The Myth of Avocado on Toast

Avocado on toast is a popular brunch dish associated with the millennial generation. This delicacy, served usually on a slice of sough dough bread alongside a poached egg, however no longer is associated with fruit found growing on trees in South America eight thousand years ago, but instead it has become something more sinister.

Avocado on toast has morphed into an association with popular and consumer culture, which perpetuates a perfect lifestyle to others. In some instances avocado on toast has been found not only to create social hierarchies on media outlets, such as Instagram, but the meal is also associated with celebrity and diet culture; promoting dieting fads and dubiously effective healthcare products.

As well as this, journalists have uncovered how the increased global demand for avocados has had life-threatening effects on farmers in South America, reporting instances where drug gangs have attacked avocado farmers in an attempt to profit from the increasing money they make.

Avocado on toast is, therefore, a myth because its dark realities are covered up in society by the elite few who can afford to enjoy and benefit from this food.

The Most Instagrammable Meal in the World

Everyone knows sitting in a cafe with exposed lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, having just ordered avocado on toast, which arrives sliced to perfection and laid carefully on toasted sough dough bread with sprinkled chilli flakes and a poached egg, is to be at the height of trendiness. You feel satisfied spending minutes taking the perfect Instagram photo of your meal, that is until you finally eat it and question if it was worth the £7.50 you paid.

Clearly this lifestyle is unaffordable for the majority of people, which ultimately encourages class division in society. The standard price of avocado on toast in cafes has led to the meal being ultimately reserved for the elite who are willing to pay for it.

Even the perceived perfect life presented on Instagram by those who can afford avocado on toast is fake. Social media allows anyone to portray an idealised version of their real lives, and in today's society displaying pictures of the green plant laid onto toasted bread with '#avocado’ (now raking in 10.6 million posts on Instagram) is a part of this ideal.

While this may momentarily please the person who posted the photo that they have conveyed others how wealthy, up to date on trends and healthy they are, unfortunately, this content has harmful effects on others. Studies have significantly linked an increased use on Instagram to the eating disorder Orthorexia Nervosa. Symptoms of this eating disorder include obsessively eating healthy food, which can result in the physical effects of malnutrition and the mental effects of self-loathing and fasting.

This relates back to avocados because the study also found that there is generally a positive attitude towards healthy eating online, and in correlation with this, teenagers who view health-related posts are more likely to develop an eating disorder.

Avocado on Toast Promoting Diet Fads to Gun Violence in Mexico

The majority of people who love tucking into this meal are unlikely to know the reality of the avocado farming industry. For most of us avocado on toast is a popular food that has only existed since the early 2010s. Avocados actually have been grown in Central and Southern America for 8,000 years.

In recent years journalist have reported that avocados in Michoacán, Mexico have had their land taken over by drug lords all because farmers there have been earning £150 million a year by selling avocados to British traders. This has driven farmers to create vigilante groups where avocado farmers carry guns as a routine part of the protection of their crops.

Unfortunately, people who promote avocado consumption through fad diets dismiss these realities. For example, the supermarket Waitrose is one corporation that has benefited from avocados as once Nigella Lawson filmed how to make the perfect avocado on toast, they saw a 30% rise in sales of avocados. Arguably this is demonstrative of how far the avocado has changed from being simply a fruit into a product of consumerism at the expense of the farmers providing them.