The Pistachios is a well known and very popular nut eaten around the world. It is part of the cashew family and originates from central asia and across the middle east.

The countries that are the major producers are Turkey, Iran and the United States and the nut is the fruit of the pistachio tree which is a desert plant that is highly tolerant of saline soil. It can grow very well when it is irrigated with water having 3,000–4,000 ppm of soluble salts

They are used in many different culinary dishes in a wide variety of situations but most notably as a snack.

So can guinea pigs eat pistachios at all?

Lets take a look at their nutritional data, in particular their acidic, calcium, sugar, fat, and fibre content is of particular interest as far as guinea pigs are concerned.

Carbohydrates 27.65 g

– Sugars 7.81 g
– Dietary fiber 10.3 g
Fat 45.97 g
Protein 21.35 g
– lutein and zeaxanthin 1205 μg
Thiamine (vit. B1) 0.84 mg (73%)
Riboflavin (vit. B2) 0.158 mg (13%)
Niacin (vit. B3) 1.425 mg (10%)
Pantothenic acid (B5) 0.513 mg (10%)
Vitamin B6 1.274 mg (98%)
Folate (vit. B9) 50 μg (13%)
Vitamin C 2.3 mg (3%)
Calcium 110 mg (11%)
Iron 4.2 mg (32%)
Magnesium 120 mg (34%)
Manganese 1.275 mg (61%)
Phosphorus 485 mg (69%)
Potassium 1042 mg (22%)
Zinc 2.3 mg (24%)

image wikipedia

As you can see pistachios contain a very large amount of phosphorus, calcium, acidic, and fat content.

So as far as guinea pigs are concerned, they cannot eat them at all. If they do they will harm the greatly. So keep them well away from piggies as they just cant handle the fat content that they content, amongst other things.

They also cant handle other forms of pistachios such as salted pistachios.

Image “Pistachios in shells” by Madmaxmarchhare at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pistachios_in_shells.jpg#/media/File:Pistachios_in_shells.jpg