Why Cashews And Other Foods Are So Confusing The reason we think of cashews as nuts rather than drupes is ... urushiol— the same irritant found in poison ivy and poison oak.

The Accra street vendor looks at me, bemused. I'm trying to establish how the rather flimsy 30g bag of roasted cashew nuts she's selling, beside a sweltering highway in Ghana's capital ...

They are technically not nuts but seeds, originating from the cashew apple. The cashew seed is encased in a hard shell that contains a toxic resin called urushiol, which must be carefully removed ...