The reason is, so they can put less pistachios inside the bag of pistachios because, the shells take up more than half the bag. So, instead of 1 bag, they can make 3 bags out of the same amount of pistachios, so its 3 for the price of 1 and they save money, because they dont have to make people open the pistachios by hand and throw out the ones that dont have a crack in it they just jam it in the bag, and make US do it. WE should get payed for cracking open the shells! BLAHHHHHHH!