like pink salt, almond milk is strictly for suckers

motherjones |  Now, I get why people are switching away from dairy milk. Industrial-scale dairy production is a pretty nasty business, and large swaths of adults can't digest lactose, a sugar found in fresh dairy milk. Meanwhile, milk has become knit into our dietary culture, particularly at breakfast, where we cling to a generations-old tradition of drenching cereal in milk. Almond milk and other substitutes offer a way to maintain this practice while rejecting dairy. (Almond milk has been crushing once-ubiquitous soy milk, perhaps partly because of hotly contested fears that it creates hormonal imbalances.)

All that aside, almond milk strikes me as an abuse of a great foodstuff. Plain almonds are a nutritional powerhouse. Let's compare a standard serving (one ounce, about a handful) to the 48-ounce bottle of Califia Farms almond milk that a house guest recently left behind in my fridge.

A single ounce (28 grams) of almonds—nutrition info here—contains six grams of protein (about an egg's worth), along with three grams of fiber (a medium banana) and 12 grams of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (half an avocado). According to its label, an eight-ounce serving of Califia almond milk offers just one gram each of protein and fiber, and five grams of fat. A bottle of Califia delivers six eight-ounce servings, meaning that a handful of almonds contains as much protein as the mighty jug of this hot-selling beverage.

What this tells you is that the almond-milk industry is selling you a jug of filtered water clouded by a handful of ground almonds. Which leads us to the question of price and profit. The almonds in the photo above are organic, and sold in bulk at my local HEB supermarket for $11.99 per pound; this one-ounce serving set me back about 66 cents. I could have bought nonorganic California almonds for $6.49 per pound, about 39 cents per ounce. That container of Califia, which contains roughly the same number of nonorganic almonds, retails for $3.99.

backlash against those eschewing (as opposed to chewing) contemporary wheat

NYTimes |  The swelling ranks of Americans adopting gluten-free diets have given rise to another hot trend: people calling the whole thing a bunch of baloney. And then requesting that the baloney be sandwiched between two pieces of white bread. Served with a cookie for dessert.

David Klimas has a friend who recently went gluten-free, a development that the 46-year-old real estate sales manager greets with a slow eye roll. He thinks that the gluten-free thing is just a fad, promoted by food companies “as a way of making money.”

“In the ’50s, everyone had ulcers,” he says. “Then, it was back problems. Now, it’s gluten.”

Gluten abstinence has grown dramatically over the past several years. According to a survey by the NPD Group, a market-research firm, nearly a third of adults say that they’re trying to either eliminate or cut back on gluten, a combination of proteins found in wheat and other grains. And this movement has spawned a burgeoning food industry valued at at least $4 billion and perhaps more than $10 billion — and climbing. 

Entire aisles at grocery stores are dedicated to the diet. Restaurant chains including Bob Evans, Hooters and, impressively, Uno Pizzeria and Grill, offer gluten-free­ menus. Trade shows devoted to gluten-free products have popped up nationwide. Bars use menu icons to denote gluten-free beers.

All of which makes some people want to bang their heads against a flour mill.

“I don’t get it,” Klimas says of his friend’s decision to cut gluten from his diet. “How can you all of a sudden be gluten-free? He’s 45. We’ve been friends for 19 years. Sometimes, I think it’s just for him to be cool in front of the waiters.”