From
Aztecs
to
Instagram
The future is green, soft,
insanely good for us and
has morphed into a cul-tural
global icon.
In Brazil, it’s used in a
thick, creamy milkshake
called creme de abacate.
In Ethiopia, it’s puréed
with sugar and milk, and
blended into a refresh-ing
juice called a spris.
Colombians turn it into
soup. Moroccans add
orange flower water and
honey to it to create delec-table
smoothies. In India,
it’s known as butter fruit.
Chileans eat it for break-fast.
And in Mexico, it’s
mashed up for our beloved
guacamole. For a green,
wrinkled berry, yes berry,
the humble avocado has
cast a spell on us and its
global domination doesn’t
appear to be slowing
down.
Do a quick #avocado
search on Instagram and
you’ll be hit with more
than 8 million posts of this
superfood. People are using
avocados in ways that go
way beyond toast. There
are lattes served with avo-cado
husks; avocado pop-sicles
and gelato; avocado
confit; avocado margaritas;
an avocado-only restaurant
called The Avocado Show
in Amsterdam; a dedicated
online avocado-everything
store; and, if consuming
the fruit in vast quantities
wasn’t enough, it’s also
being transformed into
art by the likes of Italian
designer Daniele Barresi.
Avocado hand has actually
become a recognized medi-cal
condition.
The ‘Fruit of Life,’ it
appears, is in no danger
of falling out of favor.
The World Avocado
Organization (WAO)
expects continued strong
growth for 2019 and
2020. More than 2 bil-lion
pounds of avocados
were consumed in the
United States last year —
95 percent of them were
the Hass avocado. The
global supply of the green
beauties mostly comes
from Mexico, and U.S.
consumption alone has
increased by almost 500
percent since 2008. One
Mexican state in particu-lar,
Michoacan, provides
four-fifths of the country’s
avocado exports.
If you hadn’t already
guessed, avocados are con-sumed
the most in the U.S.
over Super Bowl Sunday
and Cinco de Mayo. In
order to understand just
why this fruit went from
relative obscurity to mil-lennial
memes, we need to
look back in time.
74
WBM august 2019
B y C o l l e e n T h o m p s o n