I have been eating peanuts, shells and all, for decades. After all, that’s where the salt, and/or fiber, and/or flavors (particularly with respect Hampton Farms’ “Hot Nuts”) mostly reside. Also have challenged shocked onlookers to do the same - much to their wussie chagrin.
Yum, peanut shells!
I assume this thread is in response to this column of March 25, 1988, recently re-published on-line.
Here’s a second-hand story I heard from my doctor once upon a time, the point of which is how stupid some people really are and the lengths one must go to give silly warnings like that.
(Aside: We note that there are web sites (sorry, no cite at my fingertips, but you’ve probably seen them) where people post the most idiotic product safety warnings that they see, along the lines of, e.g., “Warning: Never operate your new Electric Hybrid Motor Vehicle in a bathtub” sort of thing.)
And a warning about THIS post: Possible (relatively mild) TMI follows:
Doctor once prescribed Preparation-H-like suppositories (for the usual reason). These come packaged in blister packs (with rather large blisters), on a rather stiff aluminum foil backing. I swear to Og, the doctor felt it advisable to warn me to remove suppository from the blister pack before inserting at the prescribed destination!
He proceeded to explain this warning, in rather apologetic tone: He once had a female patient who somehow didn’t figure that out on her own, and inserted the product at the prescribed destination still in the blister pack, stiff aluminum backing and all!
Oowie! They come six or eight or whatever to a card, and you have to cut each square apart from the others before pulling the backing off. Well, maybe you don’t really have to cut them apart. But if you do, that stiff aluminum backing has nasty sharp edges, especially when applied at that destination!
I asked the doc if he then had to go in there and fish it out (hey, inquiring minds want to know things like that), but he changed the subject at that point and didn’t answer.
Wow! I thought I was the only one who got that warning. From an Army dispensary, the woman giving me the suppositories said, “You know, You’re supposed to take the foil off before you use them.”
But for all the good they did me, I might as well have shoved them up my ass.
I especially laugh at the wussies who eat coconut layer cake without the concentrated taste and goodness of whole coconuts.
I can’t stop giggling at this. Thanks. 
The first time one of my wife’s aunts (from Yankee-land) tried boiled peanuts, she ate them shells and all.
Of course, with boiled peanuts that’s not as formidable a task as with roasted. And she was a bit tipsy at the time. 
I have eaten the peanut shells from time to time because that’s where all the salty goodness lies, but not in recent years. I do like the brown skins on some varieties - does that count? The warning label on these is silly, but I understand why they must add them.
Tangent: My father used to tell, half jokingly, how there was a family of immigrants (insert nationality of your choice), who, fresh off the boat, went to an American grocery store to stock up. When they got home they ate half a container of Crisco, wondering when they were going to get to the fried chicken.
No, I did not fall for it.
I used to eat the peanut shells until I got a tear in the lining of my anus. My doctor asked me what hard things do I eat. I told him and he said stop. I needed an operation. Learned my lesson.
I have heard persistant anecdotes (no cites, unfortunately) of persons who were not literate in English mistaking lemon-scented cleaners for drink concentrate.
I use a dishwasher product for hard water control that I could believe it of - it looks and smells like powdered lemonade mix.
I will suck the salt out of the shells, then spit them out. They’re a bit bitter and stringy.
I’ll eat pumkin seeds in the shell - love 'em, in fact. But I draw the line at peanuts.
I may have told this story here before (I’m turning into a senile old lady a bit ahead of schedule) but a while ago I used to work for a newspaper Q&A columnist who took a question from an elderly gentleman who was inquiring if cherry pits were, in fact, poisonous. They are, but unless ground up your body can’t absorb the toxins. We told him that, and added that whole swallowed pits are OK, and he informed us that he had been regularly consuming cherry pits for decades.
Why?
“Because my wife won’t let me spit 'em out on the floor!”
Hey, where I used to work there was a sign on the oven door (where we cured epoxy on our product) that said “Caution, inside of oven may be hot”!
This was added because the new guy burned his hand trying to remove a tray of parts without putting on the oven glove that was hanging right next to the oven!!
I mean really? Why would somebody assume the “OVEN” was cold??
So ya, the general public is a pack of idiots!
Yes, as much as the general public are literally a pack of sheep, you have to realize that with all the employment laws, health and safety stipulations, etc. that the business or corporation itself would be making a a very bad decision by not putting these warnings in place. The reason for the peanut bag one (this is not fact, I’m simply guessing), is that someone of ‘lesser intelligence’ either choked on or had a similar fate to the woman Cecil was referring to. They themselves or a family member filed a civil suit against the company for pain and suffering (or whatever) and the company lost a significant amount of money or suffered a significant blow to its reputation.
It’s much easier to use a few pennies more in ink than to hand over a couple million to some undeserving moron who eats peanuts with the shell on.
My two cents, haha, I did get carried away.
No need to guess, when the master has spoken. (SD article that this thread is in relation to.)
That said, I do sometimes eat peanuts and sunflower seeds whole, but not so many as to clog my innards!
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Merged two threads on the same subject.
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Myself, I like a bar where you can just toss the shells on the floor. Such as the Raffles Hotel’s Long Bar in Singapore, where the Singapore Sling was invented.
(The Raffles Hotel is reputedly where the sole surviving wild tiger in Singapore was shot and killed in 1902. Some stories place this event in the Long Bar. The Raffles itself claims the tiger had escaped from an enclosure at a nearby “native show” and been chased underneath the hotel’s Bar & Billiard Room (a raised structure) and shot to death there.)
Deep-fried peanuts confuse the issue further, because the shell is edible after deep-frying. In reasonable quantities, of course. I went through a month of addiction to them, when they first appeared around here, and then had had enough.