First There Was the Avocado—Now We Also Have the … Ecovado

Avacadoes are a tasty fruit that are popular in salads, in dips (guacamole), on toast, on pizzas and in many other recipes. However, they require a warm climate with lots of water. Thus, they are unpopular with enviroes and expensive for people in cooler climates. 

Thus, it was only natural that a researcher in Great Britain would develop an ersatz avocado that would be easier on the environment and easier on the British pocket book. Just as Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat, and other vegetarian-serving entrepreneurs developed plant-based foods that looked and tasted like meat, a British inventor developed a product quite similar to an avocado—the ecovada. Arina Shokouhi combined a mixture of locally produced broad beans, hazel nuts, apples, and rapeseed (canola) oil* to make the ecovado, an artificial fruit that mimics the taste and feel of the pale green, creamy flesh of the avacodo. It is even packaged in a fake avocado skin fashioned from wax. 

This is where I disagree with the inventor. Being a totally artificial creation, the ecovada does not need an unusable and inedible “skin.” The simplest replacement would be some type of cracker or breading material. A more exotic 3D printing approach might produce an apple skin that would have the strong smooth protective layer while also including vitamin C and other nutrients. Thus, an ecovada could be totally edible. 

Maybe the ecovada is just the beginning of many food products that could be locally produced while providing more exotic tastes and better nutrition. What sounds good to you as a new food? If you think it is especially good, tell me about it at rogercarlson@savingtheworldbeforebreakfast.com 

 

*Note: In some countries, the term “rapeseed” refers to inedible industrial oil, while in others, it’s used interchangeably with canola—an important difference. Also, grapeseed—with a G—is another type of cooking oil.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Look to the Weeds in Saving the World before Breakfast

  For thousands of years, farmers have wailed on weeds with hoes and plucked bugs off their plants.   They have fought back much more powerfully in the 1900s and 2000s with power weeders, pesticides, and herbicides. But, the pests and weeds need not be problems.   Sometimes, they can be part of the solution in developing a more efficient food-producing system.   That better food production is something humanity will need to feed a bigger population coming and for doing that despite serious global warming that might also be coming.   Hello, I’m Roger Carlson. I wrote the books, Saving the World Before Breakfast: A Better Green New Deal , and Saving the World Before Breakfast: The Earth Alone Can Save Us.   A key theme in those books is transforming problems into parts of the solution.   Let’s start with the so-called weeds and pests that become contributors when associated with one particular tiny fern, azolla. For centuries, East Asian farmers have raised fish along with ric
Read more

2023 Climate Skeptics Conference: "We’re Winning!" No, They’re Not—But How they Could Win

  2023 Climate Skeptics Conference: "We’re Winning!"   No, They’re Not—But How they Could Win In February, I attended the 2023 Heartland Institute 15th International Conference on Climate Change discussing hardcore skepticism about global warming.   Most of the press and public consider global warming (which they now call climate change) a possible end-of-the-world threat.   Heartland is the foremost exception.   Heartland began in 1984, “… to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.”   They soon zeroed in on predictions of catastrophic global warming and have been fiercely skeptical of it ever since.   This year’s 2023 conference continued the tradition.   The conference included high caliber climate scientists, economists, and energy experts, many whom are retired or otherwise insulated from possible loss of government funding. At every Heartland conference, the presentations target fallacies in the theory of a massive
Read more

Every Little Energy Bit Helps

Every Little Energy Bit Helps…And Every Eccentric Bit…and Every Bottom-Line Bit Every little bit helps! Every little bit helps! That was a line from a new group in the 1970s—the environmentalists. They had big ideas about cleaning all the smoke stacks of America. They also had little ideas. One of the little ideas was a brick in the toilette tank. One brick saved about one quart per flush with the resulting savings in water and water purification chemicals. AND if all the toilettes in America had a brick…. Let’s start with a serious concern about energy. Petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert said that petroleum production is like a bell-shaped curve. Production of oil for our cars goes steeply up to a peak.…. Then, it goes steeply down. In 1956, Hubbert said that oil production in the lower forty-eight states would peak about 1970. People laughed…until 1970 when it happened. Now, other geologists are saying there is a similar curve for world oil production. And that peak might be roughly
Read more