2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Jacob Smith)
According to the , some 94% of American homes have at least one jar of peanut butter in the cupboard. This staggering statistic highlights just how prevalent peanuts have become in this country. The legume is also a part of popular restaurant culture here, which is just one reason to customers — and the snack was enjoyed to the point of becoming a liability during the time when .
While the popularity of peanuts is plain to see, many people might not know about the centuries of cultivation and innovation that have gone into the contemporary success of this food. In this article, we seek to highlight the history of peanuts in America, and examine how this tiny legume has had an outsized impact on American culture and cuisine. The story of the peanut is not purely a historical one.
The legume looks set to adapt well in the future, and could come to play a vital role in American agriculture — not only as a nitrogen-fixing agent, but also as a robust crop that can be engineered to withstand drought. Outside of food production, peanuts also offer exciting possibilities for producing biofuel, marking this crop as extremely well-suited to the needs of the 21st century and beyond. With all this and more in mind, we believe the already-extensive history of peanuts in America has only just begun.
Peanuts are thought to have originated in South America While peanuts are beloved in North America, they did not originate there. Instead, anthropological evidence suggests the legume originated in South America, possibly in Peru. The evidence for this is overwhelming — indigenous populations of South America have been making ceramics decorated with peanut motifs for thousands of years, and ancient burial sites contained jars of peanuts meant to feed the dead in the hereafter.
During the colonization of the Americas, Europeans were introduced to peanuts in Brazil, and promptly adopted the legume into their diet for reasons explained to by Andrew F. Smith, who authored a book on the history of peanuts. "Since peanuts are protected by a hard outer shell, they could be easily stored, survive for months with minimum spoilage, and were an ideal food for mariners," Smith said.
Aside from allowing the Europeans to enjoy peanuts during their travels, these characteristics enabled them to bring peanuts back to the Old World. After being cultivated in Europe, peanuts were subsequently introduced to West Africa by the Portuguese. The local people had little trouble cultivating the legume, and it was not long before the peanut became an essential part of African cuisines.
Peanuts continue to play a key role in many contemporary African dishes, as typified through the staple specialty of peanut stew. Peanuts were introduced to North America by enslaved Africans As with watermelon, okra, and many other foods now popular in the United States, peanuts were introduced to this country by enslaved West Africans. The first reported instance of peanut plants arriving on American soil came in 1690, when the Carolina African runner peanut was introduced to Charleston.
Over the following decades, peanuts were grown by enslaved African Americans to supplement their meager rations. In line with how , the early consumption methods of peanuts in the United States were drawn from African culinary traditions. Peanuts were boiled or ground into flour, and eaten both whole and mashed.
By the mid-1800s, boiled peanuts — called goober peas — were popular among the South's white populace as well. Nonetheless, up until the Civil War, peanuts were stigmatized as food for enslaved people, even though the crop was being raised commercially in the South by that time. The crop was destigmatized during the Civil War It is often said that goober peas were popularized during the Civil War as soldiers from the North and South ate them to bolster their rations.
Some sources even suggest that these individuals were the ones to invent boiled peanuts. That seems unlikely, given that several sources reveal goober peas to be a popular snack for both white and Black Southerners long before the Civil War started. That being said, there is no doubt that peanuts were eaten by soldiers during the Civil War.
For soldiers from the North, where peanuts were not widely grown, war campaigns into the South might have presented their first experience of these tasty legumes. The consumption of peanuts on both sides of the conflict went some way in destigmatizing this food. Such a change in perception drove the national demand for peanuts to new highs once the war was over, as made apparent by some impressive agricultural figures published in .
According to this paper, U.S. agriculture authorities noted that peanut production grew by up to 300% annually in the years between 1865 — when the Civil War ended — and 1870.
By 1909, peanut production was reported in 42 states — and at that time, the U.S. had only 46 states.
Peanuts were sold at circuses and ballparks The growing demand for peanuts at the beginning of the 20th century was demonstrated by the popularity of both boiled and roasted peanuts in a variety of social settings. Boiled peanuts, for example, became a regular feature at Southern weddings during the early 1900s. Roasted peanuts, on the other hand, quickly became associated with traveling circuses thanks to the hot peanuts sold at the renowned P.
T. Barnum Circus. That said, peanuts found their most enduring home in the bleachers of baseball stadiums.
It's said that the tradition of peanuts being sold at baseball games dates back to 1895, when Harry Stevens — a pioneering ballpark entrepreneur — sold advertising space on scorecards to a peanut company. After taking his payment in peanuts, Stevens subsequently sold the peanuts to customers attending the games. Upon seeing how well they sold, Stevens built a business on feeding sports fans, popularizing peanuts, hot dogs, and soda at ball games.
Today, the legacy of Stevens lives on — peanuts remain a firm favorite of baseball fans, with around 2.3 million pounds of in-shell peanuts being eaten at Major League Baseball games every season. However, , marking peanuts as a distinctly American baseball-related treat.
George Washington Carver revolutionized the peanut industry George Washington Carver, who would come to be known as The Peanut Man, was born into slavery during 1864. Freed with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, Carver went on to study botany at the Iowa State Agricultural School, becoming the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree. Later he earned a Master of Agriculture degree, and accepted a job at what is now Tuskegee University in Alabama.
Carver made many revolutionary discoveries during his time at Tuskegee, but one of the most important concerns crop rotation. Aware that annual cotton plantings drained the soil of nitrogen, Carver encouraged farmers to alternate cotton plantings with legume plantings, as these crops reintroduce nitrogen into the soil. Carver's advice saw cotton and peanut yields dramatically increase across the South.
The nation now had an abundance of peanuts, and Carver dedicated years of his life to finding new applications for the crop. All told, he invented around 300 products made from peanuts, including wood stains, soap, ink, and plastics. He also successfully convinced the Ways and Means Committee of the U.
S. House of Representatives to introduce a protective tariff on peanuts, ensuring that domestic suppliers would continue to be favored over international peanut suppliers. Improvements in technology aided the peanut boom During the 19th century, the growing, harvesting, and processing of peanuts was still a labor-intensive practice.
Farmers tilled the fields with horse-drawn plows, and peanuts were harvested by hand. All of these steps involved slow, backbreaking work. Aside from limiting the total amount of peanuts that farmers could produce, these practices were vulnerable to human error, meaning that the quality of peanuts varied from producer to producer.
As a result of this inconsistency, demand for peanuts was somewhat suppressed. Technological advances that took place during the 20th century mechanized just about every step of peanut growing, harvesting, and production. A huge array of machinery was introduced.
As a result, peanut production increased rapidly at this time, and customers soon came to learn that 20th-century peanuts were far more consistent and reliable than those sold during the previous century. With this increased consistency came increased demand, and the United States peanut industry boomed. During the 20th century, peanut butter spread widely Today, peanut butter is one of the most popular peanut products sold in the United States, with approximately 60% of the nation's entire harvest being used to make it.
However, peanut butter was not always a fixture of the American diet. Despite indigenous populations of South America making a version of peanut butter since ancient times, it only emerged amid the American food scene around the turn of the 20th century, when several people patented various processes to make it — including Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who played a key role in the .
Peanut butter's future place as a staple was all but secured in 1921, when Joseph Rosefield pioneered the use of partial hydrogenation to prevent peanut oil from separating from other ingredients. Prior to Rosefield's innovation, stores that sold peanut butter had to frequently stir it to prevent the product from separating and subsequently spoiling. As a result of Rosefield's discovery, peanut butter became shelf stable, a factor that has undoubtedly contributed to its widespread popularity throughout recent decades.
Nowadays there are numerous that are available to consumers. Peanuts and peanut butter played a role in both World Wars As a nutrient-rich, widely available food that could be grown in various parts of the United States, peanuts played a huge role during both World Wars. During World War II, U.
S. citizens were hit by meat rationing and turned to peanut butter as a high-protein alternative. Containers of Skippy peanut butter were even sent as rations to U.
S. soldiers fighting abroad. Interestingly, peanuts were not just used as food during the wars — the legume also played a key part in munitions manufacturing.
In 1918, the final year of World War I, more than 95 million pounds of peanut oil was being produced, with a large portion of that dedicated to supplying wartime weaponry. The demand for peanut oil rose again during World War II, and mass planting saw the acreage used to grow peanuts in the U.S.
expanding to almost 5 million acres by 1942. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches became a quintessential American treat After World War II ended, the United States enjoyed a period of incredible prosperity. Innovation, affluence, and abundance were reflected in just about every aspect of society, including food.
Although meat rationing was a thing of the past, postwar America continued to embrace peanuts and peanut butter, particularly in the form of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich first enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, with the cheap, shelf-stable ingredients widely used to fuel families through the Great Depression. After World War II, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches became a common fixture in lunchboxes, and were enjoyed across generational and class divides until the turn of the century.
The sandwich's long stint as a staple saw it viewed as a quintessentially American food. Many immigrants recall adopting the meal, especially at school, to indicate that they were assimilating with the dominant culture. In other words, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a practice that clearly indicated how 'American' someone was.
Although the sandwich has lost some of its cultural capital in recent decades, it remains an important part of the nation's culinary lexicon — and it has even been given new life with the recent popularity of . In 2009, a massive peanut recall rocked the industry As with the production of many foods in the United States, the peanut industry has become increasingly centralized, with a few enormous companies dominating the processing of peanut products. While this approach may increase efficiency and reduce costs, an error at a manufacturing plant has the potential to impact thousands of products.
This is exactly what happened during 2008 and 2009, when the Food and Drug Administration traced a massive salmonella outbreak to peanut-processing facilities owned by the Peanut Corporation of America. A report published by the stated that 714 confirmed cases of salmonella were linked back to this company. At least nine deaths were also attributed to the outbreak.
Just under 4,000 products that contained the company's peanuts were recalled, leading to one of . Upon inspection, it was clear that the company's facilities were poorly maintained. The roof leaked, creating a damp environment that allowed salmonella to thrive.
To make matters worse, company officials Stewart and Michael Parnell were accused of falsifying documents to cover up the presence of pathogens in the Peanut Corporation of America's products, and continued to ship them across the nation. For their role in the outbreak, the Parnell brothers were charged with numerous crimes. Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 336 months in prison, while Michael Parnell was sentenced to 240 months.
The U.S. is the world's fourth-largest peanut producer According to the , throughout 2023, China produced the most peanuts of any country, an amount equivalent to 39% of total world production.
India produced 12% of the planet's peanuts, while Nigeria provided 9%. The United States was the fourth-largest source, producing 5% of the world's entire peanut crop. estimates that the total peanut haul of the U.
S. in 2023 was valued at approximately $1.6 billion, making peanuts one of the nation's most valuable crops.
Georgia is by far America's most prolific peanut-producing state, and is the source of over half the nation's peanuts. This state is uniquely suited to growing peanuts, thanks to its sandy soils and long growing season. However, increasing operating costs mean that many of Georgia's peanut farmers have struggled to turn a profit in recent years, despite peanuts remaining in demand.
To further compound these issues, yields have recently gone down in this state and elsewhere, predominantly due to droughts. Innovation looks set to transform America's peanut industry George Washington Carver might have been the godfather of peanut innovation, but many other Americans are also experimenting with the legume. A lot of research is being put into future-proofing peanut production, ensuring that it continues to play a part in feeding the expanding global population, even as erratic weather becomes an ever-more common phenomenon.
The peanut plant is already well-placed to meet this need. It is an extremely nutrient-rich crop, and it has the added benefit of being water-efficient. Scientists are building on these characteristics by creating new peanut varieties that can also resist common diseases and the long periods of drought that are lowering yields across the United States.
Further experiments are examining whether peanuts can become a dependable source of biodiesel. In an interview with , Luis Ribera, a professor of agricultural economics, said that genetically engineered peanuts "will be converted into renewable diesel, which is chemically identical to fossil diesel, so it can be used in anything that uses diesel." While research to achieve this goal is still ongoing, diesel-replacing peanuts could become a sustainable fuel of the future.
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