Cashews are brittle, so factories used to do this step manually to ensure machines wouldn't break the nuts. The most difficult and dangerous step is splitting open the nut, since toxic oil still coats the drupes. The nuts must then dry under the sun to help draw out some of the shell's caustic liquid. Narrator: Each fruit grows just one shelled nut, called a drupe, which workers separate by hand. Lahiru Dushyantha: Usually, people think that cashew products just come to the market as they are. It's also why they require more rigorous processing than other nuts. It can cause burns, itches, and blisters, which is why unprocessed cashews are considered dangerous to eat or touch. It's found in the plant itself and the brown oil inside a nut's shell. The trees are a member of the same family as poison ivy, and like poison ivy, cashew plants contain a toxin called urushiol.

Cashews grow in tropical locations like India, Vietnam, Ivory Coast, and here, in Sri Lanka. They're one of the most popular and valuable nuts in the world, worth over $6 billion today. In 2017, the world ate 770,000 metric tons of cashews. So how exactly are cashews processed? And is this what makes them so expensive? But without intensive, precise processing, these nuts wouldn't be edible at all. And in the US, retail prices for whole cashews can reach $15 per pound. That's over seven times as much as peanuts. Just 1 kilogram of cashews can cost $10 wholesale. Narrator: Cashews grow in select tropical climates around the world from the bottom of a hanging fruit like this. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

Cashew plant poison