Roasting mammoth pecans provides some benefits. While some studies indicate that raw pecans have fewer calories and have more nutrients packed into them, in general roasting them does not do any real harm and in fact provides some benefits.
How Pecans are Roasted
They are roasted by using a dry heat to cook them, or they can be roasted using oil. Both methods typically involve roasting them in an oven or on a frying pan. Most nuts that you buy in the store have already been roasted, typically in oil. This adds a few calories to the raw pecans, but not many.
Even so most nuts which are sold as “raw” have been soaked or dried to remove harmful substances. What are some of these?
Phytic Acid
Phytic acid is a natural defense that protects the plant from insects or from germinating too soon. As a result, the phytic acid in raw nuts also blocks the absorption of nutrients such as calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc into the body, so you don’t receive the nutritional benefit of consuming the raw pecans. So, soaking them or drying them is not a bad idea since it removes the phytic acid.
Bacteria in Raw Nuts
Recent news articles have highlighted outbreaks of salmonella in raw almonds. Raw pecans also can harbor salmonella–according to sampling by the FDA–these contaminations appear to be few and far between. But roasting them does seem to kill a lot of the salmonella bacteria.
Acrylamide
One of the few drawbacks to roasting raw pecans is the formation of acrylamides. These are chemicals that form pecans during the roasting process, and there have been some studies that have linked them to an increased risk kidney, ovarian and endometrial cancers. But even the increased risk of this occurring, is very low when compared to the health benefits of eating pecans.
Get Your SQF Certified Pecans from Stahmanns Pecans
Probably the best way to assure that you get the highest quality pecans is to purchase them from a level 3 SQF certified pecan grower such as Stahmanns. Give us a call at 844-739-6887 or contact us using our simple online form to get the latest price of pecans or get your pecan questions answered.