Speaker 1: Paine. Welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's
Speaker 1: Jerry over there, and this is short stuff about macadamia nuts.
Speaker 1: You heard me, macadamia nuts. I love macadamia nuts. I
Speaker 1: do you too. They're not my favorite nuts, but they're
Speaker 1: pretty high up there. I love them. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't eat a lot of them, um, because they're very,
Speaker 1: very oily and very rich, and they are delicious, but
Speaker 1: they're the kind of nut that And I find this
Speaker 1: with a lot of nuts. For me, if you eat
Speaker 1: too many of them, you get a little what do
Speaker 1: I called nuts stomach? Yeah, get a little, get a
Speaker 1: little nauseous, not nauseous, but just you know, a sour
Speaker 1: belly you can't see straight. Yeah, it's no good. But
Speaker 1: I do love macadamia nuts. But they are not nuts
Speaker 1: like brazil nuts. They are seeds. Yes, And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between nuts and seeds. It's hard to explain.
Speaker 1: Nuts are the fruit of the plant and they're surrounded
Speaker 1: by a hard shell, and they actually contain seeds, and
Speaker 1: seeds are an actual tiny version of the plant itself,
Speaker 1: an embryo of the plant, and it's surrounded by the
Speaker 1: seed coat which nourishes the plant's food for the planet
Speaker 1: as it grows. That's right. And this one is chuck
Speaker 1: full of good and like dinner party factoids and yes,
Speaker 1: I'm using Lord factoids and chock full um. So another
Speaker 1: one is you think, oh, macadamia nuts. Hawaii, of course
Speaker 1: is where these things first came from. Sure, Like the
Speaker 1: number one brand of macadamia nuts is Mounta Looa And
Speaker 1: if that's not Hawaiian, I don't know what is. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of them do come from Hawaii for a
Speaker 1: bunch of reasons. But they originated from our dear friends
Speaker 1: down under in Australia, and they were brought over by
Speaker 1: a man named William Purvis. He planted macadamia trees, which
Speaker 1: are nice looking by the way they are, They're very pretty.
Speaker 1: He planted them on the Big Island in one because
Speaker 1: they were growing a lot of sugar back then. I
Speaker 1: imagine they still grow a lot of sugar in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: And he wanted a wind break, so he was like,
Speaker 1: these trees look nice and they provide the wind break
Speaker 1: that I need, so let me plant. Let me plant
Speaker 1: these things. And uh, they don't produce nuts until they're
Speaker 1: four or five years old. So to his delight, uh,
Speaker 1: they bore a delicious uh, a delicious, yummy seed. So
Speaker 1: I saw that he didn't actually, he wasn't around to
Speaker 1: see that the seed could be eaten, or at the
Speaker 1: very least to see it become popular. Relate to say
Speaker 1: he died within four or five years. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: but they didn't become popular until the twenties, about forty years,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. But surely they ate him right now.
Speaker 1: I genuinely don't know. I don't know when they figured
Speaker 1: it out, but I know that that some people, I
Speaker 1: guess some people have figured it out by about the
Speaker 1: turn of the century because the in in around nine
Speaker 1: the entire global coffee market collapsed because Bolivia no Brazil,
Speaker 1: ramped up its production and overproduced and so so supply
Speaker 1: outstrip demand and the prices just collapsed. And that was
Speaker 1: really bad for Hawaii because its economy was built in
Speaker 1: large part on coffee too. So they set up the
Speaker 1: Hawaiian Agricultural Experiment Station, which, if it wasn't affiliated with
Speaker 1: the University of Hawaii back then, it is now, and
Speaker 1: they they started saying, hey, you know what, the government
Speaker 1: will subsidize your land if you start planning macadamia nuts,
Speaker 1: And they actually didn't have very many takers at first.
Speaker 1: Now there, you know, you'd get a five year tax exemption,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, some pretty good dough. But I
Speaker 1: think it just they didn't know that the world was
Speaker 1: gonna go crazy for this stuff yet, so no one
Speaker 1: was throwing their hat in the ring. When they did
Speaker 1: find out that people like them, they really threw their
Speaker 1: head in the ring. They I think it says here,
Speaker 1: from uh nineteen thirty two to nineteen eight um production
Speaker 1: went up from four twenty three acres to over a
Speaker 1: thousand acres in Hawaii, which I don't think we mentioned
Speaker 1: that the climate in Hawaii is just perfect for this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's why they grow it there. Yeah, right, So like
Speaker 1: the cultivars, which I didn't know this, but cultivar is
Speaker 1: actually a combination of the words cultivated varieties. Did you
Speaker 1: know that? Yeah? I thought we talked about that in
Speaker 1: one of our episodes. Maybe we Maybe we did, and
Speaker 1: it's just it didn't stick with me. But so a
Speaker 1: cultivar is basically where we say, hey, we really like
Speaker 1: this plant that's native to Australia. We're gonna really um
Speaker 1: work it over and and and basically breed it into
Speaker 1: a different version of itself. And that's what a cultivar is.
Speaker 1: And with the cultivars that are um have been used
Speaker 1: in Hawaii for you know, a century or so now, um,
Speaker 1: they don't grow very well outside of Hawaii, which from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, I mean, if you read between
Speaker 1: the lines here, Hawaii has basically the market cornered on
Speaker 1: macadamian nuts, which is good for Hawaii and for Hawaii's
Speaker 1: mac damia nut farmers, but bad for the world because
Speaker 1: the global demand for macadamia nuts just keeps growing and
Speaker 1: it's not like the Hawaiian islands are growing anymore. So
Speaker 1: that's it's actually created a bit of a problem market wise,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a little bit. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back, all right. So, if you've ever
Speaker 1: been to the store, you're like, man, I want to
Speaker 1: crush up some sweet macadamia nuts, and I want to
Speaker 1: dredge my fish filet and that stuff and cook it
Speaker 1: up in the oven. You're like McDonald's flay of fish. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: have you ever done that? It's really good? I have.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, there's a restaurant chain called
Speaker 1: Roy's Hawaiian and they have a macadamia crusted that's really
Speaker 1: really good. It's very delicious, very easy to do. But uh,
Speaker 1: you might find that you're spending as much on your
Speaker 1: macadamia nuts as you are your fish because it's expensive.
Speaker 1: They consider it what's called the dessert nut, um, rather
Speaker 1: than what's called a commodity crop, like any old other
Speaker 1: dumb nut that you can just get tons and tons
Speaker 1: of or seed because who can tell what's water anymore exactly.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal. There's quite a few factors that
Speaker 1: go into why. Um, you already mentioned that, you know,
Speaker 1: they really have the market quartern in Hawaii, so that's
Speaker 1: a big deal. Um. It takes seven years for a
Speaker 1: nut tree to produce a crop, so that's obviously going
Speaker 1: to drive up price some when you have to wait
Speaker 1: a long time for an output. Yeah, and we said
Speaker 1: like four to five earlier. It's it's somewhere between four
Speaker 1: and seven. Yeah. Yeah, the person in the interview said
Speaker 1: seven years. But yeah, between four and seven. He may
Speaker 1: have been like inflating the numbers, you know, Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 1: So another thing is there are labor shortages in the
Speaker 1: agricultural field in Hawaii, so you know they're having to
Speaker 1: pay them more and pay them more benefits, so that's
Speaker 1: driving up cost. They're invasive pests that hit macodaemias. They
Speaker 1: felt it COCD cocid. I was gonna say, coxid, coxid.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going with. That's going to drive up
Speaker 1: the price. And the most important thing, probably though, is
Speaker 1: what you were alluding to, which is Hawaii's very expensive.
Speaker 1: The land is really expensive, and because you have to
Speaker 1: wait for to seven years to get a crop like there,
Speaker 1: it's just not feasible to expand all these orchards, so
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, just don't have a ton of growth. No,
Speaker 1: that's right. So like the production and supply is basically
Speaker 1: remaining steady while the demand goes up, which is how
Speaker 1: you get macadamia nuts that go for twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: a pound, and that's a lot of money. So really,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, depending on the fish you're eating,
Speaker 1: it's maybe twice as much as that fish that you're
Speaker 1: you're using the macadamia nuts to crust. Where you think
Speaker 1: I'm bringing some trash gelope in their garbage garbage fish,
Speaker 1: I've heard telapia is referred to as the rats of
Speaker 1: the sea. Have you ever heard that? Uh? No, but
Speaker 1: I definitely um learned a lot over the years because
Speaker 1: in my younger days, I thought like telapi was a
Speaker 1: very fancy thing. Yeah, I I used to like it,
Speaker 1: and then I heard it called the rats of the sea,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I can't eat I can't eat
Speaker 1: this anymore. Although seeing lobster called cockroaches of the sea
Speaker 1: didn't do much to to thwart my love of lobster. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll take a buttered mayonnaise cockroach roll any day. Delicious.
Speaker 1: So our macadamia nuts. You know, they're super high in
Speaker 1: calories and fat, But does that mean they're bad for you? No? No,
Speaker 1: supposedly they're very very good for you. Um, especially if
Speaker 1: they haven't been coated in delicious Maisie chocolate. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't need that stuff. No, you do, you do, but
Speaker 1: just don't count it as like healthy. Have you ever
Speaker 1: had the Maisie chocolate covered Macadamian? No, it is delicious,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying a Macadamian to me, isn't something
Speaker 1: you have to dress upus. Have you had the spam
Speaker 1: dusted macadamia nuts. I think someone sentenced those, Yes, and
Speaker 1: they're amazingly good. Yeah, But if you're if you're just
Speaker 1: talking about there's a plain old natural roasted macadamia nuts,
Speaker 1: it actually is pretty good for you. They're very high
Speaker 1: in calories, but they also contain a lot of really
Speaker 1: good fats, mono unsaturated fats, which are the kind that
Speaker 1: actually lower your LDL cholesterol. They have a lot of carbs,
Speaker 1: but they also have a lot of fiber. And so
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever been on a keto diet like Atkins
Speaker 1: or something like that can tell you it's the net
Speaker 1: carbs that you care about. So you subject the grams
Speaker 1: of fiber from the total grams of carbs, and you
Speaker 1: end up with net carbs, and those are the ones
Speaker 1: that you start counting. And apparently with macodaemia nuts, the
Speaker 1: net carbs are actually fairly low. And because there are,
Speaker 1: they're high in carbs below in net carbs, that means
Speaker 1: the fiber in them, like plant liber is among the
Speaker 1: best stuff you can eat. It keeps you so healthy,
Speaker 1: it keeps your gut by microbiota happy and thriving. Um.
Speaker 1: So apparently macadamia nuts are chock full of them, as
Speaker 1: you would say. Yeah, they are also chock full of
Speaker 1: vitamins and minerals um, manganese, diamond, copper, yeah, which copper
Speaker 1: apparently um aids in in what some sort of transport
Speaker 1: and absorption. Yeah, I can't remember what it was. It
Speaker 1: says in't here and I was like, I didn't know
Speaker 1: copper did that. God bless copper. I wonder people are
Speaker 1: stealing it from houses iron absorption, okay, which is good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people do steal it, don't They from like a c
Speaker 1: units or catalytic converter. Come on, sure that's somebody else's
Speaker 1: catalytic converter. So chock full of despite being high in calories,
Speaker 1: chock full of that good fiber, those good heart healthy
Speaker 1: fats and proteins and vitamins and minerals um, you still
Speaker 1: don't want to see it down and eat a bowl
Speaker 1: full of them, because, like I said, they're very rich.
Speaker 1: But they say, you know to it's a good filling nuts.
Speaker 1: So if if you grab a handful between meals or something,
Speaker 1: that's way better than eating potato chips or some you know,
Speaker 1: processed ultraprocessed foods, right right, Yeah, and yeah, it'll keep
Speaker 1: you full like between meals or something you just made
Speaker 1: me think of, like sitting down and eating an actual
Speaker 1: bowl full of just like he's just sick. Just start
Speaker 1: growing up from overeating macadamia nuts. Can you imagine? No?
Speaker 1: I talked about the oil content though they are seventy
Speaker 1: oil and I did not know this. Here's another little
Speaker 1: factoid to finish us off. You can throw a You
Speaker 1: can throw any nut into water the toilet and see
Speaker 1: if it floats. And if it's got se oil like
Speaker 1: that macadamia nut, it's gonna float. Yeah. And if it doesn't,
Speaker 1: apparently they just go flush yep, washed them down the toilet.
Speaker 1: I don't think mecademia nuts are actually tested in a toilet.
Speaker 1: Think so I'm hoping not. Well, let's say for macademia nuts, Charles,
Speaker 1: I'm what about you, Jerry anything? M That's right? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us on Short Stuff Short Stuff
Speaker 1: Away Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H