Giving up on peanuts.

I've never been a huge peanut fan.  Airplane peanuts taste like salty cardboard to me, so I've always passed when the peanuts were passed my way.   But when I saw a large display of peanuts at the grocery store, I thought I'd give them a go and see what the hype was about. However, I made the rookie mistake of buying raw peanuts.  "Raw" sounded the most organic, if you will, and I knew I didn't need the extra salt.  Raw was clearly the healthy choice, right?

Well, I was disappointed. The flavor was different, and they weren't as crunchy as the peanuts I'd expected. I wasn't quite sold, but I figured it was an acquired taste, so I've been nibbling at them over the past few weeks and convincing myself that I could get used to them rather than waste them.

It was about 3 days ago that I noticed a warning on the bag: for safety reasons, they recommended roasting peanuts before consumption.  Of course I hopped on Google right away and found out that raw peanuts "may contain aflatoxin, a poison produced by a fungus that may be present on unroasted peanuts."  Perfect, I'd been poisoning myself with peanuts I didn't even like!

Needless to say, I roasted the rest of my peanuts (and burnt some in the process).  And they taste much, much better.

All these years I've been worried about my fair complexion and skin cancer.  Turns out my peanuts could be the death of me yet.