Free Republic

Agriculture detectives recently arrested a California man involved in an “elaborate” scheme to steal and resell pistachios, according to KTLA sister station KSEE/KGPE in Fresno. Additional arrests are expected after officers recovered more than $350,000 in stolen nuts and trailers, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office. Detectives were called to Setton Pistachio in Terra Bella on Aug. 14 for a possible cargo theft, said spokeswoman Ashley Ritchie. Arriving detectives found the suspects stole the identity of a legitimate trucking company. They then used that company’s name to secure contracts for the delivery of two tractor-trailer loads of pistachios, worth...

I have a confession to make. I was once an addict. For three years of my life I was a pistachio nut junkie. It started out innocently enough, it always does. Just a few pistachio nuts can’t hurt me, I told myself. How wrong I was. A few nuts led to a few more and then even more until I was irreversibly hooked. I wasted my days away popping those little red devils in my room. My habit was insatiable. I had no scruples when it came to filling my habit. I even stooped to lying to my own family....

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Federal food safety officials are warning consumers to stop eating all foods containing pistachios while they figure out the source of a possible salmonella contamination. The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that central California-based Setton Farms is voluntarily recalling more than 1 million pounds of nuts. No illnesses have been reported, but the plant has been shut down voluntarily since late last week.

Eating a handful of pistachios every day may help heart health, new research has found. The study, published in The Journal of the American College of Nutrition, and conducted by James N. Cooper of George Mason University and Michael J. Sheridan of Inova Fairfax Hospital, looked at individuals with relatively high cholesterol who replaced high-fat snacks with pistachio nuts on a daily basis. When on a diet that involved getting 15 per cent of daily calorie intake from pistachios for four weeks -- which means snacking on one to two handfuls a day -- subjects were found to improve blood...

Iran holds 55% of world pistachio production TEHRAN, April 25 (Mehr News Agency) – Iran holds 55 percent of world's pistachio production, said the National Conference on Pistachio Processing and Packaging Secretary Nasser Sedaqat in Mashhad, the capital of northeastern Khorassan Province, on Wednesday. Accounting for 59 percent of global pistachio exports, Iran stood first, he said, adding that pistachio ranked second to carpet in non-oil exports. Totally 10 percent of country's non-oil exports belongs to pistachio, Sedaqat said. Exporting 150 thousand tons of pistachio in last Iranian year (ended on March 20) earned Iran over $800 million, he added.

I'd like to thank Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for his observation that the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was just a "myth." You just don't see world leaders expressing themselves so honestly anymore — not about the Holocaust but about their own anti-Semitism and the real character of their regimes. But since Iran's president has raised the subject of "myths," why stop with the Holocaust? Let's talk about Iran. Let's start with the myth that Iran is an Islamic "democracy" and that Ahmadinejad was democratically elected. Sure he was elected — after all the Iranian reformers had their newspapers shut...