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People are eating almonds in unprecedented amounts. Is that okay?

The Atlantic

Le journaliste, JAMES HAMBLIN, met en relation les bénéfices nutritionnels de l’amande et les problèmes environnementaux que sa culture pose en Californie.

 

Extraits

Almonds are already known to help with weight loss and satiety, help prevent diabetes, and potentially ameliorate arthritis, inhibit cancer-cell growth, and decrease Alzheimer’s risk. A strong case could be made that almonds are, nutritionally, the best single food a person could eat.

The meteoric rise of the tree-nut is driven in part by vogue aversions to meat protein and to soy and dairy milks, and even by the unconscionable rise of the macaron. But the main popularity driver is almonds’ increasingly indelible image as paragons of nutrition.

Eighty-two percent of the world’s almonds come from California.

That raises ecological concerns like, as NPR’s Alastair Bland reported last weekend, that thousands of endangered king salmon in northern California’s Klamath River are threatened by low water levels because water is being diverted to almond farms.

Almond theft is not a major issue in California, but as almond skeptic Tom Philpott put it in Mother Jones, the ecological implications of almond farming during a drought are “potentially dire.” Over-pumping of aquifers threatens infrastructure like roads, which stand to collapse into sunken ground. Farmers can fallow vegetable fields during droughts, but almond trees need steady supplies of water.

California’s almond industry is also completely reliant on honeybees to pollinate its almond trees. The industry requires 1.4 million bee colonies, according to the USDA, most of which are brought to the state from across the country. Because of colony collapse disorder, honeybees are a commodity. The almond farmers’ requirements represent approximately 60 percent of the country’s managed colonies. This year many of the mercenary pollinating bees brought to California died due to exposure to pesticides.