Peas can be eaten raw, although they taste better cooked.
Eating raw peas is safe and when you eat the peas raw, it also preserves the natural crunch of the peas as well as their juicy sweetness.
For sugar snap peas and snow peas, you can eat the whole pea pod, which includes the peas and shell raw.
You can just snap off the stem of the peas and pull away the stringy edge before eating the raw peas.
For English and Garden Peas, though only the peas inside the shell are edible, as the pea pod for English and Garden Peas, the pod of the peas are too tough and fibrous to chew.
So you will need to open the Garden Peas and English Peas and pop the peas out and scoop them out to eat.
Raw peas are healthy and are great in salads, mixed with stir fries or even dipped in some hummus.
Just avoid ornamental sweet pea flowers also known as Lathyrus odoratus s their seeds are poisonous.
For canned peas, the canned peas are already cooked and ready to eat as the canned peas are cooked during the canning process.
Although even heating the canned peas up, makes them taste better, but the canned peas can also be eaten and enjoyed raw straight from the can.
Some people may also have difficulty in digesting raw peas, which can be fixed by cooking them.
Raw peas and other raw legumes like lentils and even chickpeas are high in lectins, which are naturally occurring toxins that help the plants be protected from being eaten by animals.
But cooking the raw peas and other raw legumes will fix the issue.
For some people the lectins can cause GI discomfort and can interfere with the absorption of nutrients when eaten.
Even though raw peas and other raw legumes contain the naturally occurring toxin, it's safe for humans to eat, but some people have issues with digesting the raw peas with those naturally occurring toxins.