A closer look
Cashew nuts naturally grow hanging out of the very bottom of a strange, fleshy pseudo-fruit known as a cashew apple. The incredibly toxic shell encasing the single nut contains an extremely caustic substance called anacardic acid, which is highly related to the irritating oils found in poison ivy. This highly aggressive botanical defense mechanism is designed to severely burn and blister the mouth of any animal foolish enough to try and snack on the developing seed. Every single cashew you have ever eaten had to be carefully roasted and painstakingly extracted by hand just to neutralize this violent chemical weaponry. It makes you wonder about the unhinged desperation of the first human who suffered agonizing chemical burns to their mouth and decided that extracting this particular nut was totally worth the immense physical suffering
