During transportation, both nuts in shell and nuts without shell are contaminated, even with ordinary dust, they were carried from place to place, touched with hands, thrown over with shovels during loading. It is better to wash them.
How to wash them?
The best way is to soak peeled nuts in cool water for 6-12 hours. This will wash off what’s on top. You will also get rid of excess phytic acid. This substance is not completely broken down in our bodies and can interfere with the absorption of vitamins and minerals.
If the nuts are in the shell and very dirty, it is better to wash them with soap and a brush. Peeled nuts – just rinse under cool running water if you don’t want to soak them for a few hours.
Washing nuts in the shell is also a must. You know, there are nuts that can cause severe allergies. It happens that a person shells them and gets on his hands and then in his mouth substances that were on the shell. And these substances cause an allergic reaction. And if he had already eaten peeled nuts, then maybe there would be no reaction.
The strongest allergen is peanut. Technically – not a nut, but we usually include it in this group.
What are the dangers of dirty nuts?
We’ve already talked about excess phytic acid. We will repeat that soaking nuts, legumes (they also contain this acid) increases the bioavailability of minerals.
On the surface of nuts can be various bacteria, pathogens, conditional pathogens, friendly bacteria. Imagine that a loader with an open form of tuberculosis worked with nuts. He coughed, his bacteria got on his hands, then it got on some surfaces and on the produce. And pathogens are very survivable.
And then you eat these nuts, if you have a weak immune system and the titer of the pathogens is high, you can get sick. We are not talking about Shigella!
And the fact that the nuts are in the shell is no barrier to pathogens either, they can easily get from the shell to the nut itself when you peel it. So wash everything.
All fruits, vegetables, nuts – wash them. And greens, soak them. Because there are pesticides and herbicides and so on.
Sometimes seeds or nuts are roasted on a dry pan before they are eaten. Thorough roasting also kills bacteria, although we have rarely seen nuts roasted before eating.
