salted peanuts (1 Viewer)

[ticomique]

Hi ! Greetings from snowy Northeastern Québec ! The peanuts in their shell we buy at the grocery stores apparently have 1% salt, somehow. Have been feeding birds with them for years, never seen one sick or dead chickadee or blue jay. Any opinions about this ? Thanks all, Happy Holiday season !

 

[Julie50]

Where did you get the figure of 1% from?

 

[PYRTLE]

Not sure why they would add salt, as it is highly unlikely to penetrate through to the kernel. Have you tasted one? And they are packaged and retailed for human consumption?

 

[ticomique]

Where did you get the figure of 1% from?

Hi ! Greetings from snowy Northeastern Québec. Someone on a Facebook Bird lover's group wrote that salted peanuts are not good for birds. I am 76 and have been feeding chkadees, blue jays and other kinds of birds for 30 some years, and have never encountered a sick or dead bird. BUT I still had an empty bag of salted peanuts in the garbage pail and yes, they are salted. I got them from METRO, a 950 store grocery chain here in Canada. Broke one open, tasted it and don't you know it DOES taste salty. Don't ask me how they get the salt inside the shell, but they do. This will not deter me from feeding them peanuts. But the guy has a point ! I live 6 meters from route 138 in a curve, with up to 12,000 vehicles passing by my house every day in a 90 KPH zone. This causes a lot of salt spray to splash on my front gallery and most parts of the house from Nov to May. I have Mourning Doves ingesting road sand spread with the salt all winter to digest, ravens eating road kill carcasses, and crows too. I have taken pics of the peanut bag. Hope I can post them. Have a merry Holiday season. Gary-James Callaghan, Baie-Saint-Paul, Qc, Can.

 

[PYRTLE]

13% sodium. Obviously these are aimed at human dietary needs. I would imagine they are immersed in a brine / chemical solution before being roasted.

If you are going to feed peanuts then the advice from our UK conservation organisations is for them to be raw and unsalted. Doesn't matter if they're in shells but normally they are packaged as just the kernels. And they should be considerably cheaper than the dry roasted ones.

 

[ticomique]

13% sodium. Obviously these are aimed at human dietary needs. I would imagine they are immersed in a brine / chemical solution before being roasted.

If you are going to feed peanuts then the advice from our UK conservation organisations is for them to be raw and unsalted. Doesn't matter if they're in shells but normally they are packaged as just the kernels. And they should be considerably cheaper than the dry roasted ones.

Thank you. Glad you were able to establish the right percentage. I have a feeing this corresponds more to human taste than to human needs. The challenge will be to find some in their natural state.

 

[Julie50]

Hi

Thanks for the clarification - I could do the sums …. in fact….here we go! The quoted mass of “sodium“ is 300mg in 50g, so that would be 0.6g in 100g Or 0.6% by mass. But ”salt” is sodium chloride! Sodium having a relative atomic mass of 23 and chlorine 35.5. Assuming 0.6g of ”sodium“ is not salt, but just the element sodium present, that would be 0.0261 moles which would give an equivalent mass of sodium chloride of 1.53g per 100g or 1.53% by mass of sodium chloride!

Chemistry calculations I can do - how that affects US garden birds I leave to someone who has more experience. However personally I would not use peanuts at all! Fat balls and seed mix for me

 

[PYRTLE]

Chemistry calculations I can do - Hope you're more fun at parties!

However personally I would not use peanuts at all! Why, out of interest? I don't feed them from Spring to Autumn but have always considered them a high fat and protein source for garden birds.....and bakers quality from a feeder.

 

[Julie50]

With The birds we tend to get in Birmingham, I find peanuts are not taken whole and tend to go mouldy when pecked at by smaller beaks.

 

[PYRTLE]

Agree in stop offering peanuts if they turn mouldy.

 

[ticomique]

Hi

Thanks for the clarification - I could do the sums …. in fact….here we go! The quoted mass of “sodium“ is 300mg in 50g, so that would be 0.6g in 100g Or 0.6% by mass. But ”salt” is sodium chloride! Sodium having a relative atomic mass of 23 and chlorine 35.5. Assuming 0.6g of ”sodium“ is not salt, but just the element sodium present, that would be 0.0261 moles which would give an equivalent mass of sodium chloride of 1.53g per 100g or 1.53% by mass of sodium chloride!

Chemistry calculations I can do - how that affects US garden birds I leave to someone who has more experience. However personally I would not use peanuts at all! Fat balls and seed mix for me

Peanuts are, as far as I'm concerned, peanuts in comparison to what else I buy to feed the birds. Three to four 20 kg bags of sunflower seeds and dozens of suet cakes . The peanuts are hidden here and there by the blue jays and a few resident squirrels. I guess 20 shells would be a good assessment of how much I dish out daily. Still, I wil try to find unsalted, whole peanuts somewhere. Your calculations brought me back to the 60's, hahahaha Good souvenirs of Classical College days. Merci bien !