British-made Ecovado offers low-impact alternative to "unsustainable" avocados

[Celerity]

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/07/05/british-ecovado-low-impact-alternative-avocado-food-design/



Central Saint Martins graduate Arina Shokouhi has invented an avocado alternative called Ecovado, which is meant to wean people off the resource-intensive imported fruit. The Ecovado contains a pale green, creamy foodstuff made from a combination of ingredients local to its country and packaged in a fake avocado skin fashioned from wax. Shokouhi, who is a recent graduate of London school Central Saint Martins' masters in Material Futures, created the product to help people reduce the amount of avocado they eat while still indulging their cravings for its flesh.



"The avocado has become a modern-day cultural icon synonymous with hipster cafes and trendy Instagram posts," said Shokouhi. "However, avocado production is energy-intensive and resource-intensive: each avocado requires 320 litres of water to grow and harvest internationally." "Avocados are one of the most unsustainable crops to export because of their delicate, easy-to-bruise nature, and the plantation-style monoculture farms required to meet the global demand for avocados are driving the deforestation of some of the most diverse landscapes in the world."



To come up with the Evocado recipe, Shokouhi worked with food scientist Jack Wallman from the University of Nottingham's Food Innovation Centre. He helped her identify the chemical and molecular composition of avocados and showed her how to go about finding suitable replacements. The Ecovado she made for her final-year project is designed for the British market and employs primarily broad beans, hazelnut, apple and rapeseed oil. Shokouhi says approximating the flavour and texture of avocado with only local, natural, low-impact ingredients was a huge challenge.



"The flavour of avocado is quite subtle and, overall, is most often described as 'creamy'," Shokouhi told Dezeen. "On the other hand, broad beans can contain quite a lot of bitter compounds called tannins and can have a beany flavour caused by lipoxygenase." "To reduce the bitterness, we reduced the amount of broad beans in the recipe," she continued. "The flavour of avocado has been described as 'nutty'. So we used creamed hazelnuts which would bring a good amount of fat, adding to the creaminess." Sometimes seemingly ideal substitute ingredients – such as olive oil, which is similar to avocado fat – could not be used because they came from too far away. "Instead, cold-pressed rapeseed oil was selected due to the wide availability of UK-grown products and the similarity of its fatty acid profile to avocado," said Shokouhi.

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[Backseat Driver]

1. Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby...ain't nothin' like the real thing!

I'm thinking that was a Pepsi ad song taken on the "mall" tour with a stand-up Ray Charles cardboard cutout at a piano back in the early 80s?...and you could take a free picture with "him" and the beverage ad alongside.

[SergeStorms]

2. When people buy Avacados from Mexico....

chances are they're putting money into Mexican drug cartels' pockets. They're putting their money into legitimate businesses now, similar to the mafia in second half of the 20th century.

Their tentacles spread everywhere.

[Sky Jewels]

3. I eat a lot of avocados.

I have a couple piece of avocado toast every single day, and I also put them in salads and on bean tacos, etc.

However, I believe I make up for that in some way because I don't eat any meat, which is very incredibly water-intensive and wasteful and polluting, and I don't eat dairy, which is also very environmentally harmful. (And of course both those things are beyond cruel and brutal to the animals that are confined and tortured for our meals). I don't feel guilty biting into the rich, creamy flesh of a baby avocado. But I would try these fake ones and maybe incorporate them into my diet if the research shows that they're nutritionally okay.

[Hekate]

5. You don't get it. People are really on a tear about the water-hungry tree & want Calif to rip them...

… out and turn them into mulch or some damn thing.

[Hekate]

4. Kraft makes (or once made) an "avocado" dip my BIL called "green slime." Poor man had never had

…an actual avocado from California (he was from Massachusetts) and when he finally visited here I couldn’t even get him to try one, because the horrid Kraft taste was so imprinted in his mind.

I have no idea what the Ecovado would taste like, but its gray colored flesh and make-believe seed (what is that thing? a walnut?) look awful. If you want something artificial that badly, just look in the refrigerator case at the supermarket and see if Kraft is still making it.

Ever since I moved to coastal California in 1979 there has always been at least one avocado tree on the block. People grow them in their yards. Currently I live in a little valley that used to be one big avo orchard 35 years ago, so there’s still a bunch around — like having a lot of citrus trees left over from the old days.

All you people who can’t grow an avocado tree — I am sorry for your troubles. Try being a Locovore instead. It’s what my BIL and sister do now, from their perch in upstate New York (no longer in Mass. ) . If enough of you do that, you will eat tasty natural food grown in the environment in which you live, and the evil shippers of fruits and veggies grown far away will wither away. Then when you travel you can explore other flavors.

[LeftInTX]

6. I live in South Texas...I would starve being a locovore

OK...there are loquats here, but they only produce fruit in April (They are native to Japan)
There are few plants with seeds such as hackberries, agarita and mesquite. (Hackberries are the size of a pea, likewise agarita) There is also cactus. There are acorns.

There was citrus until last year's freeze, same with avocados. But, even then not very reliable. There are a few peach trees which produce once every other year, but the all die young. Papayas do well, but I can't stand papayas. (They're not cold hardy, but they rebound quickly and are easy to grow)

However, there wasn't really a native American population here because there wasn't enough stuff here to sustain anyone...

[Hekate]

7. It's all California's fault, though, because almonds and avos suck up all the water

Last edited Wed Jul 13, 2022, 12:36 PM - Edit history (1)

Man alive, some of the posts have gotten fantastical. It’s like they don’t even know where their food comes from. I know there are places where you can’t be a Locovore — I just threw that in to see if anyone would bite, so to speak.

As for California’s Native population before the Spaniards, California was abundant and people lived well. There weren’t 40 million here though. There weren’t 8 billion on the planet, either.

ETA: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216919983 Stop eating lettuce

[Marthe48]

8. I wonder what the wax skin is made from

petroleum derivitives or bee's wax? or something else?

I have a feeling that avocadoes, just like everything else I love, will be priced out of my reach, sooner rather than later.