IF you’re actually curious, it was because we used to import them, and the importers would dye them red due to discoloration in how they were harvested. Domestic production ramped up in the US and since pistachios didn’t have to travel as far, and because modern harvesting was more mechanized. It was easier to wash, dry, roast and salt them in a shorter time period avoiding the discoloration that required the dye in the first place.
I see, so that’s why they have never been red outside the US
Ok that makes sense because I (a 30+ yo canadian) was so confused.
It’s also about ten years out of date, 25 year olds today probably wouldn’t recognize this
I’m 47 and have never seen this. I only remember pistachios in ice cream but they werent fucking red.
Pistachio ice cream was never red afaik, just the plain/salted nuts in shell. They also used to be way more expensive, so I only remember seeing them a couple times. I mostly just remember the color of my fingers after eating them.
Wait, this is real? I thought this was a joke…
Like “Back in my day, bananas were bright purple, but that breed died out.”
I also figured this was just a “let’s screw with the youth”-type post. We used to eat pistachios all the time when I was a kid (I’m 35) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a red one before today. They were always beige/greenish.
We over-60s remember when pistachios were red, airplane security was non-existent and everywhere smelled like cigarettes.
Hey, I’m not even 40 and I remember getting to check out the cockpit of a plane multiple times. And the brown glass ashtrays at McDonalds.
I’m two decades younger and remember all that except red pistachios. And my family used to eat a lot of pistachios.
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I remember all of that except red pistachios as well.
I’m also 35, and I remember the red ones. But my mom ate a lot of pistachios and sunflower seeds when she quit smoking in the mid 90s
Now smoking is much more financially responsible than eating pistachios
I also thought this was a joke until I read the comments. Pistachios have always been pistachio coloured in the rest of the world.
There’s something very American about drowning a perfectly healthy natural product in brightly coloured dye.
Iran died them before export. Not Americans.
Know your customer
Presumably at their request, or at least their approval, since it doesn’t seem to be a thing in any other country. Most products in the US are imported, don’t pass the buck. “Iran forced it on us” goes against absolutely everything else we know about US consumers.
There are bananas that are dark red to dark purple, those varieties barely get imported to the US. For some reason the import market is 1-variety-of-bananas-at-a-time-until-it-goes-extinct.
Because most banana varieties aren’t very transport stable.
The real answer is that yes, they were red, but no it wasn’t because they were poor quality.
It’s because the world’s largest exporter was Iran, and Iran had a blanket policy of dying their pistachios red.
Nope. It’s real. I was actually thinking about this the other day and just “wondered”. Probably got busy with work and forgot to Google it and then this. I remembered them being red when I was a kid. Now I know why.
many different kinds of bananas and plantains
and even the “original banana-flavour”-banana is still around, the kind is called “grand michel” and can still be bought, but is no longer suitable for mass farming (due to some fungi/bacteria vulnerability)
There are still some dark purple bananas out there. They are usually less than 1/2 the size of a normal (cavendish?) banana. They don’t taste as good to me but many people love them.
So is a US defaultism kinda thing huh
I hate this idea of “us defaultism” being labeled on anything that even remotely involves the US. This isnt us defaultism, this is someone from the US sharing something about the US worded to be for someone for the US. I see this numerous different times with different topics for different countries, but I don’t go “oh this is German defaultism, oh this is Zimbabwean defaultism.” It’s a fun fact that you’re taking too seriously because you have a hate boner for the US, which is honestly fair.
I world disagree because vast majority of the posts from different countries are labeled so (e.g. “In Germany, we had so and so”). Posts from US are almost never labeled so, hence the “defaultism”
Okay but the guy at the start of this comment chain literally did label it
But the post didn’t, which is what I think is being referred to here
That person assumed everyone would be from the US, wich is not true, hence defaultism.
Similiar reason cheddar is orange. Cheesemakers used to die it to cover inconsistences in quality or rot.
At this point, cheddar is almost perfectly homogenous, but people expect it to be orange, so its orange.
What is it’s natural color? I know there is a white cheddar. Is that just undyed cheddar or is it a different variety?
Pale yellow. To make it orange cheddar they just add annatto for coloring.
At least they use natural ingredients to make it yellow and not red #5.
It was less about hiding rot, and more about making it appear to have a higher fat content.
In the same vein… Maraschino cherries aren’t red, they are golden.
Those are cherries that are not yet Marachino. Light-colored cherries are used because the darker ones don’t bleach enough to look good with the dye they use. Maraschino cherries are whatever color they are dyed with (usually red).
So if in the 80s I lived in an area that didn’t import them already, say, Fresno, the joke would go over my head? Because I sure as hell don’t remember red pistachios
Holy shit you are pinning my exact experience. I grew up in Fresno CA and have never even seen a red pistachio in my life.
Well howdy neighbor! I grew up a few (not gonna say the amount) miles north of you. If you’re in your mid 40s we might have competed against each other in sports/music/&c. growing up.
Beautiful area, great food, no?
Excellent food and a good cultural mix of people. Melting pot of America for sure. Awful heat though. I left there years ago. Though I return to visit old friends.
Takes me back. The Naked Gun | Red pistachios scene
I know it’s common for actors to not really eat when filming a scene in which the character is eating but it almost adds to the joke that we never really see them eating the pistachios. They’re just fidgeting with the bags and chewing on nothing.
Warwick Davis (best known for his roles as Wicket the Ewok or Willow) told this story from when he was an extra at the pod race in Star Wars Episode 1.
He had an awesome looking cocktail and he made the fatal mistake of taking three large sips in the first take. And of course he had to repeat that action every take. And they had to do many takes. Trouble was (apart from the enormous amount of liquid) that the cocktail tasted absolutely awful. But as a professional he stuck to his role of course.
Those takes never made it into the movie. They aren’t even available as cut scenes or still photos.
Care to tke dinghy, Frank? No, I took care of that at the press conference.
I’ve been watching that movie for 20 years and I had never understood what he was eating and why he had red lips.
Turns out pistachios used to be dyed in the US.
The shell of the pistachio is naturally a beige color, but it may be dyed red or green in commercial pistachios. Originally, dye was applied to hide stains on the shells caused when the nuts were picked by hand.[51] In the 21st century, most pistachios are harvested by machine and the shells remain unstained.[51] Wikipedia
Well now I’m wondering what those stains were. Did they dye them red because the people picking them had their hands bleeding? We were all just ingesting small amounts of laborer’s blood?
Another commenter said it was the oil on people’s hands
Blood oxidizes to a dark brown/black pretty quickly so a red dye wouldn’t really hide it.
Yes, but as technique improved, there was less blood introduced on average and the pistachios would not be evenly coloured. To preserve the impression of quality, the farms then adopted the policy of wringing the worst performing worker of each batch of their blood to cover the batch in red homogeneously. This motivated improved performance batch on batch (less blood) and eventually, two workers had to be wrung, and at some point the remaining workers got so good that no blood was introduced and a drastic policy change had to take place.
That or automation.
They really should do an episode or How It’s Made on this. Super fascinating!
I found this great place that dyes it with garlic
Was this a regional thing? In my memory, they were all dyed green.
Pistachios are native to Iran, and until the 1970s Iran was the world’s largest exporter. They dyed their exports with a food safe red.
They were dyed because they were hand picked and oils from the pickers hand would cause discoloration. The red dye covered that up.
Machine harvested pistachios didn’t have that problem.
US defaultism
this is mostly a US thing
Nope. I’ve seen them in other countries.
Ate them in Canada for many years, am not American.
Red-dyed ones were all over the middle east when I was a kid, but I’ve never once seen them in the US sold this way. I think it just depended on what
exporterimporter your region mainly used.
I’m 31 and I’ve never in my life seen red pistachios in the UK and I’ve been eating them all my life. What kind of fuck-ass pistachios did you Americans get wtf?
Hey bud I’ve got some bad news for you.
What number do you see in this circle?
I’m pretty sure this is a prank because I’ve gotten tested for colourblindness, but this is a hilarious prank.
On my phone at least I don’t see a number
It’s a 7
- Is that good? Did i get it right?
IT’S PIKACHU!
It’s OK I ain’t seen em either
When I was a kiddo in the 80s, pistachios and other shelled nuts were commonly a winter holiday thing and I rarely ate whole nuts otherwise. I think peanuts, almonds and cashews are the exceptions, but they were almost always without shell. It’s been a few decades, but I remember having red and green (default, I guess, but maybe dyed green as well?) pistachios at Christmas and having to fight with the shells to get them out. They were the tastiest and I didn’t care much for walnuts, chestnuts or pecans.
Searching about ‘red pistachios’ also suggests it was a way to hide lower quality nuts. I’m not fully convinced about that, though, because I remember red dyed things tasting terrible as a kid. I don’t think most modern red food coloring tastes bad, but it used to. The amount of dye that made it on to the edible portion may not have affected the nut’s flavor too much, though.
All that to say: It could have been a marketing gimmick?
We used to get the red ones around Christmas. I just thought they were decorative for the holidays, like Hersey’s kisses changed to Christmas color wrapping
They tasted better this way. I wish they could bring this pistachio back from extinction.
They still exist. They’re just from Iran.
You could always add red food coloring if you have some old bottles from before they took out the toxic
Fun fact, the ketchup chips in Canada were inspired by these
/s
Where did you get that from?
His ass
Lmfao
don’t default to “he”, say “they”
I should have included the tag, I made it up 😄
I’m 34 and have never heard of these.
Was pistachio ice cream also red?
Good question, no and it confused me as a child in the 60s
32, American, never seen a red pistachio
this is only a Posnia thing.
Yet pistachio ice cream has always been green…
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