Tagged: Almonds

NPR fail: Reports almonds have fewer calories than thought, fails to mention study was funded by California Almond Board

Photo by Magic Madzik (Madzia Bryll) via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

I’m mostly a fan of NPR’s food blog, The Salt, but a recent post left me sorely disappointed. Allison Aubrey reports on a new USDA study, which concluded that the currently listed caloric content of almonds is too high after determining that some of the fat in the nuts isn’t absorbed by our bodies. Aubrey notes:

Needless to say, the Almond Board of California is pretty excited about the calorie study. It has not directly petitioned the federal government to adjust the official USDA calorie database, but the group is talking informally with federal officials, Almond Board’s Chief Scientific Officer Karen Lapsley tells The Salt.

“If we can improve the information that’s on a food label, I think everybody is better off,” Lapsley says.

What Aubrey fails to point out is that the study’s funding came from two sources, as the original scientific report acknowledges in its author note: “Supported by the USDA and the Almond Board of California.”

Imagine that! A trade group is promoting the results of a study that casts its industry in a more favorable light, and coincidentally the study was funded by the same trade organization. Why worry, though? It’s not like food marketers have overreached ever before in promoting their products, right? Right!?

To be clear, I’m not questioning these particular scientific results (though one study isn’t necessarily the end-all and be-all), but instead I fault Aubrey for the lack of thoroughness in her reporting. Scientists disclose their funding sources so that readers can make their own judgments about how big a grain of salt to take with the findings; I expert NPR to help its readers and listeners do the same.

Almonds, bees, and the price of corn

Photo by pho-tog via Flickr

On Tuesday NPR ran this interesting story from Dan Charles that connected California almonds with bees and North Dakota corn farmers. How?

With some judicious quoting, let me connect the dots: “The Central Valley of California actually grows two-thirds of all the almonds in the world…. During the few weeks this month when the almond trees are in bloom, 1.6 million beehives flood the state’s almond orchards, many of them trucked in from the Midwest [to pollinate the almond trees]…. But the bees can’t stay in the almond orchards. In a few weeks, they’ll have to move on…. In particular, [many beekeepers] drive to North Dakota….  A big reason is a government program, the Conservation Reserve Program, which has been especially popular in North Dakota. Under this program, the federal government rents land from farmers and sets it aside, taking it out of crop production to conserve the soil, save water, and support wildlife. Flowers bloom on that land — alfalfa, clover or wildflowers — all summer long. It’s just what bees need. But that floral feast is shrinking. This is where those high corn prices come into the story. Farmers who used to put their land into the conservation reserve are having second thoughts. Corn is more profitable.”

It’s really a nice piece of reporting, helping the listener/reader get a window into just how complicated and interconnected large-scale, modern food production is. Click here for the audio and full transcript of the story.