Okay, I’m sure everyone here knows that peanuts aren’t actually nuts, but are actually legumes, but that brings me to questions I can’t find the answer to… If you’re allergic to peanuts, are you more likely to be allergic to actual nuts and vice versa? If you’re allergic to peanuts, are you more likely to be allergic to beans? I mean, if you’re allergic to peanuts, would cashews have a similar effect, or could you gobble them by the double-fistful without worrying? I’m not asking anyone with peanut allergies to test this out, but if anyone’s done it already, I’d like to know the results.
Thanks bunches.
John T.
Did you ever think about going to a doctor?
I don’t have a nut or peanut allergy, and going to a doctor just to satisfy my curiousity seems like a bit of a waste.
First off, peanuts are nuts. A nut is simply any hard-shelled, dry fruit, it’s an English word, not a botanical one and doesn’t map onto particular fruit types, plant families or plant anatomies. Legume is a botanical term that refers either to an entire superfamily, or to the production of root nodes, neither of which exludes the production of nuts. A peanut is as much a nut as a macadamia, coconut or acorn.
Now back to the actual question, the answer is unlikely. Peanut allergies are caused 99.9998% of the time by a reaction to the protein in peanuts, and being legumes they contain large amounts of protein. Non-leguminous nuts are unlikely to contain the same amounts of protein (coconuts are an exception) and being so distantly related don’t produce the same proteins, so unless you happen to be allergic to a common plant protein, or to the oils or other substances in peanuts, you shouldn’t be affected by other plants. If you are then you’ll be allergic to a whole suite of non-nut vegetables as well, and your condition wouldn’t be diagnosed as a peanut allergy.
Legumes are more closely related and I have worked with a woman who was allergic to virtually all legumes. However this is obviously rare and entails a lot more than just being allergic to peanuts. It’s not described as being an allegy to peanuts, but an allergy to legumes.
And people who suffer from allergies usually suffer from more than one, so I suppose that statistically being allegic to anything makes you more likely to be allergic to other nuts or other legumes.
So the summary, yes more people who are allergic to peanuts should be allergic to other nuts, and to other legumes, but the incidences are low and you wouldn’t reach the age of 10 without realising you have an allergy to vegetable oil or to legumes.
Wow, answered my question and dispelled a myth I’ve been lugging around for decades… Unless someone chooses to argue with you, Gaspode, I owe you two 'thank you’s. 
I’ll argue
A nut is, according to my handy-dandy biology dictionary here, a “dry indehiscent, single-seeded fruit, somewhat similar to an achene but the product of more than one carpel (bolding mine)…”. A legume, on the other hand, is specifically formed from but a single carpel, and is limited to members of the family Leguminoseae. Legumes are also not indehiscent (an indehiscent fruit is one in which the seed conatiner does not spontaneously open to release the seeds). Thus, peanuts are not nuts, except in common vernacular.
Also, to answer the OP, my roommate is allergic to nuts, but not to peanuts.
I once knew somebody who was deathly allergic to nuts, to the point of having to get packed off to the hospital and treated for anaphylactic shock if she ate a walnut. She didn’t know if she was allergic to peanuts and maintained that she wasn’t going to eat one to find out. She also got asked a lot.
I am alergic to cashews-quite entertainingly so, my friends tell me-I swell up, get little bumps and rashes-but those are the only nuts I am alergic to.
I can eat all he other nuts in the can of mixed nuts and have no problem. But if I consume one cashew, send me to the sideshow.
I am also alergic to blueberries and the reaction is even more entertaining.
I had a student in my class last year who was deathly allergic to peanuts. I even had an Epi-Pen in the room for him, just in case.
He was not allergic to walnuts, almonds, cashews and other nuts. I had to know because we took a trip to a farm and the kids got to shell and eat black walnuts right off the tree.
Anyone else thinking of that scene with the gum-chewer (what was her name?!?) in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?
