Short Stuff: Macadamia Nuts

with a lot of nuts. For me, if you eat too many of them, you get a little what do I called nuts stomach? Yeah, get a little, get a little nauseous, not nauseous, but just you know, a sour belly you can't see straight. Yeah, it's no good. But I do love macadamia nuts. But they are not nuts like brazil nuts. They are seeds. Yes, And I was like, okay, what's the difference between nuts and seeds. It's hard to explain.

Nuts are the fruit of the plant and they're surrounded by a hard shell, and they actually contain seeds, and seeds are an actual tiny version of the plant itself, an embryo of the plant, and it's surrounded by the seed coat which nourishes the plant's food for the planet as it grows. That's right. And this one is chuck full of good and like dinner party factoids and yes, I'm using Lord factoids and chock full um. So another one is you think, oh, macadamia nuts. Hawaii, of course

is where these things first came from. Sure, Like the number one brand of macadamia nuts is Mounta Looa And if that's not Hawaiian, I don't know what is. Yeah, well, a lot of them do come from Hawaii for a bunch of reasons. But they originated from our dear friends down under in Australia, and they were brought over by a man named William Purvis. He planted macadamia trees, which are nice looking by the way they are, They're very pretty. He planted them on the Big Island in one because

they were growing a lot of sugar back then. I imagine they still grow a lot of sugar in Hawaii. And he wanted a wind break, so he was like, these trees look nice and they provide the wind break that I need, so let me plant. Let me plant these things. And uh, they don't produce nuts until they're four or five years old. So to his delight, uh, they bore a delicious uh, a delicious, yummy seed. So I saw that he didn't actually, he wasn't around to see that the seed could be eaten, or at the

very least to see it become popular. Relate to say he died within four or five years. No, no, no, but they didn't become popular until the twenties, about forty years, that's what I mean. But surely they ate him right now.

I genuinely don't know. I don't know when they figured it out, but I know that that some people, I guess some people have figured it out by about the turn of the century because the in in around nine the entire global coffee market collapsed because Bolivia no Brazil, ramped up its production and overproduced and so so supply outstrip demand and the prices just collapsed. And that was really bad for Hawaii because its economy was built in

large part on coffee too. So they set up the Hawaiian Agricultural Experiment Station, which, if it wasn't affiliated with the University of Hawaii back then, it is now, and they they started saying, hey, you know what, the government will subsidize your land if you start planning macadamia nuts, And they actually didn't have very many takers at first. Now there, you know, you'd get a five year tax exemption,

which is, you know, some pretty good dough. But I think it just they didn't know that the world was gonna go crazy for this stuff yet, so no one was throwing their hat in the ring. When they did find out that people like them, they really threw their

head in the ring. They I think it says here, from uh nineteen thirty two to nineteen eight um production went up from four twenty three acres to over a thousand acres in Hawaii, which I don't think we mentioned that the climate in Hawaii is just perfect for this stuff. That's why they grow it there. Yeah, right, So like the cultivars, which I didn't know this, but cultivar is actually a combination of the words cultivated varieties. Did you know that? Yeah? I thought we talked about that in

one of our episodes. Maybe we Maybe we did, and it's just it didn't stick with me. But so a cultivar is basically where we say, hey, we really like this plant that's native to Australia. We're gonna really um work it over and and and basically breed it into a different version of itself. And that's what a cultivar is.

And with the cultivars that are um have been used in Hawaii for you know, a century or so now, um, they don't grow very well outside of Hawaii, which from what I can tell, I mean, if you read between the lines here, Hawaii has basically the market cornered on macadamian nuts, which is good for Hawaii and for Hawaii's mac damia nut farmers, but bad for the world because the global demand for macadamia nuts just keeps growing and

it's not like the Hawaiian islands are growing anymore. So that's it's actually created a bit of a problem market wise, which we'll talk about in a little bit. All right, we'll be right back, all right. So, if you've ever been to the store, you're like, man, I want to crush up some sweet macadamia nuts, and I want to dredge my fish filet and that stuff and cook it up in the oven. You're like McDonald's flay of fish. No, no, no, no, no, have you ever done that? It's really good? I have.

As a matter of fact, there's a restaurant chain called Roy's Hawaiian and they have a macadamia crusted that's really really good. It's very delicious, very easy to do. But uh, you might find that you're spending as much on your macadamia nuts as you are your fish because it's expensive.

They consider it what's called the dessert nut, um, rather than what's called a commodity crop, like any old other dumb nut that you can just get tons and tons of or seed because who can tell what's water anymore exactly. But here's the deal. There's quite a few factors that go into why. Um, you already mentioned that, you know, they really have the market quartern in Hawaii, so that's

a big deal. Um. It takes seven years for a nut tree to produce a crop, so that's obviously going to drive up price some when you have to wait a long time for an output. Yeah, and we said like four to five earlier. It's it's somewhere between four and seven. Yeah. Yeah, the person in the interview said seven years. But yeah, between four and seven. He may have been like inflating the numbers, you know, Yeah. Maybe.

So another thing is there are labor shortages in the agricultural field in Hawaii, so you know they're having to pay them more and pay them more benefits, so that's driving up cost. They're invasive pests that hit macodaemias. They felt it COCD cocid. I was gonna say, coxid, coxid. That's what I'm going with. That's going to drive up the price. And the most important thing, probably though, is what you were alluding to, which is Hawaii's very expensive.

The land is really expensive, and because you have to wait for to seven years to get a crop like there, it's just not feasible to expand all these orchards, so you're kind of like, just don't have a ton of growth. No, that's right. So like the production and supply is basically remaining steady while the demand goes up, which is how you get macadamia nuts that go for twenty five dollars

a pound, and that's a lot of money. So really, if you think about it, depending on the fish you're eating, it's maybe twice as much as that fish that you're you're using the macadamia nuts to crust. Where you think I'm bringing some trash gelope in their garbage garbage fish, I've heard telapia is referred to as the rats of the sea. Have you ever heard that? Uh? No, but I definitely um learned a lot over the years because in my younger days, I thought like telapi was a

very fancy thing. Yeah, I I used to like it, and then I heard it called the rats of the sea, and I was like, I can't eat I can't eat this anymore. Although seeing lobster called cockroaches of the sea didn't do much to to thwart my love of lobster. Now, I'll take a buttered mayonnaise cockroach roll any day. Delicious. So our macadamia nuts. You know, they're super high in calories and fat, But does that mean they're bad for you? No? No,

supposedly they're very very good for you. Um, especially if they haven't been coated in delicious Maisie chocolate. Yeah, you don't need that stuff. No, you do, you do, but just don't count it as like healthy. Have you ever had the Maisie chocolate covered Macadamian? No, it is delicious, but I'm just saying a Macadamian to me, isn't something you have to dress upus. Have you had the spam dusted macadamia nuts. I think someone sentenced those, Yes, and

they're amazingly good. Yeah, But if you're if you're just talking about there's a plain old natural roasted macadamia nuts, it actually is pretty good for you. They're very high in calories, but they also contain a lot of really good fats, mono unsaturated fats, which are the kind that actually lower your LDL cholesterol. They have a lot of carbs, but they also have a lot of fiber. And so anybody who's ever been on a keto diet like Atkins or something like that can tell you it's the net

carbs that you care about. So you subject the grams of fiber from the total grams of carbs, and you end up with net carbs, and those are the ones that you start counting. And apparently with macodaemia nuts, the net carbs are actually fairly low. And because there are, they're high in carbs below in net carbs, that means the fiber in them, like plant liber is among the best stuff you can eat. It keeps you so healthy,

it keeps your gut by microbiota happy and thriving. Um. So apparently macadamia nuts are chock full of them, as you would say. Yeah, they are also chock full of vitamins and minerals um, manganese, diamond, copper, yeah, which copper apparently um aids in in what some sort of transport and absorption. Yeah, I can't remember what it was. It says in't here and I was like, I didn't know copper did that. God bless copper. I wonder people are

stealing it from houses iron absorption, okay, which is good. Yeah, people do steal it, don't They from like a c units or catalytic converter. Come on, sure that's somebody else's catalytic converter. So chock full of despite being high in calories, chock full of that good fiber, those good heart healthy fats and proteins and vitamins and minerals um, you still don't want to see it down and eat a bowl full of them, because, like I said, they're very rich.

But they say, you know to it's a good filling nuts. So if if you grab a handful between meals or something, that's way better than eating potato chips or some you know, processed ultraprocessed foods, right right, Yeah, and yeah, it'll keep you full like between meals or something you just made me think of, like sitting down and eating an actual bowl full of just like he's just sick. Just start growing up from overeating macadamia nuts. Can you imagine? No?

I talked about the oil content though they are seventy oil and I did not know this. Here's another little factoid to finish us off. You can throw a You can throw any nut into water the toilet and see if it floats. And if it's got se oil like that macadamia nut, it's gonna float. Yeah. And if it doesn't, apparently they just go flush yep, washed them down the toilet. I don't think mecademia nuts are actually tested in a toilet. Think so I'm hoping not. Well, let's say for macademia nuts, Charles,

I'm what about you, Jerry anything? M That's right? Well, thank you for joining us on Short Stuff Short Stuff Away Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H