We're pro-antioxidant, and we vote! Anti-allergy, too!

Happy Halloween Treat News from Normal, Alabama, by way of Hyderabad, India, about boiler nutrition:

Boiled peanuts contain more antioxidant properties than raw and roasted peanuts and are better for health, a new US study has found.

Closer to home, it's also being reported by the Associated Press, where they discuss phytochemicals and so forth, and on WebMD. The latter includes a note on the bad news for those of us who have taken up shelled peanut boiling:

When peanuts are boiled in their shell, the peanut kernel absorbs antioxidants that are in the peanut shells and skins. That can't happen with shelled, skinned peanut kernels, the researchers note.

Surely there are pesticides and toxins in the shell that release in the brine to counter this particular positive health effect of traditional unshelled boilers! Unless you go organic.

Nevertheless, back to today's topic: To the team at Alabama A&M University's Department of Food and Animal Sciences -- Lloyd Walker, Yvonne Chukwumah, Martha Verghese, and Bernhard Vogler -- we are much obliged. Likewise to the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, who will "break" the good news on Halloween!

One shouldn't expect Forbes to put forth a full appreciation. They use the word "mushy" to describe boiled peanuts after all. But we imagine the news will truly energize the health nuts in Dothan this weekend!

P.S. We think there's something to the Boiling-Versus-Roasting clash. Consider this, from The Parent's Guide to Food Allergies: Clear and Complete Advice from the Experts on Raising Your Food Allergic Child by Marianne S. Barber, et al (Paperback, April 2001) p.84:

"[Peanuts are common in China.] Given the assumption that populations develop allergies based on how much they are exposed to a particular food, why aren't the Chinese more peanut-allergic?
One important distinction between the peanuts consumed in the United States and those consumed in China is that the Chinese peanuts are boiled, whereas the U.S. peanuts are roasted. Roasted peanuts typically reach a temperature of 245° C, whereas boiling occurs at 100° C. Proteins change in response to heat. Therefore, that higher temperature of the U.S. peanut may open the peanut protein in some way, making more allergy-producing material available to be bonded with. It's an intriguing theory."

Indeed.