Cataloging foods is more complicated than it sounds. The tomato, for example, is a fruit even though it looks like a vegetable. The eggplant, on the other hand, is a berry (a fruit with a fleshy structure that contains seeds and is a type of fruit). This is also the case with peanuts, pistachios, cashews, and almonds , as most of them pretend to be nuts. However, from a botanical point of view, they are not nuts even though they are classified as such.
If a food is round, crunchy, and wrapped in a shell, most people consider it a nut. However, a true botanical nut is a dried fruit with a single seed encased in a hard wall that does not divide, as Judy Jernstedt, a plant scientist at the University of California, argues.
In addition, the outer shell of a true nut is hard and does not open on its own, as happens with chestnuts, hazelnuts, acorns or walnuts. The rest of ‘nuts’, however, usually have two seeds and open easily. In fact, because they grow in a pod, they are technically legumes, a family of plants that produce their fruit in a pod and have more in common with peas than nuts.
On the other hand, almonds and cashews are actually seeds inside a drupe or stone fruit. That is, instead of having a hard outer shell, they have a fleshy outer layer that surrounds the pit that contains the seed, as is the case with peaches and cherries. With many drupes (mango or plum, for example) we eat the juicy fruit and throw the stone away. But, with other drupes, just the opposite happens: the outer shell is removed and we eat the seed that is inside the bone.
Therefore, if supermarkets were more precise with botany, they would not speak of nuts but of ‘peanut legumes’ or ‘almond seeds’. Also, they would be closer to peas than walnuts. Also, as Jernstedt assures, changing the names now would be very difficult for consumers, since most people are clear about their culinary ideas and consider them nuts.
