Peas In A Pod

I’ve found you either love peas or hate them. There isn’t really any middle ground. I LOVE peas! I have always loved my peas. Maybe it’s because I have a lot of British/Australian/Celtic roots, or that peas are very popular in the South, and my mother was a Texan girl. Who knows? But I have always loved peas. I remember one time as a little girl, my parents took my to a nice restaurant. I must have been about 5 or 6 years old at the time, and there wasn’t anything I was interested in on the menu. I was NOT the food connoisseur I am today. But I saw peas were offered on the menu, and I politely asked the server if I could have a big bowl of peas with butter. He looked at me like I was some kind of freak, and I probably was (still am for that matter), but he brought me a big bowl of peas and butter. I was a very happy customer indeed.

Pease are in the legume family, but they are actually technically more of a fruit than a vegetable because the seeds are internal. Legumes are defined as members of the bean family. This family is large and diverse and contains over 16,000 species, including peas and beans of all kinds. In terms of importance to humans, the legume family is second only to the grass family. Every major civilization has had a legume as well as a grain as a part of their support system.

Peas originated in in the Middle East, in the Fertile Crescent, which is now Turkey and Iraq, and were among the first plants cultivated by humans around. They are some of the oldest cultivated crops in human history. Peas spread to Europe during the Neolithic period, around 8000 BC, and the first evidence of the garden pea in Europe is from Switzerland, around 3,000 BCE.  There is evidence that people started eating wild peas about 23,000 years ago.

Originally peas were harvested and dried for storage, rather than eaten fresh. Dried peas were a great source of protein in lean times. Eating fresh peas was a luxury that didn’t really start becoming popular until around the 12th century. But they were an expensive luxury item for most people, and were too expensive for the main populations to eat on a regular basis. People didn’t actually start eating the pea pods until much later again, in the 17th century. Eating fresh peas or “fresh” frozen peas didn’t really become popular until the invention of the food-freezing techniques by the American company Birdseye, in the 1920’s. Today, peas, and legumes in general, are eaten by people around the world, on every continent, with the exception of Antarctica.

Some fun food facts about peas:

1. On average everyone in Britain eats nearly 9,000 peas per year.
2. The world record for eating peas is held by Janet Harris of Sussex who, in 1984, ate 7175 peas one by one in 60 minutes using chopsticks!
3. There are 35,000 hectares of peas grown in the UK each year, equivalent to about 70,000 football pitches. This produces about 160,000 tons of frozen peas – that’s 2 billion 80 gram portions.
4. Global pea consumption is set to reach almost 6 million metric tons by 2026. This represents a growth of 0.4% per year since 2017. India was the top consumer in 2021 with 2.3 million metric tons. China, Ethiopia and Bangladesh followed in that order.
5. Peas are a good source of vitamins C and E, zinc, and other antioxidants that strengthen your immune system. Other nutrients, such as vitamins A and B and coumestrol, help reduce inflammation and lower your risk of chronic conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis.
6. Peas rank #7 on the top healthiest and nutrient packed list of vegetables.

Once again, we pea lovers can all thank Christopher Columbus for introducing the Old World to the peas and legumes from the New World.

I will always say yes please to peas. Have a great day and make everyday great. Stay safe and stay well. ‘Til next time.