Avocados have had a big year. Coming to stand as a symbol of millennial excess and overspending, avocados spent a few months being hotly debated... but mostly people just ate a lot of them (or made lattes in them). According to some reports, Americans were spending upwards of $1 million per month on avocado toast — though as it turns out, it wasn't the much-maligned millennials doing most of the eating.
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The surge in popularity of the amazing fruit — along with a poor growing season, labor shortages and political turmoil — sent avocado prices skyrocketing 125 percent since the start of 2017, and sent scores of folks with sliced palms to emergency rooms across the U.S. and U.K with the dreaded "avocado hand." This phenomena describes the hand injuries sustained trying to cut out the avocado pit. Apparently, the only safe avocados are seedless.
Those risky days may be coming to an end for avocado lovers, however, now that British retailer Marks & Spencer has unveiled to the world the the seedless avocado, also known as the stoneless avocado. Unlike traditional avocados, there are quite a few differences in this limited supply grown from the unpollinated blossom of the avocado.
As Eater reports, the M&S "cocktail avocado" is smaller than your classic avocado and looks more like a miniature zucchini or cucumber, with a smooth edible skin and no stone — to help abate the scourge of avocado hand and knife injuries.
Though M&S seems to be getting most of the buzz, these specialty fruits have actually been around for awhile. San Diego's Specialty Produce offers them stateside, and the company's website explains the lack of stone is "simply the result of an unpollinated avocado blossom."
While the impact of the cocktail avocado on Americans ever increasing appetites for the fatty, fabulous fruit, here's hoping the seedless fruit at least saves a few trips to the ER due to avocado-related injuries. Reconstructive and aesthetic surgeons have been quite busy, so much so that avocados should probably come with safety warning labels.
