Where does the avocado come from? Learn the history of this trendy fruit.

We met with the author of ‘The Avocado Debate’, Honor May Eldridge. Watch her fascinating interview to find out more about the avocado – the trendy fruit whose popularity has gone global.

Here she explains how the avocado transformed from inexpensive local food, traveled the globe with colonialism and the slave trade, and then re-branded to evoke Hollywood glamour, health and wellness. And finally, it’s accessibility to everyone today and the impact of globalized production.

She says “What I really wanted to do with my book was use the avocado as a hook to talk about that wider food system and all the complexity of how food gets to us in our supermarkets in the global north.” Her experience on the environmental and social impact of agricultural systems stretches from political to civil society audiences.

“But it's important to me not to demonize the avocado. It's not the problem of the fruit. It's the system of production that it's in and that globalized food system that we exist in today…. It's one of those things that we don't think about very much. And at a policy level we don't really look at very much, but it has a huge impact on our health and our planet.”