Credit: EatingWell / Getty Images
I buy avocados sparingly because they’re expensive and finicky. They’re either too ripe or not ripe enough, and if I let them sit for just a smidge too long, suddenly they’re too mushy to eat. But every so often, I get an avocado that’s creamy, buttery, soft, and firm enough to hold its shape—and just like that, my love affair starts again. It’s a vicious, delicious cycle. While choosing an avocado at its ideal ripeness is its own beast, storage is another issue altogether……….Continue reading…..
By: Liv Dansky
Source: Eating Well
.
Critics:
The avocado, alligator pear or avocado pear (Persea americana) is an evergreen tree in the laurel family (Lauraceae). It is native to the Americas, with archaeological evidence of early human avocado use dating back thousands of years across various regions of Central and South America. It was prized for its large and unusually oily fruit. The native range of avocado (Persea americana) extends from Mexico to Peru, encompassing much of Central America and parts of northern and western South America.
Its fruit is botanically a large berry containing a single large seed. Sequencing of its genome showed that the evolution of avocados was shaped by polyploidy events and that commercial varieties have a hybrid origin. Avocado trees are partly self-pollinating, and are often propagated through grafting to maintain consistent fruit output. Avocados are currently cultivated in the tropical and Mediterranean climates of many countries.
In 2024, Mexico was the world’s leading producer of avocados, supplying 25% of the global harvest of 11.2 million tonnes. The fruit of domestic varieties have smooth, buttery, golden-green flesh when ripe. Depending on the cultivar, avocados have green, brown, purplish, or black skin, and may be pear-shaped, egg-shaped, or spherical. For commercial purposes, the fruits are picked while unripe and ripened after harvesting. The nutrient density and high fat content of avocado flesh are advantages for various cuisines, including vegetarian eating styles.
In major production regions like Mexico and California, the water demands of avocado farms place strain on local resources. Avocado production is implicated in other externalities, including deforestation and human rights concerns associated with the partial control of their production in Mexico by organized crime.Global warming is expected to result in significant changes to the suitable growing zones for avocados, and place additional pressures on the locales in which they are produced due to heat waves and drought.
The avocado fruit is climacteric, and is defined botanically as a single-seeded berry with an imperceptible endocarp covering the seed; it is not a drupe. The pear-shaped fruit is usually 7–20 cm (3–8 in) long, weighs between 100 and 1,000 g (3+1⁄2 and 35+1⁄2 oz), and has a large central seed, 5–6.4 cm (2–2+1⁄2 in) long. Early wild avocados prior to domestication had much smaller seeds around 2.1–2.2 centimetres (0.83–0.87 in) in diameter, likely corresponding to smaller fruit size.
Various cultivars with larger, fleshier fruits and a thinner exocarp have been developed by selective breeding. The expansion of avocado farming causes large-scale environmental changes, such as deforestation, impacts on biodiversity and carbon levels, and losses in soil moisture and potable water supplies. Climate change directly affects avocado trees and production by causing heat stress, drought, water scarcity, and extreme weather events.
Workers on avocado farms may be exposed to pesticides and experience extortion, poverty, and forced displacement. Increasing farming pressures for avocado output may cause water shortages and disputes in high production areas, such as in the Mexican state of Michoacán where water consumption can exceed renewable water supply in some regions. Water requirements for growing avocados are three times higher than for apples, and 18 times higher than for tomatoes.
Avocados ,HealthyEating ,AvocadoLovers ,AvocadoToast ,Superfood ,Guacamole ,PlantBased ,FreshProduce ,HealthyRecipes ,Nutrition #Foodie ,Vegan ,CleanEating ,AvocadoLife ,WholeFoods ,Fruit ,Diet ,GreenGoodness ,FoodHack ,HealthyFats
Leave a Reply