Avocado eating method and efficacy avocado, really healthy? Or a businessman?

Avocado is popular in China, not only because of its high face value and health value, but because transnational agricultural trade capital is trying to weave beautiful stories to brainwash consumers. But of course they avoid talking about the sweaty truth about avocado production, but you need to know.

This week,"avocado" on the micro blog hot search list. Avocado, also known as "avocado", looks like a pear, skin rough like crocodile head, yellow green flesh, soft taste like cheese, embedded in the middle of a large stone. Avocado is known as the "butter of the forest" because of its high nutritional value and is increasingly popular in China.

According to reports, due to the expansion of China's middle class and the pursuit of health unique to the middle class, avocado quickly became the new favorite of Chinese consumers from the "unheard of" exotic fruits in just a few years. Mexico and Chile's avocado exports to China are growing 250 percent a year; in 2016, the Chinese ate a total of 15,000 tons of avocados, 127 times more than in 2013, making China the second-largest avocado consumer after the United States.

However, can the popularity of avocado in China and around the world be attributed solely to the expansion of demand for "middle class"? Avocado comes with petty bourgeois feelings, health lovers to high-nutrition fruit natural expression, or interest groups have ulterior motives? Avocado has both mellow taste and fresh style. It is popular for lowering blood fat and other effects. Is it really "blood dripping"?

The rise of avocado in China is not accidental

"More and more (Chinese) people are concerned about healthy lifestyles, and avocado is rich in nutrients to meet this need." Zhang Hui, a sales manager at an online food delivery company. In his view, it is people's emphasis on health that makes avocado an unshakable star in China's fruit and vegetable consumer world. However, it was not a natural process for the Chinese to become fanatical about avocados.

A few years ago, Chinese people were not used to this fruit, which violated the common sense of Chinese fruits-avocado did not taste as sweet and crisp as apples and pears, tasted smoother than banana durian, but did not have the sweetness of bananas. Many netizens say it is tasteless, know, micro bo, friends circle has been full of bad reviews, some people say, avocado nibbles up, like eating soap.

The avocado sellers are getting restless. In order to change consumers 'negative attitude towards avocados, they have made every effort to educate the public on various avocados.

Since September 2014, Baiguoyuan began to cultivate the consumption of avocado in the Chinese market, such as displaying avocado knowledge cards in stores to "make consumers feel that avocado is delicious". Nanfang Daily "Hundred Orchard tells you how avocados cross the sea to Shenzhen"

Avocado sellers are also actively creating new ways to eat avocado to cater to Chinese tastes.

The marketing department of Sinwing Mau, which runs one of China's largest fruit distributors, has seven or eight employees responsible for marketing all kinds of fruits. They accept avocado recipes from exporters and are also responsible for how to innovate these recipes. One of their jobs now is to entice customers to try a strange recipe called avocado soy sauce in high-end stores. They cut the avocado in half, pluck out the core, drizzle soy sauce over the flesh and carve it into cubes like tofu. Chinese consumers see avocados more as fruits and less as salads. So Xin Rongmao handed over more fruity recipes to retailers, such as cutting avocado into pieces and mixing yogurt, or adding oranges and lemons to make juice. First Financial Daily "Avocado invades China!" Imports increased 127 times in 4 years

Such education has been effective, not only the sales of avocado fruit increased greatly, once only available in high-end hotels, avocado also began to appear widely on the menu of various restaurants.

Fast food brand KFC, best known for its fried chicken burgers, also can't wait to add avocado to their menu. White Valentine's Day in mid-March, KFC launched a new avocado spicy chicken burger, Xue Zhiqian devoted himself to advertising,"a green burst red."

Joey Wat, chief operating officer of Yum China, which operates 5000 KFC restaurants, said: "It [avocado] is seen as something pretty high-class and healthy," according to FT Chinese, and launching an avocado line of chicken burgers and chicken rolls will help boost the image of its fried chicken chain.

For this novel combination, consumers are buying it. Although some say you can't taste avocado in a heavy fried chicken burger, and avocado with fried chicken is nondescript, avocado's "petty bourgeoisie" aura is enough to make tasters feel "not bad." In the end, KFC's planned three-week avocado campaign ended early because of high demand.

Social networks have also accelerated the pace of avocado's invasion of China. A large number of microblogs, friends circle hot articles, soft articles, and promotional articles about avocado eating methods and nutritional values have promoted avocado into "health elixir": avocado is called "forest cream", juxtaposed with salmon and nuts, synonymous with high quality fat, it is "high in energy and low in sugar", rich in "anti-aging nutrients", and also "super guardian of cells", which can brighten eyes, skin care, soften hair, protect the heart, antioxidant, lower cholesterol, and even lose weight.

These professional nutrition knowledge is not necessarily out of the conscience of experts, but may be commissioned by businesses to make comments:

Luo Wei has also sent a batch of avocados to some doctors and nutritionist friends. He is the Chinese representative of the avocado industry in new Zealand and has worked in the medical field. Luo Wei's goal is that these people may comment on the nutritional value of avocado in the future. - First Financial Daily "Avocado invades China!" Imports increased 127 times in 4 years

These professional knowledge quickly won over a group of health and western food lovers. Because avocado has a high face value and fully meets the popular "Mediterranean diet" standard_high energy and less sugar, and its price is much higher than that of ordinary fruits, it quickly became a "photo object" for the middle class to show its class identity, and rose to the new social favorite of the era of national food photographers. "A pair of half avocado preserves is necessary at home", which has become the "middle-class standard" in the media.

In the domestic merchants make various offline efforts, coupled with the boost of Social networks, avocado from a somewhat inexplicable fruit for the Chinese people, into a fruit aristocrat, healthy food fighter. Consumers have become avocado promoters, perfectly reproducing the meaning that merchants give avocado.

One world, one marketing.

Despite all the local efforts of Chinese avocado marketing on recipes, avocado is still a "foreign" Western food in the eyes of most middle-class consumers, and it seems to be the case that avocado is indeed a must-have ingredient on the table in Western countries.

In Britain, there must be avocado salad, avocado toast, avocado burger and many other options in the light food supermarket. Image Source: Network

However, half a century ago, most Westerners did not know what avocado was. Avocado is a very common food with a long history of consumption in Mexico, along with corn and soybeans. It was not until the 1920s that a group of white farmers in Southern California established the first avocado estates and launched a global marketing plan that avocados became known to Westerners.

The wealthy and business-minded ranchers were the first to secure an exotic and communicative new name for their product, avocado. They complained that the avocado's original name, aguacate (Spanish for testicle) and alligator pear,"wouldn't fit on the table," which nearly destroyed the entire industry, so they protested and successfully renamed it.

Starting in the 1960s, they started raising a lot of money to advertise avocados. In 1974, avocados were rare and expensive, costing $1 a avocado ($4.80 today). Marketers have positioned the pricey fruit as a luxury item for the elegant elite.

America has been fat since the 1980s, when nutritionists called for a nationwide fat reduction campaign in the middle class, and fat content became the top priority in determining whether a food category was "healthy."

Advertisers took the opportunity to label avocados as healthy unsaturated fats, unlike the bad fats found in fried chicken and potato chips. Over the next three decades, this statement succeeded in buying the hearts of countless middle-class weight loss people.

In 1995, Hill & Knowlton, a global public relations consulting firm in the United States, launched a nationwide search for Mr. Avocado. The young women participating in the contest demonstrate a healthy eating lifestyle, which must include eating avocados.

Not only healthy, but fashionable. Avocado surpassed pizza as the most popular food item on Instagram in 2016, Mashable reported. The catering industry has also kept pace with the times, developing avocado specialties. Even in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, a Avocado restaurant opened in 2016, selling breakfast, lunch, supper snacks and drinks made only from avocado.

The stars also assist the avocado god. Victoria's Secret lingerie model Behati Prinsloo is sure to eat toast and scrambled eggs with avocado for breakfast; Blake Lively, who plays Selina on Gossip Girl, also recommends homemade green fruit and vegetable shakes. Avocado has since been shaped into a high-profile "lifestyle."

What finally pushed the avocado to the altar was the Super Bowl known as the American Spring Festival Gala. In the United States, the Super Bowl is the annual American football championship game, which ranks first in the US TV ratings and is regarded as a battleground for advertisers. In 2015, the Super Bowl featured its first fruit ad-a 30-second TV commercial for Mexican avocados at the end of the first quarter, costing $4.5 million. That year, Mexican avocado exports to the United States reached an all-time high.

As the craziest consumer, the United States maintained an annual growth rate of 10-30%, with per capita consumption increasing from 1.1 pounds per person per year in 1999 to 5.8 pounds in 2014, and its avocado imports reached nearly 730,000 tons in 2014, accounting for 46% of global avocado imports. In the same year, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom imported avocado annually, ranging from 166,000 to 50,000 tons.

Like all sudden fads, avocado sales are unimpeded by a combination of PR programs, mass media, social media, and star power.

What happened to the Western dinner table in those days is likely to happen in China soon after-people will shake off their rejection of avocado and compete to taste this exotic fruit full of "foreign flavor".

Every avocado may be hiding dirty blood and sweat

However, just as we can't think of the fate of mobile phone workers when we use Apple phones, most consumers have difficulty knowing what happens to avocado farmers in the process of growing avocados. Social media and merchant marketing have successfully shaped most consumers 'good fantasies about avocados, but the production process is not so good.

Mexico is the largest exporter of avocados, and a report released by the Global Avocado Summit in 2015 showed that more than half of the world's avocados are produced in Mexico. Alibaba also established food import cooperation with local suppliers in Mexico around 2015, and its imported Mexican avocados began to be sold on Tmall online stores since the end of 2014.

However, in Mexico, the acquisition of avocado profits induced local farmers to cut down a large number of virgin forests to expand the planting range of avocado, coupled with the huge water consumption and fertilizer required for avocado planting itself, resulting in forest ecological destruction, water resources destruction and drinking water poisoning and other problems, bringing huge survival crisis to the local people.

Even less well known is that Mexico's lower-class farmers have to work under extortion by the underworld. In the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacan, 80 percent of avocados are grown for export to the United States. However, the local drug gang Templar expanded its "reach" beyond the traditional marijuana, heroin, and cocaine businesses, monopolizing the production of "green gold" avocados.

Avocados are used as blackmail by mafia gangs: they take money from fertilizer and pesticide sales and charge high protection fees for each box of lime and avocados shipped out. Those who refuse to surrender may suffer from bloody disaster-there have been local avocado processors who refused to surrender, and their plants have been burned by the gang.

Anne Murcott, a professor at the Centre for Food Studies at the University of London's School of Asian and African Studies, said the success of avocados is largely due to precise marketing, and the example of avocados shows how the modern food industry has given "superfood" status to a common fruit under social media and massive marketing investments. In the avocado epidemic, the prerogative that gives meaning to the food is not in the hands of the consumer, but of the seller.

Consumers who are promoted by advertising are actually fooled. Avocado producers in the United States are working to change health standards in order to prevent their own healthy foods from being excluded from health standards. Avocados are high in fat and do not meet the health food standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1994. In 2016, snack maker Kind filed a complaint with the FDA that avocados and salmon are not "healthy" foods according to FDA standards, while fat-free jellies and sugary grains are considered "healthy". As if consumers had reason to believe that avocados could be truly healthy after the standard change.

Capital must be constantly seeking new opportunities for profit. Due to the slow growth of major avocado consumer markets such as North America, Europe and Japan, coupled with Trump's policies, the rising tariffs between the United States and Mexico have hit avocado related industries hard. In order to expand more diversified sales, sellers engaged in South American avocado exports have turned the battlefield to China. Chinese consumers have become fresh meat for avocado vendors.

And the true producers of the global avocado value chain are completely silenced. Besides being exploited by multi-level fruit sellers, farmers also have to bear the coercion of local underworld and the deterioration of living environment.

They may never know how beautifully the avocado they grow will be presented, just as the bourgeois consumer tasting the avocado cannot taste the sweat and sweat attached to it.

In the middle, however, agricultural and commercial capitalists from different countries, who dominate everything, freely exchange what they need for mutual benefit.

Whether avocado tastes good or not depends on personal taste. But the cruel truth behind avocado is hard to swallow.