• SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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    14 hours ago

    That’s a little more understandable. Peas grow on vines, so you’d expect peanuts to be somehow similar to peas. I guess they get their name because they’re in pods like peas but without being told, how would someone guess they grow underground?

    And cashews do grow on trees (they’re technically a fruit) and are similar to peanuts. Would anyone guess that cashews are fruits?

    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      They’re legumes that grow underground and trigger nut allergies. They are the platypus of the plant world.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I don’t know why I remember this, but there was also a Spongebob episode that showed a potted peanut plant with peanuts growing on it like peas do.

    • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      I guess they get their name because they’re in pods like peas but without being told

      Presumably the opposite; they get their name because they’re in shells like nuts

      (The ‘pea’ part is because they’re a legume; it could have just as easily ended up ‘bean-nut’, except that would over time become ‘beanut’, which would probably re-become peanut)

    • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de
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      13 hours ago

      Yes, okay, guessing the origin from the name can be somewhat misleading. But the striking thing for me is that people do not know and do not bother to ask themselves where a product that they consume every day or every week comes from. That’s ignorance.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        9 hours ago

        Why is it important to know these things? I’d rather people be ignorant of the biology of a peanut plant than ignorant of the many important things that people are ignorant of.

        • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de
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          35 minutes ago

          I consider it important that if I am consuming a produce regularly to know what exactly I’m eating, what it is made from and where does it come from. Because the stuff I’m eating becomes a part of me. And also because I am regularly spending money for that so I will inform myself about the details of a product.

          It’s not about those peanuts, that’s part of understanding one’s own life and the contexts of life in which one is involved. And I think it is a problem that many people are consumers who are very alienated from these life contexts and no longer understand how they are actually connected to the world. That’s one reason why illusions can thrive.