De-oiling of peanuts to yield two potentially useful foods

Many people are enthusiastic about the future of peanuts. There are two important reasons for predicting a substantial growth in the peanut industry. They are: 1. The demanding food needs of the rapidly growing nations of the world. Population explosion throughout the developing countries is creating alarming food problems, particularly the need for protein. 2. Rapid conversion of food habits in the United States and in some foreign countries to the acceptance of convenience foods, instant food preparation, diet foods, prepared nutritious confections, and snack foods. Peanuts, also known as groundnuts, are a basic cash crop of economic importance to farmers in the Virginia Carolina area. Southeastern area, and Southwestern areas of the United States. Although, in nearly all foreign countries, peanuts are crushed for their oil, in the United States most of the peanuts are eaten as such. The peanuts produced domestically are consumed mostly in the form of roasted nuts, peanut butter, and candy (21).* The market for edible peanuts might be expanded somewhat and at the same time a new, useful food item might be obtained if all or part of the oil could be removed from the raw peanuts. Defatted peanuts were first investigated by Willich and Feuge (38). This early work established the general conditions of extraction which were later used in pilot plant investigation at the Southern Regional Research Laboratory (26) . Other factors which helped initiate these investigations were that the shelf life of this new peanut product was expected to be appreciably extended by minimizing oil rancidity, use of defatted peanuts by haemophiliacs to control bleeding (7), and that the development of a new product would increase utilization of peanuts (3). The objectives of this study were (1) to compare two processes of defatting peanuts, solvent extraction, and hydraulic pressing, and (2) to investigate the possible development of a new peanut product with a high protein and low fat (low calorie) content.