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Almonds are not a health food with a small environmental footnote. Almonds are an environmental catastrophe with a health food footnote. Eighty percent of the world's almonds come from California's Central Valley. The Central Valley is a semi-arid desert. Almonds require water in a place that doesn't have water, in volumes that are genuinely difficult to explain with a straight face. A single almond requires roughly four litres of water to produce. You probably had a handful this morning without thinking about it. California has been in a drought cycle for most of this century. The aquifers, the ancient underground water reserves that cannot be replenished on a human timescale, are being depleted to grow nuts for people in London to put in their porridge. The health marketing is persistent. Almonds are, yes, a source of vitamin E and magnesium. They are also high in oxalates: compounds that bind to minerals in your gut and escort them out before absorption can occur. The calcium in almonds is not calcium you're going to get. The magnesium in almonds is fighting the oxalates for your attention and often losing. Almond milk, which is what approximately half of Britain now puts in their coffee on the grounds that it is better for the planet, is almonds and water and a marketing budget. It contains almost no protein, almost no fat, a small amount of calcium added artificially, and enough water usage per carton to make a reasonable person put the packet down. The bees are also worth mentioning. Almond pollination requires the largest managed bee migration in human history. Every February, forty billion bees are trucked across America to California. Somewhere between fifteen and thirty percent of the hives don't survive the process. Almonds are a crop that requires imported water, depletable aquifers, continental bee migration, and a transcontinental supply chain, marketed as a virtuous alternative to the cow in the next field. The cow, for what it's worth, drinks from a stream.

💉 Aerial shot of HUGE queue in Kent, with students queuing to get their meningitis vaccine