The Killing of California Almonds (and why dead foods lead to dead people)

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As NaturalNews reported earlier this year, the Almond Board of California (ABC) has decided that all almonds grown in that state must be pasteurized, irradiated or otherwise killed, even when they're labeled "raw." This is necessary, the ABC tells us, for "safety reasons." But who's safety? Certainly not the safety of the consumer, since dead or cooked nuts are far less nutritious than living, raw nuts. It turns out the focus is on the safety of the industry, and killing all the almonds before allowing them to be sold to consumers is a way to insulate the almond industry from lawsuits stemming from rare salmonella outbreaks that afflict a tiny number of consumers with compromised immune systems.

So rather than take the risk that a few raw almonds might occasionally be contaminated and harm a few individuals, the industry believes that it's better to harm everyone equally by making sure all almonds are pasteurized or irradiated, rendering them nutritionally deficient. Or, to put it another way, the industry will knowingly put out a nutritionally inferior product to the masses in exchange for a little legal immunity of its own.

Of course, the Almond Board of California knows virtually nothing about nutrition and so does not even acknowledge any difference between raw almonds and dead almonds. It makes me wonder if the board is, itself, occupied by expired persons that the few remaining living members simply haven't bothered to remove. They seem incapable of distinguishing between living organisms and dead ones, after all. And yet the differences are tremendous: Cooked almonds have most of their natural phytonutrients destroyed by excess heat (or radiation). Protein content is diminished, fats are molecularly altered and sugars are broken down into less healthy forms. All this seems to be of no concern to the ABC, which remains convinced that cooked, dead almonds are virtually identical to raw almonds in taste, texture and nutrition.

Many almond growers, not surprisingly, are hopping mad at the ABC for this "pasteurization tyranny" that will now require almond growers to kill a perfectly good product before they can sell it to consumers. It's almost like being in the flower business and, after growing beautiful orchids for your customers, some stupid state agency comes along and says you have to cook all the flowers before you can sell them because somebody once stuck their nose in a pot of orchids and sniffed up a creepy crawler. Cooked orchids, alas, are not nearly as beautiful as living orchids.

But the ABC will hear none of it. They're determined to kill their almonds, even if it means compromising the integrity of the entire industry due to the planned false labeling that would classify dead almonds as "raw." Starting in September, when consumers pick up a bag of "raw almonds" at a health food store, they have no way of knowing if those almonds are actually raw, or if they're just pretend raw because the ABC voted to have them pasteurized (cooked) and then labeled as raw. Virtually all almonds sold in North America are grown in California, by the way. This ruling therefore impacts the whole industry.

The ABC does not even seem committed to honest labeling. If the almonds are to be pasteurized, shouldn't they be labeled, "Pasteurized"? It seems stubbornly dishonest to cook all the almonds while labeling them "raw." It's an insult to the consumer, too, but it's also par for the course when it comes to food safety: The FDA, after all, insists that both irradiated foods and GMO foods should not be labeled as such because the labels might "confuse consumers." That's right: Too much information is dangerous to consumers! Knowledge might cause them to make the wrong purchasing decision!

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