Had Your Three Almonds Today?

With the stock market dropping faster than plunging hemlines, some boomers are investing in almonds rather than stocks, bonds and treasury bills.

In California, where 80% of the world's almonds are grown, the almond market is looking a lot better than investing in the housing market right now.  "Everyone knows that almonds are a great investment," says Monterey, CA, restaurateur Dominic Mercurio, who has teamed with football commentator John Madden to purchase acres of almond orchards, spending more than $3 million since they bought their first 25 acres in the late 1990s.

While some investors have been lured to almonds because of agricultural tax breaks, the recent rush has mainly been spurred by a boom in demand, partly fueled by high-protein diets such as Atkins and South Beach.  The industry has also assiduously marketed the cousin of the peach and the plum, touting it as filling, high in antioxidants that fight colon cancer and good for the heart.  The upshot: Between 2001 and 2006, the industry says, annual consumption of almonds in the U.S. grew by more than a quarter, exceeding a pound per person.

A report in the April 2001 issue of the medical journal, Cancer Letters, supports the theory that almonds may possess cancer-preventing qualities.  Paul Davis and Christine Iwahashi of the University of California at Davis studied the effect of eating almonds on colon cancer in rats.

They fed the rats whole almonds, as well as almond oil and almond meal.  They also injected a chemical that induces cancer.  After twenty-six weeks on the almond diet, they checked the colons of the rats to see whether cancer was developing.  For the control groups, the researchers used rats that were fed either wheat bran or cellulose, two high fiber foods that can help prevent cancer.

The whole almonds, the almond oil and almond meal all had cancer-preventive effects.  The whole almonds were especially effective, and were better at inhibiting the cancer than either wheat bran or cellulose.  The authors suggest that a combination of compounds only found in the whole almonds is necessary for the full effect.  They conclude that "almond consumption may reduce colon cancer risk and does so via at least one almond-associated lipid component."

Almonds are mentioned somewhat infrequently in the Edgar Cayce readings, yet, according to his rather definite statements, apparently have a very important job to do in the metabolism of the human body.  Cayce makes no statements about the physiology of the action of the almonds, although in one reading he did state that within the almond was a substance that he called a vitamin.  He stated that taking two or three almonds a day would prevent a tendency toward cancer.

That's why I eat three almonds daily.  Do you?

Source: The Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2007