Scientific Name : Arachis hypogaea Linn
Family : Leguminoseae
Sub- family: Papilionaceae

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.

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