Eating nuts will make you nutty
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
By now, everybody knows almonds and pistachios are good for you, and that you should eat some every day.
The problem I have is that eating them is no small undertaking. One has to watch one’s consumption, or one will start to fill out in places where one doesn’t want to. You’ve heard of a double chin? Well, too many almonds or pistachios will give you a double tummy.
No offense to our many almond growers, but it’s too easy to find almonds in highly consumable forms. One can buy almonds that have been smoked or made to taste like candy. They have been unburdened from their shells. You can eat them by the handful without having to do much more than chew and lick your lips. The average recommended dose of shelled almonds is about one-fourth of a cup. One can inhale that much in about 30 seconds.
But they make one want to eat more, and soon one is signing up for waddle-a-thons instead of jog-a-thons. One finds oneself joining a gym, although one doesn’t go there very much.
Of course, one can buy almonds in the shell, and they will give one a workout just getting to them. Nature has deemed that almonds are hard to get to. Which would be all right, but almond shells by their nature tend to get all over everything within a radius of 20 feet. If one is at a computer, one has to keep blowing everything off with canned air.
Pistachios are a little better. Nature has arranged it so they arrive partly open. One’s fingers get raw, however, and the shell liners fly all over. It’s eat a nut, grab for the canned air. Hire a small boy to pick up after you.
It’s such a trial to stay healthy.
