In Maurice Baring’s The Puppet Show of Memory the author writes that when he first voyaged to Russia he was surprised at how ubiquitous was the consumption of sunflower seeds. People would be constantly crunching, chewing, and spitting out shells. This was about a century ago – does this habit still prevail in Russia?
At least until recently, Russia was still the leading producer of sunflower seeds worldwide. Most of their production goes into food-grade oil and margarine, with the leftover meal being used as livestock feed.
I spent almost five years working around the former Soviet Union and, yes, people there eat sunflower seeds everywhere outside. Teenagers walk down the street talking and sharing sunflower seeds. Old women sell sunflower seeds on almost every street corner. The people on the street are expert sunflower seed eaters. They’ll pop one in their mouth and the shells will magically flutter back out.
Backin’ up Al here. Sunflower seeds were a very common snack when I lived in St. Pete’s for a year and wasn’t a day I couldn’t find a pile of shells from someone who’d been sitting and eating.
The other ubiquitous waste product was banana peels. The oddest sight was the access panels removed from the base of streetlights and a pile of banana peels stashed inside.