Stop Removing Roasted Groundnut/Peanut Skin Before Eating them

If I asked you why you started peeling off peanut skin before eating, you would probably have no legitimate answer.

Most of us just saw other people doing it and we thought it looked cool snapping off that skin with our thumbs and throwing them one after another down our throats.

Since we have proven before herein that humans are very busy when it comes to taking care of their bodies, we know that no one bothers to find out some of the peanut skin benefits.

We just want to look cool but as we already know, cool is not always cool with body health.

It is Scientific

I will let you know that you have been doing it wrong all along by removing peanut skins from those roasted nuts.

This may look like the normal sensational nutritional advice but as a food scientist, I will make sure I back it with credible scientific references.

For clarity sake, I am not saying that your body will be significantly affected when you remove peanut skins, but by the end of it all, you will find out what you have been missing by doing so.

Peanut skin benefits

Just to clarify, we are not referring to the hard outer husk that encloses the peanut. The peanut skin is the thin reddish outer coat that hold together the two nut kernels. It is an edible part of the nut that many nut lovers just don’t feel the need to include it in their peanut diet or recipes.

Peanuts recipes come in various forms.

• It can be eaten raw in salads
• Can be dry-roasted
• It can be roasted when coated with fat or margarine
• Can be boiled
• It can also be made into peanut butter

It may be difficult to remove the skin on raw peanuts. That is good news since that is what all this post is about. Either way, the skeptic peanut users have found ways around it. I have seen them using some peanut skin removing machine that peels off the skin from raw nuts.

This to me is just nuts.

Anyway, peanuts; just like many other legumes are generally rich in essential oils, proteins, vitamin E and fiber. These are good for the body but could be made even better by adding the skin which accounts for about 3 percent of the peanut.

The all Important Antioxidant Resveratrol

Studies conducted in 2009 and another one published in the Journal of Food Science 2012 showed that roasted peanuts with skins contain high levels of antioxidants known as resveratrol (also found in red wine) that has been found vital in lowering blood sugar in the body.

Being a phenolic compound, resveratrol also proved to be a good inhibitor of cancerous cell growth and microbial toxins. If this is not good news, I don’t know what good news is anymore.

 Another recent study in 2011  credited the resveratrol with inhibiting harmful bacteria, Salmonella and E.coli from growing and causing havoc in human bodies.

If that is not enough, the resveratrol antioxidant was found to be important in reducing inflammation and increasing endurance. This is good for people with heart problems and is also the reason behind increased libido after eating peanuts.

You can imagine missing all this just because you want to look cool! Next time you find your thumb insisting on removing the peanut skins, remember this article and throw that whole peanut into your mouth as fast as possible.