This is a story of how 40 g of walnuts becomes 28 g. 

BBC's website in their "Health" section has reported that doctors from the Hospital Clinico in Barcelona are recommending eating an ounce (28 g) of walnuts a day to cut the damage from fatty foods.  The full story can be found at this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6036409.stm

Like anyone reading this group, I was suspicious.  Ounces in Spain?  Nah.  Somewhere along the line someone decided to dumb it down from some initial metric value.  I was looking for 25 grams, but I was surprised when I found that the original value was actually 40 grams.  This must have followed the familiar chain:
"40 grams, eh?  How much is that?"
"Er, 1.42857 ounces, sir"
"About an ounce it is!"
"An ounce, sir.  Yes sir."
And thus 40 g = 28 g.

Surprisingly, the US sources for this story did not shy away from using grams.  They explained the figure not as "about 1.5 ounces" but as 8 shelled walnuts.  Somebody out there must be celebrating Metric Week with us.
http://www.kold.com/global/story.asp?s=5516954
http://www.healthscout.com/news/324/535338/main.html

Remek

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