Hello there, I'm Monica Reinagle, welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, where we take

a closer look at nutrition trends and headlines, explain what the latest research means for

you, and answer your dietary questions.

And this week, we're going to talk about one of those headlines.

Last week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Christoff wrote an op-ed on the growing water

crisis in the Southwest.

And the situation there is certainly dire, you know, the adjustments that are now going

to be required are going to be painful.

And they might have been a little bit less painful if we, as a society, had been willing

to acknowledge the problem and take action a little sooner.

This current catastrophe has been a slow-motion train wreck that's been unfolding in plain

sight for years, but that's generally how we roll when faced with pending environmental

disaster.

However, in his article and in the headline itself, Christoff unfairly singled out almonds

and by extension, almond farmers as the villain in this story.

The American West was built on cheap water, he writes, that is now running out from underpricing

and overuse just as climate change is amplifying droughts.

But according to Christoff, the problem is not the irrigated golf courses and lawns

and vast suburban developments that blanket the desert.

The problem is farming, specifically almond farming.

California produces a bounty of almonds, he writes, which gulp about 3.2 gallons of

water for each almond, and that of course was the headline.

...