Peanuts. No, not ''Peanuts;'' peanuts

How did the airlines decide on peanuts as an industry standard?

I haven’t received peanuts on an airplane in a long time. And I fly every few months. More often, it seems to be pretzels. I think I heard something about some people being allergic to “peanut dust” so they stopped serving them.

I’d think you just want to serve an item that pretty much everybody will eat.

It was my idea. :smiley:

One thing about peanuts as a snack is they generally take longer to consume than say cheetos.The longer you take to eat/chew your food the less you need to consume before that hunger feeling is satisfied-plus gives you something to think about other than is the plane going to blow up.

I don’t know that these were the actual reasons,but they seem to make sense to me.

Of course there’s the Planter’s conspiracy theory,too.

Ski is right. In August 1998 the DOT proposed a “peanut free zone” in airplanes to protect people from the possibility of allergic reaction. This would involve identifying the allergic people, seating them in a “peanut free” area and not serving peanuts to people in seats around them.
Okay.
That’s when pretzels really started making their major appearance.

I suspect the appearance of the pretzel is the same reason for the appearance of the peanut…cost control.

To answer the OP there is an old legend (if someone here could prove or disprove it, now would be the time) that a major airline realized that if they served peanuts rather than almonds on their short flights they would save a nice wad of cash.
Good news from the airline bookkeepers.
Bad news for the California Almond Growers.
What followed was less an industry standard than a cost control measure that others copied.