It was quite a year for fatty not-terribly sweet massive green berries from Mexico. Well, I suppose we can narrow that down to the only fatty unsweet massive green berry from Mexico: the avocado.
Avocado toast became a punchline in recent years, representing millennials’ expensive and particular tastes. But in 2020, everyone got on the green bandwagon.
A record 2.1 billion pounds of avocados entered the United States from Mexico in 2020, according to industry sources. That’s about 3 billion to 4 billion avocados — which is a lot of avocados, when you think about it. But if you are not impressed by 10 Mexican avocados for every man, woman, and child in the U.S., at least be impressed that this is quite an increase.
This is part of a long march for avocados, driven by the dietary findings over the past couple of decades that fat and protein are good for weight loss, while eschewing sugar is crucial. So, plums and peaches fell, while avocados gained.
Avocados got a special 2020 boost, though, from the pandemic. More people cooked and prepared meals at home. That meant more people bought healthy ingredients that are easy to work into a salad, put on a burger, or just slice up over toast.
“The pandemic has divided the world into two groups, those who have done really well and those who have done badly,” noted Alvaro Luque, the president of Avocados From Mexico. “Fortunately, Avocados From Mexico has been in the group that has done well.”
Boosting the avocado’s fortunes this year was a study (funded by Big Avocado, yes, but published in Oxford University Press’s peer-reviewed Journal of Nutrition) finding that avocados help your digestive tract by fostering a healthier bacteria environment in there.
Yay for fatty Mexican fruits boosting your fecal fatty acids!
The only downside for the avocado industry was an upside for the rest of us: Amid rising demand, prices dropped due to increased supply. So maybe now millennials can have their toast without going broke!
