Here are 25 interesting Avocado facts.
1-5 Avocado Facts
1. Avocados contain more fat than any other fruit or vegetable. Also, the trees contain enzymes that prevent the fruit from ever ripening on the tree, allowing farmers to use the trees as storage devices for up to 7 months after they reach full maturity, allowing avocados to always be in season. – Source
2. Avocados used to be eaten by giant ground sloths and were saved from extinction by humans. – Source
3. Avocados, Pumpkins, watermelons, and bananas are all berries while strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not. – Source
4. The avocado evolved to appeal to extinct megafauna (e.g. the giant armadillo) in order to facilitate seed dispersal via ingestion and excretion. This is why the avocado has such a sizeable seed. – Source
5. Chipotle uses 97,000 pounds of avocado per day. – Source
6-10 Avocado Facts
6. Jason Mraz moved onto a farm, discovered hundreds of Avocado trees on it, and now supplies chipotle with Avocados while eating 2-3 daily himself. – Source
7. 95% of commercially grown avocados come from trees descended from a single tree owned by a California mail carrier. – Source
8. It is estimated that the Mexico drug cartels make $152 million a year from growing and selling avocados. – Source
9. Avocados used to be called “alligator pears.” – Source
10. Avocados are poisonous to birds, cats, dogs, rabbits, and basically all pets. – Source
11-15 Avocado Facts
11. Mexico threatened to stop buying US corn unless they could sell the US avocados. – Source
12. Americans eat 69 million pounds of avocados on Super Bowl Sunday. – Source
13. It takes 1 gallon of water to grow a single almond and 220 to grow an avocado. – Source
14. The word ‘avocado’ means ‘testicle’ named so because of its shape – Source
15. Sushi was introduced to America by Ichiro Mashita in Los Angeles in the late 60s. After substituting avocado for tuna, he is credited with creating the “California Roll”. – Source
Guacamole is mashed avocado mixed with onions, peppers, and spices. It isn’t simply mashed avocado. Avocado is derived ultimately from the word ahuacatl, which does mean testicle. However, the Spanish couldn’t pronounce the native word so they used the closest in their language, aguacate, meaning lawyer. So no, avocado doesn’t mean testicle. It’s an English derivative of the Spanish word for lawyer.
Sources are food.com and Google translate for avocado etymology. I love the facts but those are simply wrong and poorly fact checked.
I’m confused as to how the US Department of Agriculture can claim to be the first to domesticate Macadamias in the 20th century, when Australian’s domesticated them in the mid 1800s.