

The Selling of the Avocado - percept
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-selling-of-the-avocado/385047/?single_page=true

======
comrade1
The Avocados that they can actually ship (Hass) are pretty terrible. If you
haven't lived in an area where they grow avocados you probably haven't had a
chance to enjoy the other dozens of varieties of avocado.

Did you know that there's an avocado you can eat like an apple? The skin is
thin and edible. There's another avocado with much higher oil content than the
Hass and so a different mouth feel. Another kind that has a smokey flavor, and
avocados that weren't fertilized by insects and so they have no seed - just a
solid fatty oily avocado. And many more...

This is one of the things I miss about CA (specifically, I lived in Ventura,
CA). (another is the huge variety of citrus, including a strain where they
breed the acidity out of an orange and so it tasted like vanilla...)

[http://edibleojai.com/online-magazine/heritage-
avocados/](http://edibleojai.com/online-magazine/heritage-avocados/)

(the one in the lower left looks like the edible skin one I remember)

And a small list of CA varieties:
[http://ucavo.ucr.edu/avocadovarieties/VarietyFrame.html#Anch...](http://ucavo.ucr.edu/avocadovarieties/VarietyFrame.html#Anchor-47857)

There's even more varieties in Hawaii.

~~~
jballanc
I've lived in CA (Silicon Valley), and I agree that the avocados are one of
the best things about living there. The other is the weather: that perfect
Mediterranean climate with hot, dry (and I mean _no_ rain April-Sept.) summers
and mild, rainy winters.

Now I live on the _actual_ Mediterranean. The climate is still amazing, the
avacados...meh. Really not very good at all. But the olives! You have _never_
had olives. Not like this. The varieties, the flavor, it's just like you
describe for avocados in CA.

It's always struck me as odd that both places could have their own you-
can't-find-them-elsewhere specialities that would be so different for what is
essentially an identical climate. For olives, I can only assume it has to do
with their multi-century lifespan.

~~~
pm90
Maybe the soil has something to do with it also. There are some Mangoes that
only taste the same if grown in a certain region of India, and I always heard
that was because of the soil + climate.

------
jmccree
Interesting timing. Just as I started reading this article while watching the
superbowl pre-game, a segment offering a guac recipe aired sponsored by
avocados. I'm reminded how the Patagonian toothfish was renamed as "Chilean
Seabass" and of course "the other white meat".

Edit: before I could finish typing this comment, another commercial aired for
avocados.

~~~
jonah
I've done work for the Chilean Avocado Importers Association[1]. One of their
selling points is being in the Southern Hemisphere, they're counter-seasonal
to North American avos and so sourcing from both gives retailers a year-round
supply.

[1] [http://avocadosfromchile.org/](http://avocadosfromchile.org/)

------
Tiktaalik
Makes me wonder about which great fruit or vegetables I've missed out on my
whole life simply because they were unknown and badly marketed.

A recent one would maybe be Kale, which has become dramatically popular in the
last 10 years.

~~~
ghaff
Pomegranates have increased in popularity recently although they're still very
seasonal and fairly expensive in pure form (or even as 100% juice).

My perception is that cranberries have also expanded beyond their home
territories although they're still seasonal as well. (Don't really understand
why you can't buy them frozen as they freeze quite well--something I do every
fall.)

There are a bunch of tropical fruits that could potentially fall into this
category as well but they're mostly too expensive for the broad market so it
probably doesn't make sense to market them more.

~~~
jonah
Another commenter's mention of shipability is one of the keys. Due to the long
supply-chains for modern produce, the fruit or veggie has to be picked early,
ripen off the vine and stay firm to hold up to shipping. cf. Grocery store
tomatoes, etc.

My father is involved with developing the PawPaw (Asimina Triloba) into a
commercially viable fruit. It's amazing - as big as your fist with a few black
seeds and creamy flesh which tastes like custard. Problem is it doesn't ripen
off the tree well and bruises easily in shipping. Various universities have
breeding programs and there are some excellent named varieties now but still
not quite to a place where they could be commercialized on a broad scale.

Another issue is of course people don't like things they're not used to and
are generally reluctant to experiment with new foods. (Generalized to the US.)
One way to overcome that is through marketing campaigns. Federal Marketing
Orders are what we have in place to do this.[1][2]

[0] [http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/](http://www.pawpaw.kysu.edu/)
[https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/cropfactsheets/pawpaw.ht...](https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/cropfactsheets/pawpaw.html)
etc. [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_orders_and_agreement...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_orders_and_agreements)
[2]
[http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/FVMarketingOrderLandingPage](http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/FVMarketingOrderLandingPage)

(Also, frozen cranberries are generally available - but often seasonally
because in popular cooking they're limited to Thanksgiving relish and the
like...)

~~~
markdown
Interesting. In my part of the world, a pawpaw is what you call a papaya.

~~~
jonah
I hadn't heard that. Wild, in the US they're totally different fruit:

PawPaw:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba)

Papaya:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya)

~~~
markdown
I find that mildly annoying :)

The Papaya page on Wikipedia mentions the use of the name pawpaw.

------
jacquesm
In Colombia they have huge ones:

[https://conquistadorc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/p1050364.j...](https://conquistadorc.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/p1050364.jpg)

