Greg Schmidt

For years, a cartel of peanut manufacturers has been keeping the truth from us, but now the truth is available, for all to read!

Unlike what the Peanut Cartel would have us believe, the peanut is not actually a nut. Rather, peanuts are to nuts what hot dogs are to meat. That's right, peanuts are actually other nuts, discarded for whatever reason, crushed, reformed into the familiar shape, and baked.

This may seem far-fetched, but for the proof you need look no further than at a peanut itself. Notice how it breaks cleanly in two, along a smooth fault line. There is a good reason why these surfaces seem to have a machined smoothness to them: they are machined! This seeming defect, which is certainly not present in any other nut that I'm aware of, actually dates back to a limitation of the very first peanut ovens, which must now be faithfully replicated in all new peanuts, in order to cover up the charade. Peanut companies now spend millions of dollars every year on research to determine new and cheaper ways of adding this required defect.

The shell is another artifact of the early peanut manufacturing process. Because the woodburning ovens used were much less precise than the gas and electric ones used in more recent times, makers found that the peanuts would burn easily, and yields were low. They discovered that by first wrapping them in a fine paper, and then covering that with a combination of straw, sawdust and cow manure, they could ensure a much more even result, with much higher yields, making the extra cost more than pay for itself. As an added side bonus, peanuts could be shipped much more safely in these shells than without them.

Over the years, the actual materials used to make the shell have changed, but they have maintained the property that the nut always shrinks more than the shell during baking, which is why the peanut is so loose in its shell, while most natural nuts are much more firmly held. With modern advances in ovens, it has become possible to bake peanuts with only the paper wrapping, and, more recently, with no protection at all, which explains why it is now possible to purchase peanuts in all three formats. Of course, the bare peanuts are by far the cheapest and easiest to produce, so these are the most prevalent in today's market.

Peanut Butter

We would be remiss in not mentioning that, contrary to popular belief, peanut butter is actually a side product of this process. The so-called "natural" peanut butter is actually an interim stage that peanuts go through before reaching the presses. The runoff from these presses is collected and packaged as peanut butter, either with no additives ("natural"), or with some thickening agents added. You will be relieved to know that they no longer thicken it with leftovers from the shell-making process.

Allergies

Why is it, you ask, that so many people are allergic to peanuts? Well, this is clearly due to the strange mixture of other nuts used in the manufacturing process. Since a typical peanut will contain walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, cashews, and so on, it stands to reason that anyone who is allergic to any one of these ingredients will also be allergic to the final product, the peanut.

Furthermore, it appears (from preliminary studies that the Peanut Cartel is trying to suppress) that chemical reactions take place between the various different nut oils which can intensify allergic reactions, explaining why peanut oil is an even more dangerous allergen than straight peanuts.

Additional Research

I have had some inquiries asking for some proof to back up these claims. I have to admit that at first this all seems far-fetched. Not surprisingly, given the international muscle and bankroll of the players, there are very few sites where you can find direct evidence.

As you may be aware, the main problem with telling lies is that eventually you are bound to slip up and contradict yourself. Police investigators use this when questioning suspects, always asking the same questions over and over in different ways. Psychological tests use the same principle to ensure that individual test results are valid. Although they are very careful, the Peanut Cartel is not always 100% consistent in their lies. It has taken years of putting together these small clues from a wide variety of sources to reach the point I am at.

As an example, if you read this Story of the Peanut you can see inconsistencies right away. The first paragraph would have you believe that peanut plants originated in South America and Mexico, and were taken from there to Europe and Africa, and then back to the southern USA. If they had truly started in Mexico, would they honestly have had to go to two different continents and cross the Atlantic Ocean twice to get to Louisiana? I don't think so. You may also have found that another name for the peanut is Chinese nut, although China is nowhere near North or South America, Europe or Africa.

The same site documents that perhaps the first person to sell peanuts was none other than P.T. Barnum, famed showman, notorious for presenting things as being other than they truly were. Although I haven't found enough evidence to back this up (and hence why it's not on my web site), I believe that Barnum himself may have actually invented the peanut as we know it today (albeit based on earlier similar work by others). What better vehicle to quickly introduce a new product to people of all races and social standings, across the entire country, than the travelling circus of the late 19th century? Barnum was no dummy!

The site then goes on to explain how the peanut is not truly a nut even though people think it is, how it grows underground even though people think it grows on trees, etc. Clearly, society would only have these "misconceptions" if they had at one point been promulgated as truths. If you read the literature of conspiracies, you find that this is typical of the kind of uncertainty used to keep people off guard. The principle, which you may be familiar with, is the old "that's so strange it must be true" trick (used successfully by all the best players of the game Balderdash).

In fact, the peanut used to be touted as a true nut that grew on trees (although old textbooks with these facts and accompanying illustrations are now very hard to find), but as travel become more common, people began to wonder why they never saw peanut orchards. It was decided at high levels that plants are easier to explain away, as most people driving past fields of crops can't identify more than a couple of varieties, particularly when they are all clustered close together in a field. Peanut plants were then redrawn to resemble other plants such as tobacco and senna (take a look at some photos; I think you'll agree the resemblance is very striking). Interestingly, neither the Vascular Plant Image Library nor the University of California Digital Library Project (to name just a couple) has a picture of a peanut plant. Pictures that claim to be of peanut plants typically turn out to be a picture of another plant, or a forgery.

The last point I want to make is that absolutely none of the major peanut or peanut butter manufacturers have yet come forth with comments on my research. Private conversations have led me to believe that they are afraid of any publicity on the issue. They know full well that their house of cards could come crashing down around them, and won't take any steps that might hasten their demise.