Pine Nut Values & Species

Pinon nuts have outstanding nutritional value and compare favorably with pecans, peanuts, and walnuts. They supply all amino acids and provide significant amounts of vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin. The nuts of P. edulis are rich in phosphorus (1 245 mg/kg), which is equivalent to soybeans. Scroll down for an historical and in depth discussion of American pinon pine nuts and the differences in pine nut species.

Join Pine Nut Harvest Mailing list

Yes, we  have American Pine Nuts in 2009 :

P.Edulis (New Mexico Colorado hard shells) and P.Monophylla (Jumbo Great Basin Nuts)  We included an in depth disscussion of the two species at the bottom of this page.  Include a note in your comments on the order form and we will send a free sample of the other species. 

 We want people to discover the difference in American Pine Nut Species. 

There are two types of Pinon Nuts, or Pinyon Nuts. The words are again, technically interchangeable. In common use - at least with respect to American Pine nuts both spellings are used. Goods From The Woods generally talks about pinon as, P.Edulis, New Mexico and Colorado Pinon tree seeds, or hard shell pine nut. We like to refer to Pinyon as P. Monophylla, Jumbo Soft shelled Pinyon Nuts from The Great Basin. Both varieties are included in  the New Mexico Pinon Act which states in part:

See for yourself which American Species of Pine Nuts (Pinyon Pinon, Pinos ) is the best. Pictured P. Monophylla, a cross, P.Edulis

The pretty much covers All American Pinyon Pine Species. There are a grand total of 5 species of American Pinon Trees. Some on line sellers of  New Mexico pinyon are getting all bent out of shape over Nevada or Great Basin Pinyon Nuts on the market. Some sellers of the P.Edulis are making some pretty outrageous and ignorant statements about P.Edulis superiority and I thought it was important to address. 

The Story of the American Pine Nut Market

The Native American Community which harvests the New Mexico variety traditionally had better access to markets.  Before WWII, the trading post systems offered organizational tool to get the P. Edulis or New Mexico pine nuts into the market. After WWII Route 66 traffic ran right through the major rail systems. The Diné and Hopi Nations had an excellent system in place for bringing their harvests to market.

There are a lot of difference between the resources available to the Nations of the Great Basin (Paiutes, Shoshone, Washoe) and those of the Western Platue Region. There were also significantly fewer people in  these nations. There were not as many people picking excess pine nuts (those beyond what the people consumed for substance). The Euro culture in these regions were dominated Mormon Settlers, who really did not want much to do with the outside world. There was never a substantial trade system created and there were simply fewer people.  A lot of the Great Basin (Nevada) became property of the Federal Government.  When I lived there up to 90% of the land was either military or BLM. There was a very long standing disagrement with the Shoshone Nation about land title and tenure. The bottom line was that commercial availability of the Jumbo Soft shelled pine nuts was limited by population centers and transportation routes. Now with the internet and the extensive work done by Goods From The Woods, many people are discovering the difference and are thrilled with the Jumbo Soft Shell Pinon Nuts.

The long and the short of it is, the P.Edulis species had a better supply chain and wider distribution. Until the internet came along, there wasn't much of a distribution system for the soft shelled P. Monophylla nuts, beyond California, Reno and Mormon population centers. That in a nutshell is why the P.Edulis gained a better position in the market than the P. Monophylla or Great Basin Pine nut. They are two very different foods.

The P.Edulis (New Mexico, Colorado Plateau Nuts) are rich in oils and taste wonderfully buttery. Their draw back is the hard shell and the amount of work necessary to extract the nut kernel. The P. Monophylla is very large by comparison and has a sweet flavor. It has a soft shell, which can be snapped between the thumb and the forefinger then rolled like a clove of garlic. They roast at a lower temperature for a longer period of time, than the hard shell. Commercially harvested soft shell pine nuts are cleaned with vegetable oil (1/4 cup per 50 lb bag) in a tumbler to remove pine pitch. The commercial harvest is well organized and most nuts that come to market do so via commercial collection methods. In lean harvest years, there are more weekend collectors and some those nuts make it into the distribution chain. A person can look at a pine nut and tell if it was cleaned or not. If it is covered in pine pitch, it wasn't cleaned and will taste of pine. That is just not true of commercially harvested Great Basin soft shells.

Both species of pine nuts are really wonderful. When I am talking to a raw food client or a person who has not had a fresh wild pine nut, we encourage them to purchase P. Monophylla. They cost less and they are easier to shell. Then we, generally provide a free sample of P. Edulis. That way a person discover the difference. It is our experience that people connect with the first pine nut species they consume. We always ask "where did you eat your pine nuts?" That tells us, which pine nut is right for that client.

There also seems to be another cultural factor.  People from Asia, especially those from China and Japan, love the jumbo soft shell pine nut. My guess is that it is very similar to the "snow pine nut" in their homeland with a softer shell.  People from these regions highly favor the soft shell pine nut, as do raw fooders. 

People who sell only P.Edulis are deeply afraid of losing their market to P. Monophylla. We understand that concern but, cannot embrace fear base marketing tactics. It is not a healthy way to do business.These trees, together with their fruits (the pinyon pine nuts) deserved to be honored.

Fatty Acid Information:

The fats of the piñons are also of high food quality. The most abundant fatty acids in the nuts of P. edulis and P. monophylla are unsaturated oleate, linoleate and linolenate. Pinus monophylla, P. nelsonii, P. maximartinezii, and P. edulis, from the same subsection Cembroides. These grow in semi-arid regions in the Southwest of the United States and in Mexico. They are united by their low content of delta5-olefinic acids (1 % at most). Dehulled seeds are generally rich in oil, and are characterized by high levels of both oleic and linoleic acids, generally with less than 12 % of saturated acids. Delta5-olefinic acids are low as compared to most other conifer species:

Comparison of Pinon Nut Food Values with other pine nuts

Detailed Pinyon Pinenuts Nutrition 100 grams
Water g 5.900 1 0.000
Energy kcal 629.000 0 0.000
Energy kj 2632.000 0 0.000
Protein g 11.570 1 0.000
Total lipid (fat) g 60.980 1 000
Carbohydrate, by difference g 19.300 0 0.000
Fiber, total dietary g 10.700 0 0.000
Ash g 2.260 1 0.000

Minerals
Calcium, Ca mg 8.000 2 2.165
Iron, Fe mg 3.060 2 0.236
Magnesium, Mg mg 234.000 2 15.199
Phosphorus, P mg 35.000 2 20.423
Potassium, K mg 628.000 2 67.103
Sodium, Na mg 72.000 2 4.376
Zinc, Zn mg 4.280 2 0.141
Copper, Cu mg 1.035 2 0.000
Manganese, Mn mg 4.333 0 0.000

Vitamins
Vitamin C, ascorbic acid mg 2.000 0 0.000
Thiamin mg 1.243 0 0.000
Riboflavin mg 0.223 0 0.000
Niacin mg 4.370 0 0.000
Pantothenic acid mg 0.210 0 0.000
Vitamin B-6 mg 0.111 0 0.000
Folate mcg 57.800 0 0.000
Vitamin B-12 mcg 0.000 0 0.000
Vitamin A, IU IU 29.000 0 0.000
Vitamin A, RE mcg_RE 3.000 0 0.000

Lipids
Fatty acids, saturated g 9.377 0 0.000
16:0 g 4.416 0 0.000
18:0 g 2.011 0 0.000
Fatty acids, monounsaturated g 22.942 0 0.000
16:1 g 0.250 0 0.000
18:1 g 21.528 0 0.000
20:1 g 1.164 0 0.000
Fatty acids, polyunsaturated g 25.668 0 0.000
18:2 g 24.882 0 0.000
18:3 g 0.787 0 0.000
Cholesterol mg 0.000 0 0.000

Amino acids
Tryptophan g 0.146 0 0.000
Threonine g 0.367 0 0.000
Isoleucine g 0.450 0 0.000
Leucine g 0.834 0 0.000
Lysine g 0.434 0 0.000
Methionine g 0.207 0 0.000
Cystine g 0.210 0 0.000
Phenylalanine g 0.443 0 0.000
Tyrosine g 0.424 0 0.000
Valine g 0.598 0 0.000
Arginine g 2.251 0 0.000
Histidine g 0.277 0 0.000
Alanine g 0.605 0 0.000
Aspartic acid g 1.054 0 0.000
Glutamic acid g 1.969 0 0.000
Glycine g 0.589 0 0.000
Proline g 0.622 0 0.000
Serine g 0.49