Its harvest is labor intensive. “Extracting walnuts is incredibly labor intensive and this drives up prices,” said Jason Kong, operations manager at Tridge, a market intelligence company that focuses on food and agricultural products.
Pine nuts
are expensive because they contain high levels of essential fatty acids, including omega-3.Nowadays, pine nuts are eaten out of the bag or roasted and used as an additional ingredient for various dishes. The pineapple is not the only cover for the seed; each pine nut has a second shell that must be removed before eating.Pine nuts are one of the most expensive nuts on the market due to the time needed to grow them and the effort involved in harvesting the seeds from their protective shell. This condition, called “pine nut mouth” or “pine nut syndrome,” means that simply eating pine nuts makes the other foods you eat taste bitter and metallic. The majority of pine nuts in the United States are exported from China, which produces 8.1 megatons of delicious nuts each year, according to Kong. Pine nuts aren't as common as other nuts, but demand continues to rise in the United States and Europe.
You may be familiar with pine nuts, the delicious little teardrop-shaped nut often used to make pesto and to cook other dishes. The unique flavor and texture of pine nuts make them one of the most versatile ingredients in Italian cuisine. Unlike other nuts, such as walnuts, walnuts and walnuts, which come in the form of a shell and are easily broken with a nutcracker, pine nuts are encased in a thick layer of scales that must be removed before peeling them. Pine nuts are used in a wide variety of dishes, as well as in pesto sauce, and must be removed manually from pineapples by hand.
The first humans of the Paleolithic period must have needed more than a little effort and creativity to extract the pine nut and verify that the inside of the pineapple was not only edible, but that it was delicious, but that, according to food scientists, pine nuts have been part of the human diet for about 2000 years. For all these reasons, many health experts have called pine nuts “the most nutritious nut”. The Kitchn also warns that pine nuts go rancid quickly, so it's best to store fresh nuts in the refrigerator until you're ready to eat them. The Mexican company Abadía Retuerta says that once the pine nuts are removed, they are classified according to their size before brushing, washing and then packing them and ready for distribution.
Grimo added that it's not the same as climbing a walnut tree, for example, since the branches of the pine tree are tighter.