Ripe for Global Domination: The Story of the Avocado

We’re coming up to AvocadoFest 2026, otherwise known as the Super Bowl, when Americans get fully a fifth of their annual avocado allocation. But how did this humble fruit, originally named after testicles, get from its Mexican forest home to a tattoo on Miley Cyrus's upper arm? This episode, we unravel the avocado's amazing journey, a story that involves not only conquistadors and cartel violence, but also a Southern California postman and actress Angie Dickinson lounging in a white leotard. And we discover where the avocado is headed next—a place where it's known as the butter fruit, and often consumed in shake form. Listen in now for all this creamy green goodness and more. (encore) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Nicola Twilley?

  All right, I'm in my kitchen, Cynthia, and I feel as though it's time for some lunch.

• 0:05Cynthia Graber?

  I am thinking the same thing. And I have a really lovely ripe avocado here on the counter.

• 0:11Nicola Twilley?

  I do, too. I do, too.

• 0:15Cynthia Graber?

  You might even think we planned this.

• 0:18Cynthia Graber?

  Oh, come on. Don't tell me we're out of bread. That would be really bad.

• 0:21Nicola Twilley?

  There's no avocado toast without the toast.

• 0:24Cynthia Graber?

  I got bread. Okay, I'm just cutting it into thin slices.

• 0:30Cynthia Graber?

  The bread is ready. I'm just kind of laying out the thin slices of avocado on the toast. Okay, a little mashing on the bread here.

• 0:37Nicola Twilley?

  Yeah, so I am so freaking bougie that I am going to put a few little pink slivers of pickled radish.

• 0:46Cynthia Graber?

  Do you have pink pickled radish ready for yours?

• 0:49Nicola Twilley?

  Cynthia, I'm living that healthy Southern California lifestyle.

• 0:53Cynthia Graber?

  Okay, I'm sprinkling some beautiful salt on top.

• 0:55Nicola Twilley?

  Oh, my God, this is so pretty. The pink on the green. I feel like I could literally invite Gwyneth Paltrow around to lunch. Hi, Gwyneth. Are your ears burning? We're talking about you.

• 1:08Cynthia Graber?

  Don't worry, we are not going to spend this episode talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. We are, though, going to be talking about an incredibly delicious fruit. Yes, avocado is a fruit, and how it became the symbol of an aspirational lifestyle.

• 1:20Nicola Twilley?

  We are Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history. I'm Nicola Twilley.

• 1:26Cynthia Graber?

  And I'm Cynthia Graber. So this avocado toast thing, how in the world did it become a thing?

• 1:32Nicola Twilley?

  More importantly, how did a fruit that's named after male genitalia become the poster child of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the next big thing in China?

• 1:42Cynthia Graber?

  We hope you enjoy this encore episode. It's supported in part by the Alfred Peace Loan Foundation for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics. Gastropod is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with Eater.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with the family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets. Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more. Support for the show comes from TikTok.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  It's a New World fruit. It's native to Mexico and Central America.

• 3:24Nicola Twilley?

  That's Mary Lou Arpaia. She's head of the avocado breeding program at UC Riverside, near me in sunny Southern California.

• 3:32Cynthia Graber?

  Nobody is sure exactly where the avocado first came from, but the oldest evidence we have that people were eating avocados comes from settlements from 10,000 years ago in Puebla in central Mexico.

• 3:42Nicola Twilley?

  And again, no one is exactly sure where and when the avocado was domesticated. It might have happened more than once, but it was probably at least 7,000 years ago. The oldest known culture in the Americas, the Caral civilization of Peru, archaeologists have found evidence that they likely ate domesticated avocados more than 3,000 years ago.

• 4:02Cynthia Graber?

  The Caral don't seem to have been eating corn or other grains. And the same is true for another early culture called the Moxaia in what's now Mexico and Guatemala. And so avocado may have played a really important role in their diets as a major staple.

• 4:14Nicola Twilley?

  And we know the Maya valued avocados. The symbol they used for the 14th month of the year in their calendar was an avocado.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  When the Spanish conquistadors came to Latin America back in the 16th century, they encountered this fruit that they'd never seen before that had this Aztec name "aguacate", which means "testicle", actually, in the old ancient Navajo language.

• 4:38Cynthia Graber?

  Brooke Larmour is the On Money columnist for The New York Times Magazine and wrote a recent story on avocados. The Aztecs called these strange, bumpy fruits "testicles" because they hung low, often in groups of two.

• 4:49Nicola Twilley?

  And they look kind of testically in shape. I mean, I can see testicles in anything, but still.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  But the Spanish conquistadores took that name and made it into "aguacate", from which our avocado has now derived in English.

• 5:03Nicola Twilley?

  The conquistadors were big avocado fans right away. The first written description of the avocado comes in 1519 from a Spanish guy called Martin Fernandez de Enciso. He described it as, quote, "an orange. And when it is ready for eating, it turns yellowish. That which it contains is like butter and is of marvelous flavor, so good and pleasing to the palate that it is a marvelous thing."

• 5:30Cynthia Graber?

  Other conquistadors sang the praise of avocados as well. They likened them to figs. They said that avocados are healthy fruit for sick people and when eaten with sugar is like a preserve. They also said that avocados are like pears, but better.

• 5:43Nicola Twilley?

  From the Spanish records, we can get an idea of how indigenous Mesoamericans were using the avocado. They documented instances where it was used to pay nobility as a tribute, but they also wrote that it was for sale in the open-air markets of Tenochtitlan. And apparently, pigs used to gorge on the ripe fruit when it fell from the trees. Their meat was said to have a particularly excellent flavor.

• 6:06Cynthia Graber?

  So it's no surprise that the Spanish quickly adopted the avocado as a favorite fruit and eventually distributed it to other Spanish colonies all around the world where they Started to grow it too. But the avocado didn't become a major commercial crop until recently.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Even though it was grown as a dooryard crop tree throughout Central America and valued for thousands of years, there was no intensive agriculture, production of avocados actually, until the industry in California and to some extent, an industry in Florida started just about 100 years ago.

• 6:39Nicola Twilley?

  What this means is, folks like Mary Lou, they've still got a lot to learn about the avocado's evolution and its different varieties and its botany in general, compared to more established crops like wheat. What we do know is that the avocado is really old in flowering plant terms.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  It's a member of the laurel family. This is a very, very ancient part of the angiosperms.

• 7:02Cynthia Graber?

  So ancient, in fact, that you have to imagine back millions of years ago to a time when huge ground sloths the size of giraffes and mammoths stomped around avocado trees. These are the types of animals that could swallow a pit that big and then poop it out. These mega-sized animals went extinct about 13,000 years ago, but rodents picked up the avocado reproduction baton. They gnaw on avocado flesh and leave the seed to grow.

• 7:25Nicola Twilley?

  Not the avocado's target audience, but hey, it works.

• 7:28Cynthia Graber?

  So for thousands of years, these ancient backyard angiosperms, they came in all sorts of varieties and sizes.

• 7:34Nicola Twilley?

  But not here in California.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Over time, we've gone to the point where now here in California, we're 95% has.

• 7:42Nicola Twilley?

  Has is the name of an avocado variety, really the avocado variety that you see in storage today.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Has was a chance seedling that was actually found in La Habra Heights.

• 7:53Nicola Twilley?

  La Habra Heights is a neighborhood in southeast LA, just a few miles down the road from me.

• 7:57Cynthia Graber?

  And guess who's behind this chance seedling?

• 7:59Nicola Twilley?

  Oh my god, it is none other than our old friend, the globe-trotting food explorer, David Fairchild.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Fairchild picks up what he sees as the greatest avocado in Chile.

• 8:11Cynthia Graber?

  We told Fairchild's story in an episode I loved. It was about Dan Stone's book called The Food Explorer. And this is Dan describing another one of Fairchild's adventures.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  He's visiting Chile in 1897. And he explores and he finds this great variety. It's got a thick skin. It's got creamy flesh. It's not stringy at all. And he collects 1,000 seeds and sends them back to Washington in hopes that at least a few will survive. A few do, and they are received in Washington. They are propagated. They are sent out to research stations in Southern California toward the coast, around Fallbrook area and greater Los Angeles.

• 8:51Nicola Twilley?

  There were already some avocados in California. They were brought here in the 1850s by settlers from Nicaragua. But Fairchild's shipment of a whole bunch of new varieties got people excited about avocados again.

• 9:03Speaker 05

  And people start experimenting with avocados. Farmers start growing them and scientists start breeding their seeds and seeing how they could improve them. Amateurs get into it, too. In fact, one of them is a postal worker, a letter carrier. And in his spare time, he just grows avocados in his backyard. And one day, one sprouts even better.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  There was a seed that was planted in the mid 1920s. And the grower, who actually was a postal worker, kept trying to top work the tree to the variety that was the dominant variety of the day. The graft kept failing. They finally gave up for different reasons. And then, all of a sudden, he realized he actually had something of value.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  It's straighter. Its fruit comes faster. Its skin is even thicker. Its flesh is even creamier and greener. And so, he decides to patent it. And his name was Rudolph Hass.

• 9:56Nicola Twilley?

  The Mother Hass tree? It was actually still alive and growing in La Habra Heights. Apparently, it got to an astonishing 65 feet tall. When I read this, I was so excited, I was about to jump in the car and visit it. And then, I read some more, and it died in 2002 from the dreaded root rot. There's a plaque there now instead, and the mother tree wood is still preserved at a nursery in Ventura.

• 10:22Cynthia Graber?

  But even though the Mother Hass tree has become so venerated that there's a plaque for it, back when Hass avocados were new, this variety wasn't an immediate hit.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  And if you read some of the older literature, though, the thing that it had going against it- Was the fact that it turned black. There was a very nice article written in the mid 1940s where they're complaining about, well, you know, the has is this great tree. It's a great fruit, but my God, it's black, not green, because the dominant variety in the 40s up through the 70s was the Fuerte, which was a green variety. So it just shows how things have changed.

• 10:54Nicola Twilley?

  So the black color freaked out consumers. But even though it took a few decades, both growers and eaters did eventually get used to it because this brand new has avocado had a lot going for it.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Well, I can go, I can wax on forever on that one.

• 11:06Nicola Twilley?

  Let's wax. First of all, in California, the has avocado ripens at a very convenient time.

• 11:12Cynthia Graber?

  Farmers can harvest the has in March through June after the Fuerte's harvest is over. But it's not just an addition to the Fuerte.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  The other thing is, is that the fruit hung on the tree better.

• 11:21Nicola Twilley?

  Mary Lou is not yet done listing the has's virtues.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  The fruit is very easy to handle. It hides a lot of blemishes when it's ripe because it turns black.

• 11:30Nicola Twilley?

  And, and, and. The has is also the only avocado that Mexico and Peru are allowed to ship to the US, which makes it a pretty popular choice there, too.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Because they have insect pests in their countries. And research that was done in Mexico indicated that the has actually is a very poor host to fruit flies.

• 11:50Cynthia Graber?

  There are all sorts of varieties grown in Mexico, but the has is the only one they can export. So this explains why small, black, nubby has avocados have come to dominate the supermarket shelves today. But why have avocados themselves become so super popular?

• 12:04Nicola Twilley?

  Well, they weren't, at least not during the great has Fuerte battles of the 30s through the 70s. They weren't big in the US or much of the rest of the world. In Central America and the northern part of South America, though, the avocado has always been a hit.

• 12:18Speaker 06

  Here in Mexico, in a commercial way, avocado was grown in small orchards. Main type of avocado fruit was a small fruit and thin skin with large seed and scarce pulp or meat. Low commercial value, but good flavor.

• 12:37Cynthia Graber?

  Luis Mario Tapia Vargas studies water and soil management at the National Research Institute for Forests and Agriculture. He's based in Michoacan.

• 12:44Nicola Twilley?

  Even with the introduction of the has, which had more flesh than seed and a sturdier skin. Even then, the rest of the world took some convincing. Part of the problem with the avocado was its name.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  In the early 20th century in the United States, it was marketed as the alligator pear, which might explain why it never caught on because it's not a great name.

• 13:06Cynthia Graber?

  Not a great name at all. The California Avocado Growers Exchange complained in the 1920s that associating the delicious fruit with an alligator was, quote, "ruining the avocado business."

• 13:16Nicola Twilley?

  Eventually, the growers got their way, and we now call alligator pears by a bastardized version of the Spanish, bastardized version of the Nahuahtl word, which means "testicle fruit."

• 13:27Cynthia Graber?

  Because testicle fruit was also clearly not going to be a winner.

• 13:30Nicola Twilley?

  Testicles and alligators aside, the avocado had bigger problems than just its name. In the rest of the world, the places where the avocado wasn't from, people had no idea how to eat it. It was a fruit, but it wasn't sweet. It was sort of slippery. It didn't really cook well.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  I think when people first encounter the avocado, they're getting them kind of off the truck, and they're just not edible. They're hard. They don't really know what to do with them.

• 13:53Cynthia Graber?

  So on top of all the avocado's challenges, consumers are buying them unripe. It is not looking good for the avocado. How did we get to today? Lauren Euler wrote an article about the rise of avocado toast. Yes, we'll get to that. And she looked back at how a few bold eaters in the US were at least trying avocados in the early 1900s.

• 14:11Nicola Twilley?

  She found a New Yorker article from 1937 called "Avocado, Comma, or the Future of Eating?" by one S. J. Perelman.

• 14:20Speaker 07

  And he goes to a restaurant in Los Angeles and has an avocado sandwich on whole wheat and a lime rickey at a pharmacy called Best Drug Stores. And so at that point, you can see at least that there's the concept of avocado on bread is emerging in our culinary consciousness in America. And then I also found in a 1962 New York Times article that says you could put avocado in a toasted sandwich, and that would be an unusual way to serve it.

• 14:48Cynthia Graber?

  Lauren's point is that most people were not eating avocados. There weren't as many Mexicans in the US back then, and most non-Mexican Americans at the time weren't eating as many tacos or chips and guacamole as they are today.

• 14:59Nicola Twilley?

  Most Americans-- The time would not necessarily have known what guacamole was.

• 15:03Cynthia Graber?

  Plus, avocados were seasonal and only grew in certain areas of California and Florida, and so they were expensive.

• 15:08Nicola Twilley?

  In fact, at nearly five bucks an avocado, they were apparently often stolen from grocery stores, and they were marketed as fancy foods. If you really wanted to impress your guests, you could serve an avocado with lobster as an elegant appetizer. That's actually how I first encountered the avocado. My mom would serve it at dinner parties with a hole where the pit used to be filled with prawn cocktail.

• 15:31Cynthia Graber?

  Plus, you know, the 60s and 70s, this is also the beginning of the whole crazy fat is bad time in American history, and avocados are pretty fatty, and they would have been seen as unhealthy. So the California Avocado Commission responded with a marketing campaign.

• 15:45Nicola Twilley?

  They poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into this. The first step? Convince folks that avocados are actually healthy.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  This body needs good nutrition, including vitamins A, E1, C, E, potassium, niacin, iron. And this body gets them all in California avocados for just 153 calories in a luscious half shell.

• 16:10Nicola Twilley?

  That sexy avocado fan is the actress Angie Dickinson, and she is lying alluringly on her side, dressed casually in gold high heels and a shiny white leotard, just, you know, scooping an avocado out of its skin with a teaspoon.

• 16:25Cynthia Graber?

  As one does in a white leotard.

• 16:28Nicola Twilley?

  We've got the video on our website for all of your avocado eating wardrobe inspo needs.

• 16:33Cynthia Graber?

  I can see how this commercial would send everyone running to the supermarket. But that wasn't all the commission did. They funded studies showing that the fat in avocado helped increase nutrient absorption. They partnered with Harvard to promote the Mediterranean diet full of so-called healthy fats. This was an all-out avocado blitz.

• 16:49Nicola Twilley?

  But there was another problem.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  And here's a tip. Ripen them like this, two or three at a time. As avocados.

• 16:57Nicola Twilley?

  And better together. Would this body lie to you? People were buying these fancy avocados while they were shiny and green and trying to eat them, which was not nearly as fun and delicious as eating a ripe avocado.

• 17:10Cynthia Graber?

  The commission even introduced a mascot called Mr. Ripe, as in, make sure your avocados are actually ripe. And to get some attention, they launched a contest looking for his perfect mate, Ms. Ripe, who would, quote, "exemplify the California lifestyle of good health and healthy eating."

• 17:25Nicola Twilley?

  But even with Mr. and Ms. Ripe, and Angie Dickinson encouraging folks to put their avocados in a paper bag or on the windowsill and let them ripen for a few days, the fact remained, it's annoying to have to plan in advance to get a ripe avocado. Who shops four days ahead?

• 17:42Cynthia Graber?

  And then Brooke Larmour told us that an avocado farmer named Gil Henry came up with a revolutionary idea.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  He and his children went out to the local market in LA and watched people buy avocados. And he realized that people would go up there and kind of feel around the avocado. And if they didn't find a ripe one, or one that gave a little bit to the thumb push, they would just walk away.

• 18:02Nicola Twilley?

  In fact, the avocado commission installed a hidden camera in a California supermarket in the early 1980s, and the footage showed shopper after shopper squeezing the fruit and putting it back down. It was just lost sale after lost sale.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  And so he had this idea, we'll do this.

• 18:18Cynthia Graber?

  This was invent ripening rooms for avocados. Gil modeled his avocado ripening rooms after banana ripening rooms. They're basically refrigerated rooms where the avocados would hang out and small amounts of ethylene would be pumped in. Ethylene is a plant hormone, and it's what causes the fruit to ripen.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  And so that's very, very important commercially.

• 18:36Cynthia Graber?

  This way, all the avocados ripen together at more or less the same time, before they even land on the grocery store shelf.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  And so first in Ralph's, the grocery stores in Los Angeles, and then that expanded to Kroger, which owned Ralph's. And that became something where that was also a factor in getting people to buy avocados.

• 18:53Nicola Twilley?

  Today, all avocados go through this ripening room process. It's revolutionized the avocado business. The chances that you can find a ripe, ready to eat avocado at the store are approximately 100% better than they were in the early 1900s. And so shoppers now put those avocados in their basket after squeezing them.

• 19:12Cynthia Graber?

  And a side effect of all this is that it causes the Hass avocado to fully take over the market. Beforehand, when avocados were sold unripe, the green Fuerte ones looked nicer. They were shiny and green. But once they're sold ripe, the Fuertes would show any bruises to the soft fruit, while the black Hass avocados hide any small blemishes.

• 19:29Nicola Twilley?

  So between this massive marketing effort, the invention of the ripening rim, the name change, and the nutrition message, the avocado is poised to finally become a regular part of the American diet. But the thing that really pushed it over the edge, much less glamorous than Ms. Ripe, it was a trade agreement.

• 19:49Cynthia Graber?

  We are about to tell the story of how NAFTA led to the avocado's world domination. But first, a quick word from our sponsors.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

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• 21:44Cynthia Graber?

  In 1994, the avocado finally hit the big time because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yep, NAFTA.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  But something else had to happen first. There was a ban on Mexican avocados that was imposed way back in 1914, ostensibly over fears of bollweevils getting into the agricultural crops in California. And it protected the California farmers from infestation, but it also kind of protected them from cheap competition. So there was this, there was this great fear in the United States that opening the doors to Mexican avocados in this particular industry would, would destroy the California industry.

• 22:23Cynthia Graber?

  So when it came to the talks about the avocado during the NAFTA negotiations?

• 22:27Speaker 04

  Well, they were hardly talks. There were more arguments and fights that went into trying to lift this ban. Were extremely heated. I talked to one US distributor who said that he went into this meeting in Southern California to talk about lifting the ban. And he was a distributor, so he favored bringing in Mexican imports. He said that he was spat at and shouted at and basically kicked out of the meeting.

• 22:48Cynthia Graber?

  A few years after NAFTA was signed, the ban on Mexican avocados was finally lifted. At first, it was just for 19 states in the Northeast.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Far away from California so that the New Englanders could consume avocados in the wintertime. That gradual incremental lifting of that restriction was fully enacted by about a decade later. And that's what really led to the explosion.

• 23:09Cynthia Graber?

  And explosion is the right word.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Back in 1997, Americans only consumed avocados in the summertime, when the California avocados were harvested. None of those were imported. You know, today, Americans can eat avocados year round, almost anywhere.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  If they can afford it.

• 23:26Nicola Twilley?

  Post NAFTA, avocado demand has grown exponentially. 25 years ago, Americans were eating barely one pound of avocado per person per year. Now it's more than seven.

• 23:38Cynthia Graber?

  The other thing that's boomed is ways to eat all that avocado.

• 23:41Nicola Twilley?

  To go back again to when I was a kid in the 80s encountering avocados in England, we had them on the half shell, like Angie Dickinson. Though not, I hasten to add, in a white leotard. You scoop the flesh out with a teaspoon, and when the pit hole wasn't being filled with something fancy like prawn cocktail, we used to put vinaigrette in there. But that was the only way I knew to eat an avocado.

• 24:04Cynthia Graber?

  And I don't remember even seeing anything like that, at least not in my house or my friends' houses. I do think my family went out to kind of Tex Mex restaurants on occasion. I remember one down the street from my house in the 80s.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  In the United States, we have this Mexican-American community that is growing along with the explosion of Tex Mex food.

• 24:20Cynthia Graber?

  And so people like me and my family started to eat more guacamole in their everyday lives. It also became one of the foods popular to snack on during the Super Bowl. So the Avocado Commission decided to do a big PR push to get folks to eat even more guacamole during the Super Bowl.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Avocado. From Mexico. Delicious. Listen to this, Larry. Eat them. Eat it.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Everyone loves guacamole.

• 24:46Cynthia Graber?

  If it's not obvious, they're trying to hypnotize us all into consuming even more guacamole. And it worked. Super Bowl weekend became one of the most important dates for avocado consumption in the US.

• 24:57Nicola Twilley?

  According to the Mexican Avocado Association, a full 12% of America's annual avocado consumption takes place during the Super Bowl.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  But 80% of those are imported, and almost nine out of 10 of those imports are from Mexico, specifically from the state of Michoacan.

• 25:13Cynthia Graber?

  So Americans are eating lots of avocados. That's a win for the marketing campaign and, in theory, the growers. But these avocados are from Mexico. Sounds exactly like the nightmare that the California growers were worried about. So did this mean that California avocado farmers were doomed? What happened to them?

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Well, remarkably, this is a case of the rising tide lifting all boats. The year-round availability of avocados helped expand the visibility and attractiveness of avocados for everybody. So there was the growing market and the explosion among consumers only helped the Californians.

• 25:50Nicola Twilley?

  Part of this is because Mexico's production actually fills a gap around the California grower's season. Under the NAFTA rules, California avocados get priority during their season, and Mexico, where avocados bloom four times a year, gets everything else.

• 26:05Cynthia Graber?

  But even if California could extend its season dramatically, the state couldn't possibly meet this new and still growing demand for avocados, even if the farmers wanted to. There isn't enough water and land.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  And so they really need this kind of extra input from Mexican avocados. And so the analysis is that there's a real benefit to the United States economy, not just that California agricultural growers are spared, but also it's adding many, many jobs. I think there's something like 19,000 jobs, new jobs for American workers, more than $2 billion added to U.S. GDP simply by avocados.

• 26:42Nicola Twilley?

  Okay, so California farmers are happy, American avocado eaters are happy, but what about the place where all these avocados are coming from?

• 26:50Speaker 04

  In Mexico, most of the avocados are grown in a single state, the state of Michoacan, which is in south-central Mexico, not far west of Mexico City that goes down to the Pacific coast. And it's not something that's run by a big agribusiness. It's actually, there are 20,000 individual orchards that are coordinated by a national association.

• 27:13Cynthia Graber?

  Michoacan is the only state that's actually legally allowed to export avocados to the U.S., and the state has been completely transformed by avocados.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  It dominates the agriculture in that state.

• 27:24Nicola Twilley?

  So what has the rise of the avocado meant for Michoacan?

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Well, it's interesting. Michoacan is a beautiful state. It has volcanoes and forests. I remember my first trip to Michoacan way back a few decades ago was to see the sanctuary where monarch butterflies migrate in the winter from the United States. And these are butterflies. That have come three generations or four generations since the original migrants in the United States, and they all come back to the same trees in a couple of different preserves in Michoacan state and in the state of Mexico. But that was my first trip, and it's just, it's a gorgeous state.

• 27:58Cynthia Graber?

  These volcanoes and forests are a part of why Michoacan is so great for avocados. It has really fertile soil and lots of rainfall.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  In California, one of the real issues is water because avocado trees are extremely thirsty. Michoacan is blessed with, I think, more than 70% of the orchards are naturally fed by springs, rivers, natural irrigation.

• 28:20Nicola Twilley?

  So water usage is not a big issue, at least in Michoacan. The bigger environmental issue, at least for now, is what the avocado is doing to all those gorgeous forests.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  The Mexican environmental authorities estimate that about 50,000 acres a year are deforested in the state of Michoacan.

• 28:39Cynthia Graber?

  It's a big problem, and it's not just because of avocado farms, but they are one of the causes. We asked Mario, the researcher who works on forest and water issues. The natural forest has been deforested for three main causes: illegal logging, forest fires, and avocado planting.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  And about 30% of that is due to avocado growing. The growers association will respond that, well, actually, these new orchards, most of these new orchards were previously used for other crops that have transferred their growing to avocados because they're much more lucrative.

• 29:11Nicola Twilley?

  So the avocado is not the only culprit here.

• 29:14Cynthia Graber?

  And in case you were worried about the future of the monarch butterflies, the forests that are being cut down for avocados aren't the ones where the monarchs go to spend the winter. Those are higher up in colder areas that aren't as good for avocado farming.

• 29:25Nicola Twilley?

  But still, as an avocado eater, I would love to enjoy my daily dose of creamy green goodness without contributing to deforestation. Mario told us that there had been some discussion about a law that would protect the forest and actually require avocado growers to return 10% of their cultivated land to wild forest.

• 29:46Cynthia Graber?

  I am not optimistic of this situation. The growers fought back, and the government wasn't interested in pushing this law, partly because it has bigger things to deal with, like drugs, and partly because Mario thinks that corrupt government officials are making money from avocados.

• 30:00Nicola Twilley?

  So what should a concerned avocado eater do? Mario says that, in fact, we are the ones who can make a difference.

• 30:07Cynthia Graber?

  The only way to protect is that, for example,

• 30:12Speaker 06

  That United States said, I don't buy you more avocados if you continue deforesting your lands.

• 30:20Cynthia Graber?

  This strategy that American demand can make a difference, it worked in the past. Mario said that avocado crops had been poorly handled. There were lots of pesticides left on and bacteria, but Americans wouldn't put up with that. So Mexican farmers improved their farming methods to meet the demand. Mario thinks the same thing could happen with the forests, that if US consumers demand avocados that don't contribute to deforestation, that could help save the forests.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  But there's also another problem in Michoacan, which is that this is the center of the Mexican drug war.

• 30:50Nicola Twilley?

  Drug cartels in Mexico have made so much money from Americans looking to smoke pot and take meth that they've actually pretty much replaced the government in some places. They are super powerful along the West Coast and in Michoacan, too.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  So you can imagine when avocado profits in the last 20 years started to rise, the cartels were quite interested. In Michoacan, avocados are known as oro verde, green gold. And the cartels became kind of an insidious influence within the avocado industry. There were different groups, one called the Knights Templar, who kind of had this medieval chivalric code and came in, but extorted growers, kidnapped owners, usurped land. They created a kind of, almost in a warlike situation for growers, as we became very dangerous for the larger owners especially. Today, the Knights Templar have faded from the scene, La Familia Michoacana has faded

• 31:46Speaker 04

  from the scene, and now there's a small splinter group called Los Viagra's, which is apparently named for the leader who had heavily mousse hair that kind of stood on its end.

• 31:56Nicola Twilley?

  On one level, if anyone is going to control the testicle fruit trade, it should be the Viagra gang. But seriously, cartel violence is a gigantic problem.

• 32:06Cynthia Graber?

  You may have even noticed reports in the US media in recent years about blood avocados. I mean, it's not just that we don't want to eat something that's contributing to deforestation. I definitely don't want to eat something that's supporting the cartels.

• 32:17Nicola Twilley?

  But Brooke tells us that in the past couple of years, things have looked up a little.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  In response to a lot of this cartel activity, many of these smaller towns have created self-defense militias. Usually formed by the owners themselves, many of the owners have teamed together to try to keep the peace and keep their avocados. There's one place in particular called Tansitaro, which has become kind of famous as the last place where it has this kind of self-defense militia. It's like an 80-person force where they surround their town with checkpoints and the producers have to work with armed bodyguards. But they've now celebrated four years without a kidnapping, which is considered a success. So the cartels are still an influence on it, although they haven't really slowed down production, which is quite amazing.

• 33:06Cynthia Graber?

  And again, like the deforestation issue, the cartel violence is not entirely the avocados' fault.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  I mean, first of all, I think that the drug cartels were not created by avocados. They happen to attract the cartels because of their lucrative nature.

• 33:20Cynthia Graber?

  And actually, Mario says that avocados have been really good for Michoacan in a lot of ways.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  The boquero in Orsas cap permitted that the people, the poor people of many communities that was in the poverty, now they are in economic best conditions.

• 33:40Cynthia Graber?

  And those economic benefits mean that more people can stay in their homes with their families.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  Michoacan is a huge sending community, or has been, a sending area for migrants to the United States. But avocados have kept more people closer to the land without necessarily needing to migrate.

• 33:58Cynthia Graber?

  Great to know that we can enjoy Mexican avocados with very little guilt, because, frankly, what would happen to the Instagram feeds of millennials if you took away their avocado toast? Just kidding, don't write us angry emails.

• 34:08Nicola Twilley?

  And for even less guilt, if you want to get rid of that lingering worry that your avocados from Mexico are contributing to deforestation, right now, the best you can do is look for an organic, Rainforest Alliance, or Equal Exchange label. Rainforest Alliance and Equal Exchange avocados are hard to find, and organic doesn't specifically guarantee that a grower is not cutting down virgin forest, but it does mean that the cultivation is less intensive and doesn't pollute the groundwater as much. Not a perfect solution, but one that means you can go ahead and have your avocado and eat it on toast. Just don't expect to be able to buy a house as well.

• 34:48Cynthia Graber?

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• 36:23Speaker 07

  So I was actually talking to someone yesterday and I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna do an interview for a podcast about avocado toast." And they were like, "Yeah, what?" It's like, "What is it exactly?" I'm not really sure I understand. I'm like, "It's literally what it sounds like."

• 36:38Nicola Twilley?

  It's avocado on toast. This is Lauren Euler again, journalist and author of "An In-Depth Look at the Origins of Avocado Toast." And in case you've been living in a cave for the past few years, avocado toast is having something of a moment right now.

• 36:55Speaker 07

  I feel like I came to avocado appreciation relatively late in life. I grew up in West Virginia and it's not like we didn't have avocados there, but it's not like... One of the main food groups, as it is in somewhere like New York or LA or even Berlin where I used to live.

• 37:12Cynthia Graber?

  Lauren first noticed avocado being served on toast just a few years ago when she moved to Berlin after college.

• 37:17Speaker 07

  I don't really remember eating it in college and I graduated in 2012. And then when I lived in Berlin, there are a lot of Australians living there. And there are a lot of Australian cafes, and I think that is probably the first time that I really noticed it on a menu.

• 37:32Nicola Twilley?

  This is kind of late in avocado toast terms, or at least in terms of the current wave of avocado toast. Because the question of avocado toast's origins is a tricky one.

• 37:43Speaker 07

  Because you could certainly argue that avocado on a tortilla is the original avocado toast. Right? But I think that's a fundamentally different eating experience. Though it may be a predecessor to avocado toast, and it probably certainly is a predecessor to avocado toast.

• 38:02Cynthia Graber?

  Which today is basically mashed avocado on toast with maybe salt and pepper and a few beautiful garnishes like Nikki's pickled pink radishes. That avocado toast is now found on the menu at restaurants and cafes basically everywhere. But Lauren wondered, where did it first come from, this current incarnation of avocado toast?

• 38:20Speaker 07

  There's truth to the idea that Australia popularized avocado toast in the way that we know it today, which is as a sort of like glamorous snack or meal that one can take a nice photo of for one's Instagram account. Generally, the first menu avocado toast is said to be at a cafe called Bill's, I think in 1993 in Sydney.

• 38:48Nicola Twilley?

  Bill's is a trendy all-day restaurant run by a well-known Australian chef called Bill Granger. He has confessed that he had no idea what he was starting when he first put avocado toast on his menu. He says he just thought avocado was a nice thing to have with a bit of tomato on some toast.

• 39:05Speaker 07

  He published a recipe for avocado toast and he put it in his cookbook and he was sort of like, I felt dumb putting a recipe for this in my cookbook because it's like so easy and obvious that you shouldn't need a recipe, but I need It to fill a page.

• 39:16Cynthia Graber?

  It wasn't an overnight success, but then a little more than a decade later, an Australian chef named Chloe Osborne put avocado toast on the menu at Cafe Gitane in Manhattan.

• 39:24Nicola Twilley?

  And then came Gwyneth, Paltrow, in case you're not on first name terms. She put avocado toast in her 2013 cookbook, It's All Good. And this, according to Lauren, is the moment when avocado toast went from being a thing you ate to a cultural phenomenon.

• 39:43Cynthia Graber?

  So much so that Miley Cyrus has a tattoo of half an avocado on her upper left arm. But when we say phenomenon, really, it's kind of crazy how much the avocado and avocado toast, of course, have taken over.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  From toast to guacamole, avocados are seemingly everywhere.

• 39:58Speaker 07

  So that, but then I also talked to some people who grew up in California in the 70s. And they were like, yeah, we ate avocado on toast, too.

• 40:05Nicola Twilley?

  Yet not everyone is on board with the Bill's Cafe Gitane Gwyneth origin story for avocado toast. Turns out, people have been mashing avocado onto grain-based products for a while.

• 40:16Speaker 07

  After I published that article, someone messaged me saying that her sister or something had spent a lot of time in Tel Aviv and that they always ate avocado on toast, too. So that she thought that that meant that they had invented it.

• 40:30Cynthia Graber?

  This was my experience. I first fell in love with avocado in the 90s when I was living in Israel and everyone just sliced avocado and put it on bread and sprinkled some salt on it. And I was like, this is delicious, not revolutionary, just delicious.

• 40:42Speaker 07

  But I think trying to pinpoint the origin of it is a fool's errand.

• 40:46Nicola Twilley?

  No shit. But the real question is why? Why has avocado toast transcended its status as snack to become a symbol of everything?

• 40:56Cynthia Graber?

  Part of it is that it's become something that somehow seems pure and fresh and healthy and the good fatty and somehow just perfect.

• 41:03Speaker 07

  I think as a status symbol, the avocado toast does sort of advertise a certain lifestyle, which is like a wellness, a healthy lifestyle, which now is a kind of status symbol. And along with like doing yoga or going to SoulCycle or going on a vacation to

• 41:24Speaker 07

  Like Joshua Tree or something avocado toast can like signify a certain kind of person and a certain kind of aspirational lifestyle.

• 41:33Nicola Twilley?

  And it turns out that avocado toast is the perfect visual aid to advertise that lifestyle. It is the Instagram food par excellence. At one point, British Vogue reported that 3 million new pictures of avocado toast are uploaded to Instagram every day, which truly says something about our times.

• 41:53Cynthia Graber?

  I can't even wrap my head around that figure. So why in the world has avocado toast taken over Instagram? What makes it such a perfect model? Once again, Lauren has the analysis.

• 42:02Speaker 07

  I think the color green of an avocado is bright and alluring, but it's not so bright that you can't pair it with other colors. So you often see like a radish on avocado toast, or maybe like shaved beets or some kind of beet-like thing. And so with the contrasting with the pink or the purple, it looks really, really nice.

• 42:22Nicola Twilley?

  It's beautiful and healthy and it's expensive.

• 42:27Speaker 06

  In May, Australian millionaire and property mogul Tim Gerner said this about millennials. When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each. Bro, what?

• 42:39Speaker 07

  So there was a controversy semi-recently in which I think an Australian investor or millionaire or some sort of rich Australian non-millennial was deriding the millennial generation and saying that we couldn't, the reason we couldn't afford to buy houses was because we were spending so much money on avocado toast and four coffees that cost $4.

• 43:01Nicola Twilley?

  A tsunami of people helpfully told this dude that he had his head up his ass and the real reason millennials can't buy homes is not actually because they're spending all their money on avocado toast.

• 43:13Speaker 07

  But because of raging income inequality and the subprime mortgage prices and all the sort of economic stuff that has been pushed onto us from the older generations. And while I agree with the structural critique of his statement, I also do feel like avocado toast is quite expensive and also it's something that you can make at home for very cheap. And so I don't want to say I see where he's coming from because it's a stupid comment, but avocado toast is quite expensive. I mean, like you can get it for like $13 at some places in New York. Which is more than I'm going to spend on a piece of toast, shall we say.

• 43:58Nicola Twilley?

  Look, I get it. Sometimes you're out at a cafe and they have awesome bread and they put fun garnishes on it and you want a piece of avocado toast. For Lauren, though, it's come to mean something more.

• 44:07Speaker 07

  When I encounter avocado toast on a menu today, I always have this sort of like pain, this feeling of yearning because I, at least, still cannot justify ordering it in a restaurant, though I see people doing it all the time. And I'm always like, if only I were, like, I feel like there's, at some income level, I will be frivolous enough to order an avocado toast in a restaurant. But it's, still, there's like a barrier to me. It just seems so luxurious.

• 44:39Nicola Twilley?

  When you hear about Miley Cyrus having an avocado tattoo, or avocado toast breaking Instagram and denying a whole generation homeownership, you think, we must be at peak avocado. But no. Because the future of avocados, it's probably not in the US at all.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  In the year 2010, there were fewer than two tons of avocados imported into China. A small sedan could carry that many avocados. But since then, it has become much more widespread, mostly among young millennials and the upper middle class, but as a healthy fruit. And it's known in China as the butter fruit, which seems to me like a perfect name for the avocado, because that's exactly what it feels like when you eat it, so buttery.

• 45:26Nicola Twilley?

  So, OK, in 2010, there was a carload of butter fruit sold in the whole of China. That was the situation a little more than a decade ago.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Last year, 32,000 tons were imported into China. And this is partly a marketing campaign, and also partly kind of a young, urban, middle class reaching for a global craze.

• 45:50Nicola Twilley?

  Brooke says Chinese entrepreneurs are building ripening rooms for avocados. They're starting to talk about growing avocados in China. We've had our boom here in the US, and now that boom is moving on to other shores.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Chinese have an unbelievable ability. Ability to adapt and incorporate new things into their cuisine. They are omnivores of the first order and also have a very, very widely diverse palate. And the avocado is a flavor carrier. In China, as in in Southeast Asia, they're also able to see it as a fruit. They don't mind a fruit that looks like a vegetable or are using it both for sweet and savory outcomes.

• 46:31Nicola Twilley?

  In fact, Brooke says that in the southernmost part of China, near the border of Myanmar, avocado is already popular. It's used in salads with tomato and onion, like a kind of proto guacamole. And it also goes into shakes, where it gets blended up with condensed milk, sometimes with powdered chocolate added for good measure.

• 46:49Cynthia Graber?

  This is pretty common around the world. You find avocado ice cream and avocado shakes. It's only starting to catch on here. We still seem to think of avocados mostly in savory dishes. But Brooke says we can't even imagine how big avocados are going to get in China. The avocado's journey from Mesoamerican backyards to world domination still has a way to go.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  One of the guys that I quoted in the piece, this guy Steve Barnard, who's one of the biggest distributors in the world, dreams, like every entrepreneur, of introducing four chunks of avocado in every noodle soup, every bowl of noodle soup in China.

• 47:20Nicola Twilley?

  Thanks this episode to Brooke Lomer, freelance journalist, avocado fancier in New York Times On Money columnist, and also to Lauren Euler, freelance journalist and avocado toast aspirer.

• 47:34Cynthia Graber?

  As well as to Mary Lou Arpeya and Eric Voigt of UC Riverside, and Luis Mario Tapia Vargas at the Mexican National Research Institute for Forests and Agriculture. We have links to their articles and publications and websites on our website, gastropod.com.

• 47:47Nicola Twilley?

  We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode for your listening delight.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  Support for the show comes from TikTok. There is a scientifically documented correlation between listening to podcasts and curiosity. So since you're here, you probably enjoy discovering new things. One great place to indulge your curiosity is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabi Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, built just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.