Nobody said the selenium was in the shells - that ban was a separate issue brought up by Rayne Man. The edible part is indeed extremely high in selenium, radium and barium, which are concentrated by the tree.
The issue with the shells seems to be aflatoxins, which are produced by a fungus which grows on the nuts. They apparently think the fungus on the shells can contaminate the whole nut:
As suggested by the OP it can be difficult to get all the shell off the meat. I recall as a kid just bashing the thing with a hammer, then putting the pieces in my mouth and gnawing the meat from the shell fragment, spitting out the shell like sunflower seed hulls. This thread is the first I have ever heard of any risk.
Thanks to the OP for starting the thread. Brazil nuts (by their non-PC name) were a Christmas staple when I was growing up.
Here, too. Mama was from Tennessee. Where did you hear that name used?
Up until I was about 15, I had never heard the term “Brazil Nut”, but I knew what it was.
I feel somewhat better that I have never heard of some of those terms.
Duh! Didn’t you look at the photo of that guy that **Squink **posted?
That’s what we called them here in South Texas when I was young, but certainly not PC these days!
I hope I’m not too late, but I sent off for one of these at the time of this thread, and it came yesterday. I must say it works good with all my nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, and frozen brazil nuts) so far. There are other styles on this site.
By being careful, I was able to get all the brazils out whole.
Besides, it’s cool in a crude way.
Silly question I know, but do you need to shop for them at a certain type of store? I love Brazil nuts, but don’t recall ever seeing tins of unshelled nuts sold at the supermarket. I know Diamond sells the in-shell kind by themselves in bags, but I only encounter them unshelled in tins of mixed nuts.
Now that I think about it, this may actually be a good thing; otherwise I would probably be dead from selenium poisoning by now. I do love those Brazil nuts.
Trader Joe’s usually has whole shelled Brazil nuts, in a bag.
I was raised in Denver, CO. Parents grew up in Grand Junction, CO. It wasn’t really a racial thing, just what they were called.
That’s also the name that I knew…completely without context…just a name.
In pennsylvania here. That was also the name I heard when I was young. Took me a long time to find out the proper name as I didn’t like calling them by the slang name.
I grew up in Bakersfield, CA. We (white people) called them “that” too, but the name definitely had racial connotations. Ask somebody why they used that term.
When kids heard the word, they’d think of black people’s feet.
All I ever heard growing up in central Oklahoma (60s & 70s) was “brazil nut”. I was adult before I heard the other term.
In Brazil, they call them “nuts” [/simpsons]
Enlist the services of a hyacinthine macaw, as those are what eats them in the wild. The birds seem to extract the nut with no problem.
Of course, you will then have the problem of extracting the nut from the bird’s grasp…
Freeze the macaw 24 hours before cracking
Sure. You put him (her) in the freezer. :eek: