[Weaving together new research and rich primary sources, the Plant
Humanities Initiative recounts stories of global foods, such as
peanuts, to illuminate their extraordinary significance to humans.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

PLANT OF THE MONTH: PEANUT  
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Kristan M. Hanson
May 18, 2022
Jstor.org [[link removed]]

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_ Weaving together new research and rich primary sources, the Plant
Humanities Initiative recounts stories of global foods, such as
peanuts, to illuminate their extraordinary significance to humans. _

Illustration of peanut (tlalcacahuatl), Bernardino De Sahagún,
General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de
Sahagún: The Florentine Codex. Book XI: Natural Things. Medicea
Laurenziana Library, Florence, World Digital Library., Medicea
Laurenziana Library, Florence, World Digital Library.

 

Peanuts are a tasty treat enjoyed by many. Whole nuts, roasted or
boiled, salted or not, are a high-protein, low-cost snack. The
“nut” is also a quintessential ingredient in cuisines around the
world, used as a thickening and flavoring agent. And the peanut is a
source of cooking oil and the star ingredient in a spread for toasted
bread, sandwiches, and more.

Peanuts and peanut butter, a North American staple patented in 1884
and 1895, surged in popularity in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, as the National Peanut Board reported, peanut consumption
reached “an all-time high.” Peanut butter accounted for the bulk
of consumption (56%), well ahead of peanut snacks (20%), candy (17%),
and in-shell nuts (6%).

This preference suggests that shoppers in the US changed their buying
and eating habits—favoring peanut butter—in response to physical
distancing measures and economic uncertainty. The spread became an
affordable staple for preparing meals at home. For some, that included
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches: a comfort food that evoked
childhood memories of better times. The new habits, along with panic
buying, contributed to a shortage of peanut butter at grocery stores.

Given this renewed interest in peanuts, the plant’s unusual history
sheds interesting light on the rise to its status as a global food.
Attending to botanical properties of peanut and its interactions with
humans, from Andean civilizations of South America to enslaved persons
of nineteenth-century West Africa, elucidates the cultural, medicinal,
and economic salience of the plant.

Despite its English name, the peanut, or Arachis hypogaea, is not a
nut in the botanical sense. Rather, it is a leguminous plant belonging
to the family Fabaceae. The plant’s specific epithet hypogaea
(“under the earth”) references how it adapted to produce bright
yellow flowers above ground and fruit below ground. This form of
reproduction, known as geocarpy, evolved to protect plant offspring
from harsh conditions.

The peanut, a natural hybrid of two wild species, originated in
Bolivia. Andean civilizations domesticated the plant through natural
selection over millennia, spreading its cultivation to other regions
of central South America.

Thousands of years later, the creators of the Moche civilization of
northern Peru CONSUMED PEANUTS
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and produced metal and ceramic objects with depictions of pods. They
also buried high-ranking individuals with such objects as well as
offerings of real peanuts.

Historical records also establish the presence of the peanut in
pre-colonial Mesoamerica, where it gained importance to Nahua peoples
of present-day Mexico. The peanut, or _tlalcacahuatl_ in Nahuatl,
appears in the twelve-volume _GENERAL HISTORY OF THE THINGS OF NEW
SPAIN_ [[link removed]]—the most celebrated
version being the _Florentine Codex_. Significantly, Nahua authors
and artists compiled the chronicle of Nahua culture, practices, and
history in collaboration with the Spaniard Bernardino De Sahagún, a
Franciscan friar. Book Eleven of the codex portrays a yellow-flowered
peanut and documents Indigenous knowledge about its structure and
medicinal properties.

During the colonial era, Spanish and Portuguese explorers first
encountered peanut in the New World tropics, where Indigenous peoples
cultivated it. These Europeans subsequently transported the plant to
Europe, Africa, Asia, and beyond in the sixteenth century.

Geographer Judith Carney HAS ELUCIDATED
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the Portuguese transatlantic slave trade disseminated African plants
and Amerindian crops introduced to Africa—including the
peanut—back to the Americas. Slave-ship captains obtained peanuts
and other African food staples to improve survival rates of enslaved
persons during the Middle Passage, with leftover rations being
dispersed. Yet, as Carney shows, it was “uprooted Africans” who,
drawing on plant knowledge and cultivation skills, grew novel plants
in kitchen gardens and used them to create signature cuisines.

Peanuts remained bound up with slavery in the nineteenth century even
after Great Britain, France, and the US outlawed the practice.
Journalist Jori Lewis HAS EXPLAINED
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an insatiable desire for peanuts in Europe and the US fueled a West
African groundnut trade reliant upon African slavery and indentured
labor. Paradoxically, as Lewis reveals, the peanut also provided some
enslaved and indentured persons with a means of liberation: peanuts
grown at kitchen farms could be sold and the earnings used to purchase
freedom.

Weaving together new research and rich primary sources, the PLANT
HUMANITIES INITIATIVE
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stories of global foods, such as peanuts, to illuminate their
extraordinary significance to humans. For more on the peanut, visit
the PLANT HUMANITIES LAB [[link removed]].

* food history
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* nutrition
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* agriculture
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