the Arab technique of making dried pasta from durum wheat flour—knowledge that traveled eastward to China, Japan, and Korea, and then westward to the Mediterranean.

A similar exchange transpired when potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa, and tobacco were introduced from the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia, and in the other direction, olives, rice, wheat, and cattle were imported to Central and South America. And not only foodstuffs made the journey. Cooking styles, for example, changed dramatically in South America where, before the arrival of the Spanish, frying was virtually unknown but later became commonplace.

Well-traveled route

When Marco Polo left Venice for China in the 13th century, he was following a long-established trade route between Asia and Europe, which had transported foods into both parts of the world.

Mealtimes in Mesopotamia

One of the oldest written records about food dates from around 1650

bce

in the form of a recipe collection, complete with other culinary information, engraved on clay tablets from Mesopotamia. Originating from a region of Southwest Asia that equates to modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and southeastern Turkey (Türkiye), these tablets provide an insight into how food was prepared in this ancient region. These cuneiform tablets hint at the variety of food available, listing 20 kinds of cheese, 100 different soups, and 300 types of bread. They also indicate how important mealtimes were to social organization as well as to religion.

Researchers deciphering these tablets have deduced that the social elite ate a main meal in the morning and one in the evening, with two smaller snacks during the day, while laborers ate just two meals. At royal banquets, guests were seated according to a strict hierarchy arranged by profession, ethnicity, and status at court. Food was also a central part of religious rituals, with four meals a day served to the gods at local temples, where any leftovers were eaten by temple attendants, royal staff, and possibly needy townspeople.

Pictogram beer record

Records of food and drinks were being kept as early as 3100

bce

in Mesopotamia. This tablet records the allocation of beer in a community using pictograms created by pushing a wooden stylus into moist clay.

Social and religious customs

The principle of social or religious groups eating together—whether as entire communities, members of a particular clique, or families—provides a practical approach to communal food preparation. Yet it is also a way of bonding, providing a forum for sharing information and oral history, giving advice, and reinforcing particular beliefs.

The Christian Church of the 5th to 15th centuries preached the importance of eating at regular times to discourage gluttony and reinforce a sense of discipline. In ancient China, too, eating excessively was frowned upon, and at the dinner table, children were instructed to eat only until they were three-quarters full. Business deals were cemented in the coffee houses of 17th-century London; gossip was shared, marriages planned, and domestic manipulation plotted over afternoon tea in the polite society of 18th-century Europe; and political alliances were forged over dinners in 1950s Communist Beijing. Criminals and their victims found reconciliation and communities brokered peace in the Southwest Asian tradition of musalaha (breaking bread)—a practice echoed in the bipartisan breaking of bread begun in 1987 in the US Senate prior to the presidential State of the Union address.

Mealtimes have functioned in this way since the earliest times and continue to exert a powerful influence in many societies. In France, lunch is rarely consumed on the go or as street food—employees take an hour for lunch and go out to eat. In many Southeast Asian cultures, street food is an essential element of daily life. Eating together in public places is a fundamental part of seasonal and religious celebrations around the world. One example is Japan’s custom of hanami, picnicking under blossoming cherry trees every spring. At a domestic level, modern psychologists say that children who eat meals with their parents at least a few times a week are much more likely eat healthily, have fewer problems with drugs and alcohol, and perform better at school than children who do not have regular mealtimes with one or both parents. Our ancestors clearly knew the powerful effects of sharing food.

A study by the University of Oxford, UK, shows that the more often people eat together, the happier they are.

Community eating

On November 11, the Miao people in Leishan County, China, gather together for a communal meal to celebrate a special Miao’s New Year. The sumptuous multi-dish meal is used to honor the ancestors and celebrate the harvest.

London coffee house

In 17th- and 18th-century London, trade agreements and financial deals were often conducted over coffee, tea, or chocolate in coffee houses. Such places provided a clear-headed environment for business.

The future of food

While examining the history of food reveals many interesting facts, it also leads us to think about the future of food, especially in the face of environmental issues, such as overfishing and deforestation for crop planting, and political issues, such as genetically modified foods and intensive animal farming.

Agriscientists are exploring new technologies and new approaches to growing food that will help conserve precious resources, such as energy, land, and water. Among their predictions are an increase in urban agriculture, with such innovations as rooftop vegetable gardens and beehives and vertical farms that take crop growing sky high to preserve precious woodland. In vitro meat production is another possibility that is already being realized, although it may be a challenge to convince consumers to buy laboratory-produced animal products.

One technique at the forefront of future food production is aquaponics, which combines crop-growing and fish-farming. Hydroponics—growing plants indoors in water rather than soil—is an already well-established practice that supplies the majority of salad leaves, tomatoes, and cucumbers in supermarkets in some parts of the world. Aquaponics, however, goes one step further. It involves no chemicals, uses energy-saving LED lights, and is typically set up in disused buildings in dense urban areas with a ready-made local customer base. In fact, the idea of companion farming fish and crops has been practiced since Aztec times, but it was not until 2010 that the concept was moved indoors.

The revival of nose-to-tail eating, which involves consuming every part of an animal, in parts of the world that had lost the tradition is another example of new generations rediscovering how efficient food production goes hand in hand with social needs, culinary creativity, and a deep respect for nature. The past continues to inspire the future of food, and with it, our future as a species.

In the pink

Hydroponic techniques—cultivating plants in a soilless, indoor environment—are helping boost food productivity in sites otherwise unsuitable for growing food. UV lights create a pink glow.

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Nuts and Seeds

Nuts and Seeds | CONTENTS

Introduction

Almonds

Walnuts

Hazelnuts

Brazil nuts

Pecans

Peanuts

Cacao

Expedition food

Cashews

Chestnuts

Pine nuts

Pistachios

Sunflower seeds

Pumpkin seeds

Coffee

Sesame seeds

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Nuts and seeds

Nuts and seeds were a perfect food for our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors. Consisting of edible kernels in a hard outer shell, nuts were particularly nourishing and sustaining, providing fat, carbohydrate, protein, and fiber in varying quantities, depending on the species. Unlike roots and tubers, which required digging out, they were easy to gather, kept well, and could be moved from one place to another without great difficulty or loss.

Hunter-gatherer feast

The types of foods our earliest ancestors ate are reflected in nomadic tribes today. For the Penan people of Brunei, nuts and seeds form an integral part of a tribal feast.

Gaining knowledge though observation

Like many other animal species, the earliest humans ate whatever they could find growing readily available. Over the centuries, they steadily increased their knowledge of which plants were most beneficial to eat, which should be avoided, and which provided the most energy. These early humans were observant, often ingenious, and were acutely aware of their surroundings. They noticed that nut-tree harvests varied from year to year and also discovered that the trees growing deep in the shady forest interior were usually less productive than the ones growing around the forest edge. This knowledge, coupled with an increasingly sophisticated variety of tools, eventually inspired them to clear away undergrowth and smaller trees to foster greater nut harvests, giving rise to the beginnings of what we now call cultivation. Hunting and organized crop-raising came later.

Autumn harvest

Harvesting nuts was an important part of the medieval year. Among the most common in Europe were almonds, which were used in cooking, ground for flour, and mixed with water to make milk.

The first nutcrackers

Nut remains and nutting stones—flat or slightly concave rocks bearing traces of nuts and seeds—have been found at archaeological sites all over the world, providing evidence of the importance of these foods in prehistoric diets. These primitive nutcrackers typically have a shallow depression in the center, showing where the nuts had been placed and then cracked with another stone—the same technique that has been observed among many primate species today. At Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, close to the Dead Sea, 50 pitted stones of this type were found and given an estimated date of 780,000 years old. Among the nut remains were acorns, almonds, and pistachios.

Some nuts could be cracked and eaten, but others needed processing to become edible. Acorns, for example, were put into woven baskets and suspended in running water in a stream to remove their bitter tannic acid. They were then dried or roasted and ground into meal. Acorns and anything made from them have very good storage qualities, and new scientific techniques that can identify microscopic traces have shown that acorns were much more important than previously thought. This is shown in writings from ancient periods, such as in those of 1st-century Roman naturalist and chronicler Pliny the Elder, who wrote that the oak was the tree which first produced food for mortal man. It is now believed that nut consumption in general has been widely underestimated, mainly because the evidence for them had disappeared: The nuts were all eaten, while the shells were burned in fires as extra fuel.

Stone-age essential

Grinding stones were central to Neolithic people’s existence and were used to grind some roots and vegetables as well as seeds, nuts, and many types of grains.

Mechanized marzipan

In the 19th and 20th centuries, machines took over the arduous task of nut-grinding—and such sweets as marzipan, from ground almonds, were no longer exclusively a treat for the rich.

Hoards of hazelnuts

Hazelnuts are the most commonly found nut excavated at archaeological sites worldwide. Their shells are especially hard; many that formed millennia ago have survived intact to this day. They probably reached Italy and Greece from Turkey (Türkiye) and have been found at prehistoric lake-dwelling sites in Switzerland and at least one Neolithic site in Sweden. At Colonsay in the Scottish Hebrides, hundreds of thousands of burned hazelnut shells from 7000

bce

were unearthed in a shallow pit, evidence of hazelnut storing on an epic scale. In addition to protein and other nutrients, the high fat content of nuts meant that oil could be produced from them; this was also true of seeds. Ancient Egyptians used a variety of seeds to produce oil, including radish, flax, moringa, and sesame; the latter was also used in King Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Mesopotamia. Seeds, like nuts, were easily transportable and useful as a ready source of energy.

Pliny claims that pine nuts quench thirst, alleviate heartburn, and stop stomach pain.

The nature of nuts

One of the first recorded naturalists, Pliny the Elder, mentions acorns and hazelnuts as important sources of food. The hazel is thought to have been an import from Turkey (Türkiye).

Seeds as early breath mints

In medieval times, seeds were coated in layers of sugar—an expensive and time-consuming process—and eaten as sweetmeats and breath-fresheners. Generally, however, seeds were not consumed as much as nuts, although sunflower seeds became popular in Russia in the early 18th century, when Peter the Great introduced the plant there. Poppy seeds were used in spice mixtures in India, where the Indian poppy’s pale seed is ground and used as a thickener.

Candied delights

Marrons glacés, or glazed chestnuts, have been enjoyed in France and Italy since the 16th century. The process involves shelling and then boiling the nuts in a sugar syrup.

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Almonds good luck charm

Considered a fertility charm by the ancient Romans, this sweet-tasting nut has provided the basis of desserts and cakes for centuries. It is also the source of oil and flavorings for a host of foods and drinks.

Origins

Southwest and West Asia

Major producers

US, Spain, Italy

Main food component

15 percent fat

Source of

Iron

Non-food use

Cosmetics

Scientific name

Prunus dulcis

For thousands of years, almonds have been regarded as a symbol of hope, rebirth, and good fortune. One of the oldest mentions in literature appears in the Bible’s Book of Numbers, where Aaron’s rod blossoms and produces ripe almonds. Almonds were a popular food in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, while the Romans regarded it as a Greek nut, calling it nux graeca.

In fact, wild almond trees are native to southwestern and western Asia, but cultivation quickly spread from there to the Mediterranean. They were taken by Phoenician traders to Spain and by the 8th century were being widely cultivated in the south of France, from where they spread to Italy and the rest of Europe. Almonds played an important role in early Arab and medieval European cooking. They were taken to North America by Franciscan friars in the 1700s, but it was not until the early 20th century that the almond industry became firmly established in California, now the world’s largest producer.

Almond harvest old-style

Dervishes at Qand-i Badam, in the Fergana Valley in present-day Tajikistan, gather their almond crop in baskets and sacks in this 16th-century illustration.

Pretty and pink

The almond tree has pink flowers that appear in early spring. Many countries, including Japan, have festivals to mark the almond blossom season.

Nearly one million beehives are trucked to California annually to pollinate the almond groves.

Sweet or bitter

Almonds are not true nuts but rather seeds encased in a hard outer layer or hull. Two varieties are cultivated today. Sweet almonds are typically eaten as nuts and used in cooking or as a source of almond oil. The oil of bitter almonds is included in flavoring extracts for foods and liqueurs, such as Italy’s amaretto. However, bitter almond oil contains prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide), which has to be removed by heating to make it safe to eat.

Sweet almonds have myriad uses. Available shelled and unshelled, whole, flaked, or ground, they can be eaten raw, blanched, or as a salted snack as well as featured in numerous dishes both savory (such as trout with almonds) and sweet. They are the main ingredient in marzipan, a thick paste consisting of sugar and finely ground almonds sometimes bound with egg. This originated in Southwest Asia and became popular in Europe in the Middle Ages.

Fuzzy fruit

Almond fruit, like their relative the peach, have a fuzzy skin. When ripe, the outer flesh peels away to expose the nut.

Pastries, cakes, and cookies

Almond paste is used as a pastry filling in many cuisines, from the Portuguese tarte de amândoa to the traditional British Bakewell tart. Ground almonds are also the basis for many cookies, including macaroons. Almond-flavored cakes and cookies are especially popular in Spain, including the famous pan de Cádiz, a confection of marzipan and dried fruit. And in Sweden, cinnamon-flavored rice pudding with an almond hidden inside is a special Christmas dish.

Shaking things up

A specialized harvesting machine shakes ripe almonds off the tree, ready for collection.

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Walnuts Jupiter’s nut

Known to have been eaten by humans in the Neolithic period, walnuts remain one of the most popular nuts for snacking and cooking.

Origins

Central Asia

Major producers

China, Iran, US

Main food component

67 percent carbohydrate

Source of

Iron, potassium

Scientific name

Juglans regia

Archaeological excavations in the Aquitaine region of France have uncovered fossilized shells of roasted walnuts dating back to the Neolithic era, more than 8,000 years ago. It is known from inscriptions on clay tablets discovered in Mesopotamia that the walnut was also part of the diet of ancient civilizations of Southwest Asia. These writings suggest that walnuts were being cultivated in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (in present-day Iraq) around 2000

bce

.

Association with the ancient gods

Encased in thick, green husks, walnuts have finely ridged shells and are the rounded, single-stoned fruits of trees belonging to the genus Juglans, the most widely cultivated being the common walnut (Juglans regia), thought to have originated in Central Asia. The species name is a reference to the Roman god Jupiter (Jovis or Jove) and the word for nut in Latin (glans). Jupiter was believed to have eaten walnuts when he lived among mortals. In Greek mythology, Carya, a mortal beloved by the god Dionysus, was transformed into a walnut tree. On hearing of this, Carya’s father ordered a temple to be built in her memory, with columns in the shape of nymphs of the walnut tree, called caryatids.

In the Middle Ages, walnuts were traded in Asia along the Silk Road and in later centuries were spread by seafaring traders around the rest of the world. The walnut was brought to North America by Spanish missionaries, who settled along the Californian coast in the 1800s. Today, California remains among the world’s leading producers of walnuts, although China tops the list.

The Afghan name for the walnut means four brains, referring to its brainlike appearance.

Barrels of nuts

In this depiction of a late-18th-century rural market, a trader scoops walnuts out of a barrel to sell to an eager customer. This would have been a familiar fall scene in southern Europe.

Snacks, soups, and sauces

In Europe and America, walnuts are mostly eaten as snacks and are used in cakes and sweet dishes from ice cream to baklava. They also appear in savory dishes, such as French walnut soup, pasta sauces in Italy, and in eastern European and Southwest Asian meat dishes. Walnut paste is widely used in the cuisines of countries in the Caucasus Mountains. Walnut oil was traditionally used in France, Switzerland, and northern Italy for cooking and in salad dressings but is less popular now due to its high price.

Chocolate covered

By the early 20th century, walnuts covered in chocolate had become a favorite sweet snack in the UK.

Ground down

Throughout southern Europe, walnuts are sold in ground form for making pastes and sauces. Here, shelled nuts are poured into a traditional mill.

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Hazelnuts elegantly flavored nut

The fruit of the hazel tree, which grows throughout the northern hemisphere, hazelnuts are now one of the world’s favorite nut crops.

Origins

Europe, western Asia

Major producers

Turkey (Türkiye), Italy, Spain

Main food components

12 percent fat, 12 percent carbohydrate

Source of

Calcium, iron

Scientific name

Corylus avellana

This common nut was undoubtedly a favorite of our Neolithic ancestors. Archaeological digs have unearthed charred fragments of hazelnut shells in many Neolithic sites in several parts of northern Europe. The hazelnut would have been a ready source of food in fall for these early people. The nut grows on a wide shrub with toothed leaves and yellow catkins that flower in spring. The grape-size nuts appear from late August to October.

Nuts and catkins

Hazelnuts form from flowers that have been pollinated by the long, yellow pollen-bearing clusters known as catkins.

Classical sustenance

There are mentions in Greek literature from the 1st century

bce

of hazelnuts being brought to Greece from the shores of the Black Sea in what is now Turkey (Türkiye). The 1st-century

ce

Roman historian Pliny the Elder writes of hazelnuts being gathered for food, although with the fall of the Roman Empire, it is probable that cultivation slowed. By the early 17th century, however, cultivation appears to have restarted in Italy and also in England. In 1629, early colonists in North America started to import hazelnuts from England and probably began growing them locally around this time too.

Today, hazelnuts are grown on a commercial scale in many parts of the world. As well as being eaten raw, the nuts are used, chopped or ground, in baking and candy making. Hazelnut flour adds aroma and nuttiness to cakes and pastries, and hazelnut oil adds its flavor to salad dressing. Chocolate and hazelnut spread is enjoyed worldwide.

Medieval harvest

In the 14th century, collecting hazelnuts may have been an enjoyable activity in Europe, as this illustration suggests.

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Brazil nuts jungle nut

Originating in the Amazon Basin, Brazil nuts are a favorite snacking nut and recently have become valued for their nutritional value as an unrivaled source of selenium.

Origins

Amazon Basin

Major producers

Bolivia, Brazil

Main food component

67 percent fat

Source of

Selenium, calcium

Non-food use

Cosmetics

Scientific name

Bertholletia excelsa

Brazil nut trees grow wild in the Amazon rainforests of South America, where they usually tower over their neighbors; a mature tree can be as tall as 165ft (50m). They cannot be grown in plantations outside the rainforest because the flowers need to be pollinated by native bees, and the resulting seeds—the nuts—are dispersed solely by agoutis, large rodents that live on the forest floor.

Inside the shell

The Brazil nut consists of a spherical, hard, rough-textured shell, enclosing the individual nut segments.

Look out below!

With a hard, thick, woody shell, the Brazil nut tree’s fruit is similar in size to a coconut and contains 12–24 seeds arranged like the segments of an orange, each with its own woody covering. Because the trees are too tall to climb, the nuts cannot be harvested until the fruit pods fall to the ground, reaching speeds of up to 50mph (80kph). The weight of the fruit, which can be as much as 5lb (2.3kg), makes this a potentially lethal event, and at harvest time the locals wear hard hats for protection and avoid gathering the pods on windy days.

Brazil nuts have been a good source of nutrients for Amazonian tribes for many thousands of years. The Spanish and Portuguese first came across them in the 16th century, and it was the Dutch traders who introduced the nuts to Europe, in 1633.

Although these nuts did not reach North America until the 19th century, today the US is the largest importer of Brazil nuts, most of which come from Bolivia, the world’s largest exporter of the nuts. In Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, the trees that bear the nuts are highly protected, and logging is prohibited by law.

At the tree top

The fruit of the Brazil nut tree are borne on branches high up in the forest canopy. The tree is deciduous, dropping its leaves in the dry season.

Hard times

Brazil nuts are available to buy shelled or unshelled, although they are a hard nut to crack. They can be eaten raw, blanched, or roasted as a snacking nut. They are also an ingredient used mainly in the candy industry. In Brazil, they are featured in the popular Brazil nut cake.

A mature Brazil nut tree can produce 250lb (113kg) of nuts a year.

Loads of nuts

Brazil nuts are big business and a significant commodity for Brazil, which exports around 41,888 tons of the nuts each year.

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Pecans North America’s own tree nut

The only tree nut native to North America, the pecan and its eponymous pie have become inextricably linked with North American celebrations.

Origins

North America

Major producers

US, Mexico

Main food component

72 percent fat

Source of

Iron, zinc, vitamin B3, vitamin E, vitamin K

Scientific name

Carya illinoinensis

Despite its name, rather than being a true nut, the pecan is actually a drupe, like its relative the walnut. However, unlike a walnut, a pecan has a smooth shell. Although its kernel has a similar wrinkled appearance, it is darker brown and has an oilier, milder flavor.

A type of hickory, pecan trees are native to the southeastern US and a few Mexican river valleys. Wild pecans were a valuable food source for Indigenous peoples of North America, who would gather and eat the nuts during the fall. Pecans were also used to make a nut milk by fermenting powdered pecans into a, possibly intoxicating, drink known as powcohicora.

Hard graft

Pecans may have first been cultivated by the Indigenous peoples of North America, who traded their crop with early European explorers. Certainly, Spanish colonists planted pecan trees in northern Mexico in the late 16th or early 17th centuries, and then other colonists followed suit in Long Island in the early 1770s. The US pecan industry gathered momentum, and by 1805, advertisements in London were branding the pecans as meriting attention as a cultivated crop. There were still, however, great variations in the size, shape, and flavor of pecan nuts until the mid–19th century, when an enslaved person in Louisiana named Antoine figured out how to graft wood from superior wild trees onto seedling stocks. Pecans are used mainly in sweet dishes, such as pecan pie and candy.

Pecan types

In 1912, the US Department of Agriculture published an illustrated guide to the main varieties of pecans grown in the US at the time.

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Peanuts the underground nut

First cultivated more than 7,000 years ago in South America, peanuts have become popular worldwide. Once considered mere animal feed in the US, they are now an integral part of the US diet, a universal snack food, and an important component of African and Asian cuisines.

Origins

South America

Major producers

China, India, Nigeria

Main food component

39 percent fat

Source of

Iron, vitamins B, E

Scientific name

Arachis hypogaea

Fossilized shells from the Nanchoc Valley in northern Peru reveal that peanuts were grown and eaten by Indigenous people from around 5600

bce

. As the species was not one that grew naturally in the area, peanuts must have been farmed earlier elsewhere, probably in Bolivia. Research has revealed that the cultivated peanut, Arachis hypogaea, was the product, by selection, of two wild South American species.

Despite the name, peanuts—also known as groundnuts, monkey nuts, and goobers—are not true nuts but legumes, members of the pea or bean family. The seeds, or peanuts, have a substantial oil content and so are easily ground into a thick, nutritious paste. The earliest Peruvian peanut-farming communities were probably the first to enjoy some form of peanut butter and may also have roasted the nuts.

Growing underground

Peanuts grow in the ground on trailing stems within fruit pods containing up to seven seeds or nuts.

Food mountain

Peanuts were, and continue to be, big business in the tropics. Here, heavy sacks of peanuts are carried across gangplanks at the foot of a great mound of peanuts awaiting export.

A passion for peanuts

Evidence of the peanut’s long-standing popularity is found in artifacts from the Moche civilization, which flourished in Peru between the 1st and 8th centuries

ce

. These include ceramics molded into peanut forms or illustrated with peanut designs, gold peanut pod-shaped jewelry, and funerary offerings of peanut-filled vases. Centuries later, the Incas also farmed peanuts, transporting their harvest of nuts on llamas.

Spanish colonists took peanuts back to Spain in the late 16th century, the Dutch took them to the Dutch East Indies, and they also traveled via the Pacific to China. The Portuguese introduced peanuts to Africa and India. Despite the proximity of South America, the peanut is said to have traveled to the US with enslaved people from Africa as late as the early 18th century. Slave traders stocked up on the crop because it traveled well and was cheap and nutritious.

Americans initially regarded peanuts as animal fodder or food for the poor. It was only in the 1800s that peanuts started to be grown commercially in Virginia. Dr. John H. Kellogg, who with his brother Will later created corn flakes, patented peanut butter—now an integral part of the American diet—as a nutritious health food in 1898. Impressed with his teachings, Seventh-Day Adventists in Australia imported peanut butter with some of his other health foods, popularizing peanut products there.

Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.

JAMES A. GARFIELD, US PRESIDENT (1831–1881)

Cheap snack

In the 1930s, Americans could treat themselves to a handful of peanuts for just one cent, dispensed by this innovative vending machine.

Enjoyed worldwide

The advent of labor-saving machines to plant and harvest peanuts boosted US production in the early 1900s and, when the boll weevil threatened cotton production, many Southern farmers turned to peanut-growing instead. With the encouragement of the botanist and inventor George Washington Carver, a staunch advocate of peanut-farming, the industry flourished. In the 20th century, the US was the largest producer of peanuts after India and China and was also the world’s largest exporter.

Whole and pureed peanuts are important ingredients in various Thai and Chinese noodle recipes. They are also used in Indonesia as dipping (satay) sauces for grilled meat and fish on skewers; in India’s popular breakfast dish poha; and in West African stews, soups, cakes, and candy.

Roasted peanuts

In the US, each person eats 6lb (2.7kg) of peanuts per year, although half of that is as peanut butter, while Europeans tend to munch roasted peanuts with drinks.

g Nuts and Seeds g Contents

Cacao food of the gods

Cocoa beans from the cacao tree have had a long and remarkable history, being used for everything from money to medicine and religious rituals, eventually becoming the basis of one of the world’s favorite sweet treats.

Origins

Mexico, Central and northern South America

Major producers

Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia

Main food component

57 percent carbohydrate

Scientific name

Theobroma cacao

Believed by the Maya and Aztecs of Mexico and Central America to be a gift of the gods, chocolate in those civilizations was only for the elite and for special occasions, served after feasts and drunk from gourd cups. In fact, it was thought to be an ill omen if an ordinary person drank it. For some rituals, it was mixed with blood, which was also seen as sacred. The name chocolate comes from the Aztec word xocolatl, which means bitter water. Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish naturalist, echoed early beliefs when he named the cacao tree Theobroma cacao—theobroma is Latin for food of the gods.

Goddess of chocolate

The earth goddess Ixcacao was revered as a protector against famine and the guardian of crops by the Mayan people.

The right conditions

Cacao trees, originally from tropical Mexico, Central America, and northern South America, grow in damp conditions, where they can be pollinated by midges and shaded by taller tropical trees. The trees shed all their leaves and die if the