The world’s love affair with avocados apparently comes with a dark side: rising demand is fueling illegal deforestation in Mexico gringos keep cutting their hands opening them.
The NYT first shed light on this super serious issue on May 1, noting that while US hospitals don’t track data about what ingredients cause kitchen injuries, “anecdotally, doctors say they see a number of avocado-related cooking injuries annually — enough to notice.”
Fair enough – avocados are pretty slippery and accidents happen.
On the other side of the pond, however, the situation seems more severe than the occasional accident. According to a recent report in The Times, British avocado eaters are landing in the emergency room with avocado-related hand injuries so frequently that surgeons are calling it “Avocado Hand” – a phenomenon described as “serious stab and slash injuries that are the result of failed attempts to penetrate the fruit’s hard outer casing with a sharp knife before encountering a resistant inner stone.”
According to Simon Eccles, former president of the plastic surgery section of the Royal Society of Medicine, Brits are basically lost in the sauce when it comes to avocados. “People do not anticipate that the avocados they buy can be very ripe and there is minimal understanding of how to handle them,” he explains.
As a result, the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons is calling for safety labels to be placed on avocados, in the hopes it will prevent the flood of injuries. Eccles suggestion: “Perhaps we could have a cartoon picture of an avocado with a knife, and a big red cross going through it?”
Mexico’s response:
