{April Fool's Story!} This is not the typical story I would publish on Healthy Vegan, but as one of the publishers of VegNews Magazine—a national vegan lifestyle publication—I feel it is my obligation. And because almonds are integral to my recipes (and life, for that matter), exposing this news on Healthy Vegan seems like the right thing to do. Let’s just say that a life without my Chocolate Almond Smoothie or Raw Almond Creme Whoopie Pies is a life which has no interest to me.

One day this past February, an unmarked package arrived to the VegNews offices in San Francisco. With some hesitation, I opened the sealed envelope and was shocked to discover the contents inside. An anonymous sender had mailed dozens of pages of email communication between the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Almond Board of California. In a nutshell, the dialogue between the two organizations focused on a single issue: the fact that almonds are not vegan and how they were going to keep the news from going public. In this top-secret correspondence that an insider decided to leak to VegNews, there was immense fear over the mayhem that would ensue should the vegan community learn the truth about their beloved nut. It would “cause an industry meltdown” and “slash the GNP in a way that would forever change the US economy,” according to one top FDA executive. Another person involved in the almond cover-up said that this classified information “MUST REMAIN A SECRET” (he said in all caps) in order “for capitalism—aka, almond milk sales—to prevail.” Under no conditions, they fired back and forth, can vegans know the truth.

As of today, however, their dirty little secret is out. It’s time to take back our cherished seed (yes, almonds are actually a seed) so that our cereal, lattes, and trail mixes remain unscathed and uninterrupted.

So why aren’t almonds vegan? According to documents, growers began injecting trees with animal-based hormones in order to increase the size of the almonds. In one email from that brown-paper parcel, an almond tycoon quips that the growth steroids “increase profit by 200 percent” because of the pumped-up weight. So at $8.99 a pound, it takes a farmer far fewer jacked-up almonds to make the same amount of profit as with unadulterated nuts.

But here’s the real question: What are we, vegans of the world, going to do without our treasured almond milk, almond butter (OMG!), and Justin’s Almond Butter Cups? What about our gluten-free desserts made with almond flour, almond-based ice creams, and those Ritter Sport marzipan chocolate bars? I know we have Brazil nuts and cashews and hazelnuts, but nothing beats the king of them all. Thinking about a life without almonds takes me to a very dark place, somewhere I never want to go. While sometimes I feel like a nut, today I don’t. Something must be done, but in the meantime … Happy April Fool's!!!