Due to concerns about the large carbon footprint of this fruit and its unsustainable harvesting methods.
Some chefs are moving away from using avocados in their restaurants – substituting popular dishes like guacamole for alternative grains and seeds – due to concerns about the large carbon footprint of this fruit and its unsustainable harvesting methods, with the loss of biodiversity, water scarcity and deforestation.
Produced primarily in Central and South America, avocados travel incredibly long distances to reach consumers in places like the United States and Europe. Also, given the distances, avocados are picked before they are ripe and shipped in energy-intensive, temperature-controlled containers.
According to Thomasina Miers, co-founder of the Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca, in an interview with The Guardian, avocados can require up to 320 liters of water each to grow and “have such a global demand that they are becoming unaffordable for the indigenous people of the areas where they are grown.”
Two small avocados sold together in a package at grocery stores have a CO2 footprint of almost 850 grams, according to Carbon Footprint Ltd. That’s almost twice the amount of two pounds of bananas.
Monoculture that negatively affects the environment
Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Laboratory for Agri-Food Analysis at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, explained, according to CTV News, that avocados are grown in monoculture, which means that the same crop of avocado trees grows on the same land year after year.
Charlebois added that the high agrochemical inputs on these farms degrade soil fertility, which has a negative impact on the environment and biodiversity.
“More and more consumers are seeing the planet on their plates,” says Charlebois, adding that unsustainable foods like avocado are increasingly unpopular with diners.
Chefs put avocado aside
For all these reasons, some chefs in the UK are saying that they are going to do without avocado on their menus. For example, Thomasina Miers assured The Guardian having changed the avocado for the beans as the base of a guacamole type sauce that they named as Wahacamole.
Likewise, the British media spoke with other chefs who have used peas, artichokes, zucchini and pistachios as substitutes for avocado. For example, the London chef Santiago Lastra last year added a guacamole-style sauce to Kol’s menu, made with fermented pistachios and gooseberries.
“Blood diamonds of Mexico”
For his part, Irish restaurateur JP McMahon pulled avocados from all of his restaurants in 2018, calling them the “blood diamonds of Mexico,” and introduced a guacamole alternative made with Jerusalem artichokes.
“There is a certain sustainable baggage linked to the product itself, so some leaders in the culinary world are showing some discontent with the popularity of avocados and are trying to find other ways to please their customers using other types of products,” he said, for your part, Charlebois.
Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at the University of London, says this is what happens when “an exotic food is normalized without thinking about the consequences.”
“Parts of the food industry are beginning to wake up to the enormity of the problems we face as a result of intensive agriculture,” Lang added to The Guardian.
Social media influencers are also sharing avocado alternatives with their audiences, and TikTok star Calum Harris’s “guacamole” recipe using frozen peas went viral last month. On Instagram, the hashtag “#noavocado”, which many accounts use to share sustainable recipes without avocado, had 3,227 posts. (I)
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
