Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva Podcast. I'm your host

Monica Reinagle. Thanks for tuning in. A friend recently related to me a conversation that she'd had with her barista at a well-known

coffee chain. The barista confided that she always bristles when her customers order

almond milk for their lattes because she said growing

almonds waste so much water.

You may have heard similar things about almonds and their negative impact on the environment.

For example, maybe you've heard that it takes a gallon of water

to produce a single almond.

And perhaps, like my friend's barista, you've even been avoiding almonds or almond milk out of concern

about their water usage. But as is so often the case, there's a little more to this story. It's true that almonds are a very

water-intensive crop, but not really more so than most nuts. If we were all to switch to pistachio milk or walnut milk and

prompting farmers to start growing more of those nuts instead of growing so many

almonds, we'd still be using about the same amount of water.

According to data published in the June 2018 issue of the journal Science,

the non-derry alternatives that have the lowest water footprint are soy and oat milk. But nut milks

still use significantly less water to produce than cow's milk. And in terms of

greenhouse gas emissions, almond milk may actually be one of the better choices

because almond trees trap so much CO2 in their leaves more so than other crops.

But getting back to water issues, the reasons that almonds use such a large share of California's water supply is that they make up such a large share of California's agricultural economy.

The growing conditions in California are perfect for almonds.

Plus, almonds are a really high value crop.

Farmers can earn far more per acre growing almonds than they can

...