This year has been more challenging that anyone could have ever imagined, in a whole lot more ways that the big obvious pandemic every single person in this world lived through somehow in 2020. Covid-19 has definately brought a whole lot of sorrow & stress to our lives and managed to put the world to a halt, jumpstarting a new era on the timeline of humanity we never thought possible!

History has been made, plans have been altered, lives have been changed; and the planet has managed to rethink a “new normal” that we are all only beginning to understand, taking it in day-by-day, without really grasping what an impact this will all have on our social, economical, and personal growth in the coming years.

In so many parts of the developed world, economic rescue plans were quickly put to action to help citizens & businesses facing hardship as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak. Germany even offered parents who had to stay at home with the kids for the lockdown (& work remotely for about 5 weeks, without necessarily losing their jobs) an additional one-time Kinderbonus of €300 per child; a part of the €130 billion boost to revive the economy. Peanuts, it seems!

Sadly though, most of the human population (NOT living in first world countries) is in dire need of these rescue plans – living in conditions unimaginable to those reaping the benefits of an extra bonus thanks to Covid-19 – it’s a matter of life or death, really! And they aren’t even close to getting peanuts at this point.

A while back ago, comparing money to peanuts became a thing. Basically describing an amount of money so small & not worth working for or considering, using the term ‘peanuts’ became a common expression to indicate earning low wages or practically nothing…the word itself was always used for something small or paltry, but it became a financial term in the 1940s in the United Kingdom. Earning or working for peanuts for so many people today, though, means putting a bit of food on the table for that day, and that is a cruel & sad reality in today’s world.

If we actually lived on peanuts alone, though, this legume crop would in fact be enough to end world hunger; the world would be a much better place! World annual production of this super food was 44 million tonnes per year in the past decade! As a legume, the peanut really belongs to the botanical family commonly known as the bean or pea family. However, they are so similar in taste and nutritional value to ‘tree nuts’ such as chestnuts and hazelnuts, that they are usually categorized as ‘nuts’ for culinary purposes and in common English more generally – since, using the criterion that the botanical definition of a nut is a “fruit whose ovary wall becomes hard at maturity”, the peanut is not a nut. Additional nut frauds include cashews, walnuts, pistachios, and almonds, which botanically speaking are classified as seeds of the trees they grow on!

These tiny-but-mighty snacks, though, sure pack a huge punch, helping you fight heart disease and boost your brainpower. So this should definitely not stop you from chowing down on these nutritional superstars, go ahead, grab a handful. Work for peanuts!