Avocado Toast 'Guacs' my World

The perfect mix of crunch and creaminess. The heat radiating from the golden toasted multigrain bread pairs nicely with the cool smooth avocado spread. Topped off with salt and everything bagel seasoning, the dish is so delicious - and don’t forget - pretty nutritious too! It is the perfect mix of flavor and texture. Not bad for my first bite, I thought to myself, before taking a bigger, better bite.

Trying a new food can be extremely difficult for picky eaters. I should know - I am one! That’s why, when it comes to trying new things, I am usually immediately sent into a tiny panic full of anxiety. Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly open to the idea of trying new foods, but when it comes down to actually tasting it, nine times out of ten, I find some reason for why it does not fit my liking. So, when I found myself actually yearning to try avocado toast for the first time, I was shocked and intrigued with myself. I’m a huge fan of avocado in my sushi rolls and I love guacamole, but avocado toast seemed to be on a completely new level from the way that I’ve heard people talk about it. In today’s society, avocado toast has become such a huge phenomenon that you can pretty much find it on the menu of any up and coming local eatery. Naturally then, I was extremely interested in hopping on the bandwagon and trying out my first exhilarating piece of avocado toast.

I started out on my journey to discover what set apart avocado toast from any other dish by doing my own little bit of background research. I had so many questions about the delicacy and I wanted answers! With avocados “appear[ing] on 45 percent of restaurant menus, with growth of 3 percent in the last year, 17 percent in the last four years, and 42 percent in the last decade,”I wanted to know what has made this food so popular in the last fews years/decade (Glazer). What makes avocado toast so special that it has become a part of today’s biggest society trends? What are the pros and cons to eating avocado toast on a regular basis? Essentially, my biggest question that I wanted to answer when everything with this experience was said and done was: Does avocado toast actually deserve all the hype?

In short, I can answer this question, and say that I do believe that avocado toast is amazing, but overall I think it has become a part of popular culture not simply for its taste, but also for the prestige that it offers as well. Most places that I looked into getting my avocado toast from was selling it for upwards of seven dollars for one slice (half the avocado)! I was immediately taken aback. As a college student, I definitely do not have the funds to afford this kind of dish, and with the help of my sorority house chef, James, I was able to try his famous avocado toast.

I also found though, that this prestige not only comes from the cost of the dish, but also the idea that multiple social media influencers, celebrities, and famous chefs rave about how great avocado toast is. Once we hear this kind of information going around in our own communities, we tend to want to test it for ourselves and agree with them - or at least, I admit I certainly wanted to.

Before diving into trying my warm toast topped with green goodness, I was also intrigued in other ways that avocado is incorporated and prepared into dishes. I was surprised to find that not only has avocado toast become so popular, but avocado itself has become a highly valued and popular ingredient to chefs in many new restaurants. In "Beyond Guacamole and Avocado Toast,” Chef Mario Mernandez explains his famous avocado “steak,” a technique that includes soaking avocado in lime powder water for up to an hour in order to add a solid texture that allows it to be grilled, roasted, and sealed with flavor. Chef Ricardo Camacho describes his most famous avocado dish by mashing and rolling the avocado with jalapeños, onions, cilantro, lime juice and salt before coating them in flour and deep frying them. Perhaps most interesting is the idea that, in recent years, chefs and artists alike have been known to create sculptures out of avocados.

Upon my research, I found some interesting results that I had not originally anticipated. I struggled with learning about the fact that the way the avocados are farmed and imported can be detrimental for the individual farmers and the environment. Avocados have come in such high demand that they “sometimes [have] to be flown from 5,000 miles away,” increasing carbon emissions exponentially (Martin). Studies from this same source show that the amount of water used to produce a single avocado is equivalent to a full bathtub. On top of this, farmers are put at risk by local gang violence that infiltrate their production of avocados in hopes to seize their agriculture efforts and take control of the bustling, successful avocado industry.

I never deeply considered the factors that helped deliver my food from the farm to my plate, and now that I had, I was struggling with the moral dilemma it presented. I do not want to contribute to the weakening of our environment and/or cause harm to innocent people because I simply want to eat an avocado. Most alarming to me though, was the fact that I had no idea these moral issues existed - making me believe that these same issues are probably applicable for other foods that we consume everyday. From this entire experience, I realized that it is important to know where our food is coming from, not only to verify that it’s safe for us to consume, but to also verify that it is safe for the planet and those who are producing it. Although I may not stop eating avocados, I am definitely more wary of my food choices and I see myself cutting down my avocado consumption in the future.

Overall, this experience was definitely eye-opening. I was able to enjoy this delicious dish that I was very hesitant to try and I was able to learn some major take-aways. It is worthwhile to step out of our comfort zones and try something that may scare us at first. At the end of this whole experience, I truly think avocado toast does deserve some hype, but maybe not as much as I had originally expected. Like any good food, I will continue to enjoy eating it, but it is definitely not my absolute favorite. I think it is important that we educate ourselves on the issues that come about within the process of the production of food. As consumers, it is our job to understand what really goes into the entire experience of the food we are fortunate enough to be able to buy on a daily basis at our local grocery stores and markets. In the future, maybe I can spice up my palette and try “avocado” steak! And for those of you who have not had avocado toast before, I definitely recommend trying it for yourself!