It's like 20% empty shells! WTF! So I look under the bag hoping to find the holy grail of de-shelled pistachio heaven... But nothing!

This is Pistaccio Gate out in the open. Now I have to look over my shoulders.

Update: the bag after this one has not yet produced the same disparate amount of empty shells. It must have been a fluke!.... Or so I think!

Hmm ok one time is a statistical coincidence.... But here, no matter how many you pick:

Did they fall out and the nuts are at the bottom of the bag?

I wanna see you daily pictures till the end of the month.

This is why I always remove the shells at the store before they weigh the bag!

eat half the bag and return them for a refund

I'm not sure where you buy pistachios but Costco and many other stores in America seal them at set weights.

Nope! No delicious bottom!

Thank I will!

Hilarious!

i always wanted a warranty for my pistachios, especially if they don't open

On the other hand, last I checked, they were SO much cheaper at costco than the grocery store that I wouldn't complain about some empties.

But the empty ones are fun to snap closed! I see this as a win

Ok, you are not wrong.

Don't sell yourself short

I see I'm being summoned...

I think I must have got your loose ones because I had about that many extra.

Bulkbarn in Canada, maybe? But that's weird to do imo.

Welcome to Costco, I love you

Looks like they're cheaper because a large portion are empty.

Probably not worth buying these.

I've hated pistachios ever since I was on a bus and I saw a guy eat a full bag of them put the shells on his lap then let them fall when he stood up.

Fucker littered the bus with his left overs.

I feel like your hate maybe a wee bit misplaced here…

No I'm good
Never really liked nuts anyway but this cracked it for me

If I saw someone handling every single pistachio and setting some back after getting their booger hooks on them I would complain to the store.

Brought you out of your shell?

Crushed my soul

Pistachio market is getting squeezed by drought in California, and the second largest exporter, Iran, is having a bit of trouble getting product out of the country.

Same. I'd probably complain to the person directly.

Maybe I'd even stick my hands in their nutsack bag of shelled pistachios before they purchase them to see if they like their nuts being fondled handled by strangers.

If they are more than 25% cheaper it’s still worth it if you are already at a Costco.

Never realized the incentives these ghouls have to add empty shells to the mix to bulk the bag.... Diabolical. If it isn't intentional, venture capital is watching and it's certainly now their next rock to squeeze blood from.

At my Costco, pistachios are $20 for a 48 oz bag, so 41 cents an ounce. At my local Ralph's, they're $11 for a 16 oz bag, so 68 cents an ounce. So the grocery store is 67% more expensive. That's way more than the percentage of empty shells we're seeing, and I doubt the shells weigh as much as the nuts.

That's nuts!

I usually find a bunch of shelless ones in the bottom of the bag.

So... consider that if they scoop them one bag at a time from a large container nobody is adding extra shells, some of the nuts fall to the bottom of the container.

That means some bags at the end of each batch will be lucky and others (like this one) won't. The math is probably something along the lines of "how can I optimize the cooking and prep process to keep at least XXX percent of nuts in the shells?" and not "How can I guarantee each bag has statistically equal nuts and shells" or "Mwahahaha how can I source empty shells to fill 20% of all bags!"

I'm all for a good conspiracy theory, but I can practically guarantee you that no one is inspecting every singe nut looking for empty shells to bulk up the bag.

Other than a certain amount of each batch that is kept aside for quality control testing, the bags are filled by machines on a conveyor belt. I doubt a human even looks at them until they're at the final stage and ready for the last quality control test.

It's completely random how many empties there will be in a bag. OP was just unlucky this time.

It's ok though, pistachios aren't nuts.

They don't need to. If they passed the nuts over a shaky conveyor to collect those tasty expensive deshelled nuts, they'd have bulking shells for free.

Also, the unshelled nuts might still be in the bag. Shit shakes loose, ya know

Not a single free floating pistachio bean anywhere. But empties galore! WTF!

I mean if I want to buy shells I'll do that.

You are seriously underestimating the industrial factory technology at scale to do quality control when processing food. If they wanted, they could literally remove individual ants from the flow of 5 ton sacks of coffee beans, in a sustainable way. They literally have lasers and sensors to find undesirable product and knock it out of high speed belt flows of fruits and vegetables with micro targeted jets of air and things like that.

You're mistake is is that you are thinking of how YOU would sort these yourself, that's part of our problem as humans, we have a bit of a narcissistic bias. Similar to trump people that think, " he's doing well enough... I'd do a but better probably, but he's doing okay" they are comparing to themselves as baseline, when they aren't even near qualified either.

See my other response, it's very much not random. Every processed product in the modern world is hyper optimized for profit. At the least , they know the average weight of shell with nut and without in grams or something smaller. Also likely a hopper with high speed cameras to count yield per bag to maintain exact profit margins. There could be, and likely is, a scale at the end of line that weighs and would five a fairly faithful estimate of empty percentage per bag. And all that is automated.

Problem is that infrastructure likely exists more or less and they have just turned up the acceptable percentage of empties probably. Like anything else, VC pushes those lines quarter after quarter until people might revolt (or in another time, an administration regulates an acceptable amount of "defective" product).

i peel my bananas first for the same reason 🤠

While that is true that factories CAN be extremely detailed in their process, everything is driven by cost efficiency. If it is more efficient to process a large batch instead of a small one, what happens in this thread is what you get. There is no reason to say "oh they could remove those shells!" because it's only a thing worth doing if it's cost effective.

So I guess yes you're right it's fixable but only if it's a problem people care about. I think it's fundamentally crazier to think you can figure what is profitable for pistachios from a thread by some rando better than the company that makes them.

Maybe it's a conspiracy, probably it's process optimization.

Starting to think they throw 15%-20% in there on purpose...

Maybe it was a bad batch?

Ouf! That's quite bad yeah...

I found it! Behold! The pistachio that fell out of the shell!

XD

As a sidenote: you go through those everyday!? Is that good for you? I'm worried the real problem here might not be the pistachio ration inside the bag.

I'm vegan and those are unsalted. It's my source of protein. It's either that or beans. It's the good cholesterol too.

Many places recommend 1oz. That's around 50 pistachios.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/pistachios-11706406

Makes sense!