Christmas nuts: some you invite, some invite themselves, and some you bring home with the shopping. Which nuts should make it onto your Christmas list this year?(Test: cashews and other nuts)

Publication: Choice (Chippendale, Australia)

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COPYRIGHT 2004 Australian Consumers' Association

There are always plenty of nuts around at Christmas, and when it comes to the ones you put on the table (rather than seat around it), our taste test of cashews revealed some good-value winners.

We asked around 250 of our Home Testers to try 20 brands of cashews, looking for the tastiest. While they didn't quite get top marks for taste, two of the cheaper brands--COLES FARMLAND Salted cashews and WOOLWORTHS Roasted and salted cashews--still got the thumbs-up from our taste panel. That's good news for stretched Christmas budgets and they're our Best Buys. For how all the brands we could find in Sydney supermarkets and healthfood chains stacked up, see the Cashew nuts table, far right.

We also took a look at mixed nuts: which roasted and salted mixed nuts are packed with peanuts, and which ramp up the value with a good proportion of more interesting nuts like cashews, almonds and brazils?

We picked our way through three packets of each brand, separating and weighing the peanuts and beer nuts (which are simply peanuts with the skin left on) and the rest. The table, below right, gives the rundown on where the peanuts were mostly hiding. (We didn't include 'no peanut' varieties.)

If you like peanuts to be...

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