While millennials may be teased the most for their deep love of avocado toast, people of all age groups adore this creamy green fruit.
There’s a lot to love: avocado is a rich source of heart-healthy monounsaturated fat (plus a little plant-based omega-3), potassium, and fiber. A half of an avocado provides about 14.7 grams of fat (most of it monounsaturated) and 6.7 grams of fiber, and 2 grams of protein. They’re not a great source of protein (though they can contribute towards your needs), but that combo of fat and fiber does make avocado very satiating by supporting stable blood sugar.
For anyone who’s ever purchased a few avocados, only to have them be rock-hard for days until they all ripen at once (naturally, before they can all be eaten), you know that avocados rank pretty high on the food waste frustration scale. There’s nothing like that little micro heartbreak of cutting into an avocado that was likely perfect yesterday, only to find it’s gone black inside.
So how best to store avocados to avoid that frustration? Is there a way to keep them fresh longer? Or what if you want to ripen one faster? I spoke with Savannah Braden, who is a biological scientist at food-tech startup Apeel, which creates food protection products using materials that already exist in plants to create a protective extra peel that seals in moisture and keeps oxygen out to keep produce fresh for longer, delaying the time it takes to go bad. Braden has spent the last five years studying the physiology of avocados and other produce to determine what makes them ripen—and go bad.
When asked why people love avocado so much (beyond the stellar nutritional stats), she said, “They’re a bit of a mystery. There’s an art to picking the right avocado, a fun balance of choosing the right one.”
Here, she shares some science-backed avocado hacks to help reduce food waste and boost enjoyment.
Savannah Braden is a biological scientist at food-tech startup Apeel.
Jess Cording: What’s the best way to store avocados?
Savannah Braden: It’s a delicate balance of having them ripen when you want them and allowing the fruit to breathe. If you let it get ripe at room temperature and then put it in the fridge, that will allow the full flavor to develop.
Cording: What is the best way, according to science, to prevent avocados from going brown?
Braden: What’s happening is that when you slice open an avocado, you’re breaking open the cells that contain different molecules that will interact with each other and with oxygen. Preventing that interaction with oxygen will help prevent that browning. Many people will cover the exposed avocado with plastic wrap or squirt it with lime juice. The plastic wrap prevents interaction with oxygen, and the acid in the lime juice can help inhibit the reaction that causes the conversion into that brown color. A really popular trend is to add more oil to the surface of the avocado to reduce interaction with oxygen. While putting sliced avocados in water is also a trend, when putting it in water, side reactions can occur, which can impact quality.
Cording: Is there anything you can do to speed up the ripening of avocados?
Braden: All fruit that ripens post-harvest (for example, avocado and banana) makes a compound called ethylene, which tells the cells to ripen at once. Putting avocados with other climacteric fruit will help, as the cells interact with each other. Keeping the avocado warmer and avoiding putting them in the fridge before ripening can also help speed up the process.
