The avocado is a healthy
and expensive trend
In more recent years the avocado has become one of the world’s trendiest foods. You can eat it with anything – sweet or savory! It’s known to be a poster child of healthy living and is a mainstay for foodies everywhere. Avocado prices have rocketed in recent years, but the complaints hasn’t been piling up.
Let’s take look back at the brief backstory and where they came from.
Way back in 750 BC avocado seeds were buried in Incan tombs with mummies. But in 500 BC is was the Aztecs who gave it the name: āhuacatl , which translates to testicle but were later renamed by Spanish Conquistadores when swept through Mexico and Central America in the 16th century. Over the course of 100 years after that avocados were predominantly framed only in Central America and South America, but before the late 19th century no one really consumed the fruit. It was only until the early 1900s when it first became commercialized but was branded as a delicacy for the wealthy, like this advert in the New Yorker from 1920, which declared them as the aristocrat of salad fruit that the selection of California growers realized that the hard to pronounce a bracket a was off putting for the mass market. So they formed the California avocado Association, by the 1950s production scale grew and avocado prices fell to about 25 cents each. Popularity increased further with the wave of inter American Immigration in the 60s as Latin Americans brought their love of avocados with them to the US. But as demand increased supply had to keep up. And the true difficulties of yielding large scale avocado crops began to show. Avocado orchards require an extraordinary amount of costly resources in order to flourish.
There are multiple inputs that avocados require whether it’s water fertilizer pruning pest control this sunburn protection of trees all those go into making your chances better of having a very good quality crop, when we decide to plant an avocado orchard we’ll plant trees that come from certified nurseries, we have to place our orders. years in advance, on average, if we’re producing 100,000 pounds per acre. That takes about a million gallons of water, so 100 gallons per pound. So it’d be about 50 gallons per eight ounce fruit, but that’s dependent on what Mother Nature will throw at you you know we have wind. We have intense sun, it’s really hard for a grower to manage the unmanageable things that will affect the crop.
The surging popularity of avocados stone during the fat fighting frenzy of the 1980s, with an average of only one pound per capita being consumed in America, by 1989, the decades low fat obsession drove consumers away from avocado, because of its high fat content without really understanding the nutritional truth, hidden with it.
When it comes to fat in food in general, people tend to get a little bit concerned because we often hear in the media that fat isn’t good for us, but the type of fat that’s in avocados is mono and saturated fat, which is actually often deemed healthy fats, or hard healthy fats. So while there is a lot of fun avocados. It’s actually quite good.
Avocado started its meteoric comeback at the turn of the millennium. And it was helped by an unlikely political decision. In 2005, the US Department of Agriculture, lifted a 90 year old ban to allow the importation of Mexican avocados, to all 50 states. Initially this decision angered California and growers who feared the move could slash local growers sales by as much as 20%.
What actually transpired took place was as that Mexican supply became much more prevalent and available. Retailers got behind marketing and selling out a kados food service providers restaurants sort of putting it as permanent parts of their menus and demand started the boom because the inconsistent supply chains before were now consistent and consumers were allowed to enjoy avocados, every day of the year.
The biggest day of the avocado calendar became Super Bowl Sunday. When it’s now estimated that almost 200 million pounds of avocados are eaten during the big game in America. But if you take a moment to consider the resources needed to produce that amount. You can start to understand avocados elevated prices. According to experts, it takes roughly 270 litres of water to grow a pound of avocados, so 200 million pounds could require as much as 54 billion litres of water, which means droughts, or heat waves can have devastating consequences on the avocado industry. In fact, that’s exactly what’s been happening in California for the last seven years with the Sunshine State only recently been declared drought free, in 2019, which goes a long way to explaining record avocado prices. In some countries like Chile, avocado cultivation is being blamed for exacerbating droughts, as lush green orchards overlook dry riverbeds. Perhaps the biggest reason for avocados rise to dominance is the emergence of the Clean Eating lifestyle, no longer just a chip tip for special occasions. This superfood can be found in a plethora of recipes in cafes and restaurants, everywhere around the world. And those who are eating them are really keen for you to know about it. Just type hashtag avocado into Instagram, and you’ll be hit with over 10 million search results. But is the glorification of avocado justified.
There’s quite a bit of hype around aplicados but actually is quite justified when it comes to how nutrient dense This food is there is not many foods that actually replicate it in terms of a nutritional profile. When it comes to calling something super food, I’m not ready for that label avocados are definitely good foot in creating your diet but like I said you’re not really missing out. If you don’t like them, or if you can’t eat them for any reason, not on saturated fats, we can find that in things like olive oil and all of nuts and seeds vitamins and minerals we can find that in other green vegetables so spinach and broccoli and things like that. So there’s ways of getting those nutrients in but at half an avocado.
All of this produce requires an astonishing amount of labor. Even once grown pruned and picked avocados need costly distribution methods in order to be delivered fresh and ripe, to far flung corners of the world.
Veera living in Philadelphia right you want to buy a ripe avocado and Philadelphia, What they do as they ship green avocados from California to Philadelphia. They send them to the ripening center, they warm them up and get ethylene in them. So they all right then. And then when they’re moved out to the retail stores. You’re actually buying something that’s almost ready to eat or ready to eat. Because if you were to buy a green avocado that’s shipped straight from California to your market. You know, you would have to ripen it yourself over seven to 10 day period, and most consumers are a little more anxious for their avocado toast than waiting 10 days
with prices so high, the commodity of avocados has attracted a spate of thefts from orchards and delivery trucks worldwide. In New Zealand, arm night patrols and electric fences, have been introduced. After a grower in Northland had 70% of his orchard stolen. There’s even further grim reading for avocado lovers in Michoacan where 80% of Mexico’s avocados originate cartels run a so called blood avocado trade violently enforcing a non negotiable extortion fee from farmers, based on the size of their land, and the weight of their crop, some restaurants began an avocado boycott, as we all weigh up the ethics behind our eating habits. Experts suggest that water shortages could affect 5 billion people by 2050 and rainfall in the so called drought belt, which includes Mexico and South America is predicted to decline. But whilst evidence of environmental degradation is mounting the avocado industry is still growing. Along with consumer demand in certain places the sustainability of avocado production will become untenable.
This case.
You can love that thing is perfect.