Just wondering if sunflower seeds or other nuts and seeds terrorized by the government like almonds are? A local market up the street has really cheap "raw" sunflower seeds and I wanted to get some as an alternative to the very expensive nuts. I also want to try sunflower milk. Anyone try this?

hi nubster

i think sunflower seeds are raw

in my experience

brazil nuts are almost always rancid ( but on rare occasion, they are not)

macadamia nuts seem rancid too though there was a beautiful "spell" when the raw expensive nuts were actually fresh tasting AND raw but now it seems like they are a rip off rancid piece of junk

pistachio nuts are cooked unless they are expensive and touted as raw

almonds ... just forget those ever existed unless you are willing to get them from a raw exclusive vendor

but i always thought sunflower seeds were raw

i think i saw a couple of threads where this was discussed before

and it always seemed to be the consensus

though i'm not 100 percent sure

when they are cooked, they are more brittle crunchy in texture

but when they are raw , they are more chewy in texture

so i can tell the difference

raw pecans are usually raw ( i believe)

and the good ones are crunchy

cashews are steamed even if it says raw

so u have to get them from a source that tout exclusive raw nuts

and they are MORE expensive then the fake "raw" juts

i know

confusing

it should be illegal to label an item "raw" when it is cooked

i have NO IDEA why they do it

but a little dose of humor goes a loooooooooong wayy

g'luck

All cashews pretty much have to be raw, I was under the impression they are poisonous unless cooked...

Cashew are cooked because it is very difficult to remove the skins, they are caustic and boiled to remove them without taking the skin of people's hands. There is a process of removing them without cooking but it results is very expensive cashews.
Now cashew fruit, there's something I'd like to try...

[en.wikipedia.org]

Ah, apparently the toxin I was thinking of is the poison oak allergen urushiol, present on the shell, and in a resin inside the shell, and apparently if the shell isnt removed correctly, it can make the nut inedible as one would get rather sick consuming urushiol... some native american tribes used to actually feed their children poison oak to give them an immunity to it... unfortunately this practice had a rather high mortality rate if I remember correctly...

This article on it was pretty interesting
[www.living-foods.com]
Seems to have about the same information as the wiki article you posted, I just found it to be a little more concise, and since im really tired from lack of sleep, easier for me to read,lol...