Hypoallergenic Nuts
As I wrote in “Our Delusions about 'Healthy' Snacks—Nuts to That!” nuts are almost the only portable snack that is actually healthy—just check for sugar or easily digestible starch as an ingredient. Remember that almost all commercially available fruit has a lot of sugar in it—partly because it was bread that way. See for example “Nutritionally, Not All Apple Varieties Are Alike.” Also, beware: although raw nuts aren’t that hard to find, many packaged nuts have sugar added. Others have peanut oil added, which is OK if and only if you think peanut oil is OK. Still others have salt added, which I don’t worry about.
Because nuts have so many pluses, I have explored a wide variety of nuts—and hope to try many more.
Sadly, I am allergic (meaning that I get canker sores in my mouth) from regular walnuts, pecans and pistachios. For walnuts, I discovered to my delight that black walnuts, which are a different species, are OK for me. Below is the Amazon page for the black walnuts I get. Here is the Wikipedia article for eastern black walnuts: “Juglans nigra.” But I haven’t found any variant of pecans or pistachios that I can eat without suffering for it. ‘
This post has two purposes: First, to let others who love the taste of walnuts but suffer from walnut allergies know about black walnuts, which they might be able to eat. Second to make a plea for entrepreneurs to develop hypoallergenic nuts, including hypoallergenic pecans and pistachios. There is a market out there! Third, to ask for any information anyone else has about the availability of hypoallergenic nuts that are as close substitutes to the regular nuts as black walnuts are to regular walnuts. If you know anything along those lines, leave a comment!
Melissa Pandika’s August 23, 2014 NPR blog post “Hypoallergenic Nuts: A Solution To Nut Allergies?” gives some hope that research is being done on hypoallergenic nuts. She says:
… researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have shifted their focus. Instead of treating people who suffer from nut allergies, they're trying to treat the nut. That means "disrupting [the] structure" of nut proteins, says Christopher Mattison, a molecular biologist at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service.
That sounds sensible to me.
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see: