The Bottom Line: Delicious facts about avocados!
The Full Story:
- Avocados are a fruit, not a vegetable. They belong to the Genus Persea in the Lauraceae family.
- Avocados are an Aztec symbol of love and fertility, and they also grow in pairs on trees. Where’d they get the idea? Avocado trees do not self-pollinate; they need another avocado tree close by in order to grow.
- Avocados contain four grams of protein, making them the fruit with the highest protein content!
- Don’t just think of avocados as a savory addition to sandwiches and salads, Brazilians actually add avocados to ice cream.
- You can tell that an avocado is ripe when they feel heavy for their size and are dark in color. If you want to quicken the ripening process, simply put one in brown paper bag for 2-4 days. You can speed this process up even more by putting adding a banana to the bag.
- Avocados mature on the tree, but only ripen once they are taken off the tree.
- Hass is the most popular variety of avocado grown worldwide. The Hass tree was discovered in the backyard of a mailman named Rudolph Hass in Californina in the 1930’s and Hass patented his tree in 1935.
- On average, 53.5-million pounds of guacamole are eaten every Super Bowl Sunday, enough to cover a football field more than 20-feet thick.
- Speaking of guacamole, the origin of the word comes from Spanish explorers could not pronounce the Aztec word for avocado, “ahuacatl,” so they called the avocado “aguacate.”