Time Goes Nuts for Almond Butter

A recent installment of TIME magazine’s food/health series “Should I Eat This?” finds all of its dietitians recommending almond butter due to its lack of carbs, high-fiber content, abundance of protein, and healthy fat, all of which leave consumers full and satisfied. “Churned almonds have all of the nutrition of almonds, and that’s very good,” David Katz, founding director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, said. “But be careful that additions of salt, sugar, and other oils haven’t hitched a ride.” Something else the article addressed? Almonds are not the problem when it comes to the drought. Two of the experts surveyed emphasized that the environmental impact of almonds is no greater than everyday activities or animal agriculture. “If nuts are replaced even by dairy, the effect on ground water use and antibiotic pollution by feedlot industrial agriculture is orders of magnitude greater,” David Jenkins, Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Metabolism at the University of Toronto, said.