Avoiding the Avocado?

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There's a growing anxiety around avocados. With more awareness of their impact on the countries where they are grown, some chefs have been reducing their presence on menus. Are worries about their sustainability well-founded? Why do we focus so much on avocados and could we replace this contentious fruit with something else?

Leyla Kazim meets chef Adriana Cavita at her new Mexican restaurant to talk about growing up with Avocados and how she has tackled the issue of their sustainability. Leyla talks to food systems expert and the writer of a forthcoming book on avocados Honor Eldridge about the issues in the production of avocados in the Global South. She also gets a mini tour of avocado trees growing in London from garden designer and tropical plant fan Rob Stacewicz. Political commentator Ash Sarkar talks to Leyla about avocado's status as a meme in our public discourse. Wahaca owner and chef Thomasina Miers makes an alternative for Leyla to try.

Presented by Leyla Kazim and produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Sam Grist

Transcript

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0:50.0	Here we are and there it is. Oh wow
0:58.0	big dark green leaves. I mean that's probably going up to what the third or fourth story of the buildings.
1:05.4	Is it in a car park?
1:07.1	They've knocked down a building here and so this is like a building site but amazingly they've left the tree here
1:16.8	Oh right so it kind of a relief you know all us fans that have been sort of coming to visit it and see see how it's doing.
1:25.0	I mean it could be sort of 30 years, 40 years. I mean maybe...
1:30.0	I'm going to guess sort of culturally when avocados first became
1:36.0	popular back in the 70s so that would make it you know 40-50 years old from a seed and the seeds was of either someone was
1:47.3	planted the seeds and planted the tree there or it sort of just rolled out of the of a bin bag and just sprouted up there.
1:57.0	That was Robert Stasovich showing me some of London's amazing avocado trees. We love avocados in this country. Once seen as something
	...

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