Hi,
I didn't read much science this last month. I had knee surgery instead (the pic above shows the cool leg squeezing machines and icing machine I got). But I've got a review of one article on freshwater protection in Chile, AND as a treat a guest review from Randy Swaty and Sarah Bixby of an article comparing the pros and cons of different kinds of nuts! They even included some discussion questions. If you are reading this and want to do a guest review just let me know!
If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://bit.ly/sciencejon (no need to email me).
NUTS! (review by Randy Swaty and Sarah Bixby):
Walnuts for the win? Well, it depends. Being a conscientious consumer is challenging. Just try to figure out which nuts are most sustainable. A Google search turned up typical top-10 lists and shallow articles. Google scholar pointed us to Cap et al., 2023 which assesses 8 nuts and 2 seeds (see article for specifics) against 3 environmental, 2 nutritional and 6 social criteria. We did not come away with a clear answer, but learned: 1) indicators we thought of (e.g., transportation and packaging) were not included (see citation they reference Tillman and Clark, 2014), 2) walnuts and sunflower seeds generally ranked the highest with cashews ranking the lowest (by far), 3) Figure 5 was a favorite, where the authors rank nuts based on ‘regret’. Surprisingly, while just two of the eleven criteria are nutrition criteria, chestnuts’ poor nutrition ranking knocked the tree nut right out of the least regret category and 4) seeds outperformed nuts on nutritional criteria-we’ll be looking for more data on seeds. The authors also present some hope (mostly-as usual there’s exceptions) in Figure 6 where they report “improvement” in 10 of their 11 criteria if consumption patterns followed the baseline rank order.
Jon's side note: In the first draft of this review they also had discussion questions; we cut them for brevity but I loved the idea and the curiosity this article spawned for them! Email me if you want to be connected w/ Randy and Sarah to follow up :)
FRESHWATER PROTECTION:
Weber Salazar et al. 2024 is a legal analysis overview of freshwater protection in Chile. While Chile lacks a national river conservation system, there are several relevant policies including: the water code which recognizes water as a public good and establised theoretically required minimum ecological flows (via updates in 2005 and 2022), regulations of protected areas and forests, urban wetlands law (for estuaries near urban developments), and recreational fishing law. Water quality standards are weak (limiting both which pollutants are covered and where they apply). The 2022 new constitution offered a new water framework, but it was rejected (as was another consitution in 2023 with much weaker environmental protection). Granting water rights for environmental purposes has been quite limited but there are efforts to improve that. The authors also surveyed 1,612 Chileans (plus 30 semi-structured interviews) about attitudes towards river and river protection. 85% said they had a connection to a specific river (80% a river near where they lived. with tourism the most frequently mentioned connection followed by cultural and a source of water), and 99% of respondents said protection of Chilean rivers was necessary (44% favored legislation for specific rivers, 33% preferred constitutional protection, and 22% favored protected areas). There's a lot more interesting results here (more than I can fit in a short summary) and I recommend a closer look to anyone working in Chile.
REFERENCES:
Cap, S., Bots, P. and Scherer, L., 2023. Environmental, nutritional and social assessment of nuts. Sustainability Science, 18(2), pp.933-949. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-022-01146-7
Weber Salazar, P., Macpherson, E., & Willaarts, B. A. (2024). Towards durable legal protections for rivers in Chile. Water International, 00(00), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2024.2346394
Sincerely,
Jon
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