Today I read this article on the health benefits of boiled peanuts.
Boiled nuts help protect against illness
For lovers of boiled peanuts, there’s some good news from the health front. A new study by a group of Huntsville researchers found that boiled peanuts bring out up to four times more chemicals that help protect against disease than raw, dry or oil-roasted nuts.
Lloyd Walker, chair of Alabama A&M University’s Department of Food and Animal Sciences who co-authored the study, said these phytochemicals have antioxidant qualities that protect cells against the risk of degenerative diseases, including cancers, diabetes and heart disease.
“Boiling is a better method of preparing peanuts in order to preserve these phytochemicals,” Walker said.
The study will appear in Wednesday’s edition of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The other co-authors in the study are A&M researchers Yvonne Chukwumah and Martha Verghese, as well as University of Alabama in Huntsville researcher Bernhard Vogler.
Walker said peanuts and other plants use phytochemicals for things such as helping avoid disease and insect attacks.
“These things are not nutrients; at the same time they have health benefits to humans,” he told The Birmingham News. “The trick is to keep those health benefits, not to process them out of the foods.”
According to Walker, water and heat penetrate the nuts, releasing beneficial chemicals to a certain point. Overcooking the nuts destroys the useful elements.
Alabama is third in the nation in the amount of peanuts produced with a crop valued at more than $67 million last year.
Information from: The Birmingham News
Eating boiled peanuts was a ritual my father and I loved sharing. I wonder if boiled peanuts sound like a terrible food choice to anyone who hasn’t enjoyed them? I relished pulling apart the shells and chewing them; they are soft, since they could have been cooked for as long as twenty-four hours. The salt added to their water may not be healthy but gives the peanuts the taste, as I once read, of the ocean on your tongue.
Among my favorite memories from childhood is traveling by car with my parents and stopping at roadside stands to buy things like boiled peanuts and fresh vegetables and fruits grown by the people who were selling them. I believe you can still do that in the South (and maybe here, for all I know; it’s not like I get out to rural Texas more than once every fifteen years), but I wonder if my perspective has changed so much that I wouldn’t stop. Would I be wary of strangers and their produce? Would I get wrapped up in details like whether they used pesticides, or how they fertilized their soil? I’d definitely go to a farmer’s market like the one that opens here every weekend, where the sellers at least say they do organic farming. But maybe if I were driving through rural Alabama, I couldn’t resist the lure of tomatoes taken right off the vine or juicy peaches or fresh ears of corn still in their shucks.
After we moved back to Alabama when I was around ten, my sister used to sometimes take the train back to South Carolina to visit her boyfriend and other friends, or my sister-in-law would come to visit us from the Palmetto State. The only stop the train made near where we lived was in the dead of night at a country store. My parents and I would drive out and wait through a dark, misty hour or more, depending on whether the train was on time, for Debby’s or Terri’s arrival (a gothic setting if ever there was one).
One chilly autumn night while we waited in our car, the elderly woman who owned the store and lived in attached rooms behind it got out of bed to check on things. Maybe because my parents had a child with them, she decided to open the store. In a robe and slippers, she brewed a fresh pot of coffee for the grownups and gave me hot chocolate. She made sandwiches and peanut butter and crackers, cracked open a tin of sardines, and sliced some cheese. We shared our feast with her while sitting around a gas heater for warmth, the wooden floor boards creaking as the heat expanded them. She and my parents did the “your people” litany. (Where a Southerner is from was never as important as what family produced us. Conversations began, “Who are your people?” and continued until strangers found a common connection through family, friend, or acquaintance.)
Hers was the kind of hospitality and kindness that was once everywhere in the South. When you read horror stories about my region, though they may be true, they are only one part of a savory and varied table of people and place.
Last night, I shared with Mark G. Harris two letters from readers. I love reader mail even when it’s critical, because it’s a means of knowing how what we (or I) write affects people. It’s rarely critical, however, and often indescribably moving. But this past week a couple of letters arrived that were somewhat mean-spirited about things that had little to do with the actual novel that prompted them. Because I’m struggling to finish another novel against constraints of time and circumstances, and because I’m worried about and miss Tim, my defenses are down. If he were here to read these letters with me, he’d use his humorous perspective to take away the bitter taste of them. In fact, when we spoke on the phone a while ago (his doctors told him this morning they need to keep him for observation until at least Monday) and I read to him the most recent of the letters and my answer, his reactions made me laugh and immediately lifted my spirit.
In truth, those letters are a sour anomaly among a sumptuous feast of thoughtful comments and reactions. There is another kind of hospitality offered from within the human heart, and I’m grateful to all of you who have shown it to me and my writing partners. I may not know your people, but I know that you are part of a family that includes Daniel, Blaine, Adam, Jeremy, Sheila, Josh, Martin, Andy, Ken, Gretchen, Gwendy, Derek, Hunter, Vienna, Cart Man, Davii, Nick, Roberto, Blythe, Morgan, Kendra, Dennis, Ethan, Gavin, Alex, Aaron, Heath, Miranda, Patrick, Vivian, Kieran, Phillip, Ellan, Chad, Jess, Carlos, Bunny, Dash, Taryn, Keelie, Michael, Jennifer, and Evan, among so many others. You are always welcome to sit by our fire and share our repast on the sunniest of days and the bleakest of nights.
Thank you.