Features
Avocados and Testicles
by Michael Patrick O’Leary
I had one of those silly arguments on Facebook which arise from my contrarian nature forcing me to try to squash a stranger coming forward with some received wisdom with no foundation. This fellow confidently stated that ‘avocado’ was Aztec for testicle.
To be picky, Aztec was not a language. The Aztecs were a people who actually called themselves the Mexica (Me-SHEE-ka), and they came from what is today the American Southwest. Nahuatl was the lingua franca of the Aztecs, who ruled Mexico between the 14th and 16th centuries before they were conquered by the Spanish. Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since the seventh century and is still spoken by nearly 1.5 million Mexicans. ‘Avocado’ comes from the Nahuatl word ahuakatl; ‘chocolate’ from xocolatl; ‘tomato’ from tomatl; and ‘chili’ from cilli.
The English word “avocado” comes from the Spanish word aguacate. The earliest known written use of the word in English was in 1697, as “avogato pear”. The Spanish word aguacate comes from the Nahuatl word âhuakatl. The Nahuatl word âhuakatl was sometimes used as slang for testicles because of the shape of the fruit and its alleged aphrodisiac properties. When I was in Peru, I noticed that lawyers were called “avocados” and wondered if this meant lawyers were regarded as bollocks. In Peru, the fruit itself was called by the Quechua-derived word palta. Peru is now the largest supplier of avocados imported to the European Union and the second largest supplier to Asia and the United States.
Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana
is a bilingual dictionary of Spanish and Nahuatl by Alonso de Molina, first published in 1555. In Molina’s Nahuatl dictionary auacatl is given also as the translation for compañón “testicle”, and this has been taken up in popular culture as a fact that testicle was the word’s original meaning. This is not the case, as the original meaning can be reconstructed as “avocado” – rather the word seems to have been used in Nahuatl as a euphemism for “testicle”.
Until the early 1900s, the ahuakatl had never been grown commercially in the United States. By 1914, however, hotels in Los Angeles and San Francisco were ordering as many of the fruits as they could and paying as much as $12 for a dozen.
The first time I heard of avocados, they were called avocado pears. This was a bit confusing because in my English childhood, pears were things you had out of tins at Sunday tea time and they came in a sickly, sugary syrup. In later life, I enjoyed eating avocados as a savoury snack swimming in garlicky oil and vinegar. Walnut oil and balsamic vinegar for preference.
In those drear, dead days when I had to work for a living, the office crowd in London used to lunch on sandwiches or baguettes filled with pureed avocado and crispy bacon. Here in Sri Lanka, we can substitute dried sprats for crispy bacon.
Sri Lankans do sometimes eat avocados as a pudding with sugar and cream, or pureed with milk and kitthul treacle. They are sometimes called butter fruit. Diabetes has long been a scourge in this country. When I was in Goa, I developed a craving for cold fruit lassis that I bought on the beach. Avocado lassi was one of them. Lassi, a yogurt-based drink, itself has many health benefits, including improved digestion, bone health, and immunity beneficial bacteria that help with digestion and prevent bloating, constipation, and indigestion.
Botanically, this fruit is a berry not a pear and the tree is a member of the laurel family. It is native to the Americas and was first domesticated in Mesoamerica more than 5,000 years ago.
Cholesterol
I first heard of cholesterol in the early 80s although it had been discussed long before that. In 1769,François Poulletier de la Salle identified solid cholesterol in gallstones. The story of lipids includes at least 11 Nobel prizes, but that is another story. I was once a small cog in the Study of Health and Stress carried out by Professor Sir Michael Marmot at London University. This was when I found out that cholesterol was a thing. My cholesterol levels were “at the high end of the normal range”. Medication was not suggested. In London I was advised to avoid cashew nuts, coconut oil, avocados and prawns. In Sri Lanka I was told to eat as much of them as I could. I am more than happy to help the Sri Lankan economy by gorging on these delicious and healthy comestibles.
Gut Feeling
Avocados positively impact the gut microbiome inside the digestive tract. Avocado is rich in a phytochemical called lutein—a pigment related to beta carotene and vitamin A. Lutein is one of the two major carotenoids found in the eye. The other place lutein is found is the brain. Eating avocados improved performance on memory tests but taking a lutein supplement did not give the same results, so something in the fruit itself, possibly healthy fats, improved brain function. Eating avocados increases the amount of macular pigment that results from an increase in zeaxanthin. Extracts of avocado pulp or the fruit have been found to have cancer fighting properties. An extract containing several antioxidants, including lutein, zeaxanthin, beta carotene, and vitamin E, stopped the growth of prostate cancer cells. Another extract killed oral cancer cells.
The amount of folate, one of the many B vitamins responsible for energy metabolism and new cell production, is 40% of the daily value. Avocado has over 30% of the daily value for vitamin K, necessary for blood clotting and bone health. The amount of vitamin C is over 20% of the daily value of the water-soluble antioxidant that supports immune health and aids collagen synthesis to promote wound healing. The four milligrams of vitamin E, a fat-soluble antioxidant that supports cell structure, is 26% of the daily value for vitamin E. Nearly 30% of the daily value of potassium and almost 20% of the daily value of magnesium, a mineral essential for structural and chemical reactions in the human body, is in this fruit.
Food Fads, Good and Bad
Foody fads come and go. Currently, the consensus is that avocados are good for you. People who regularly eat avocados have higher intakes of fiber, vitamins E and K, magnesium, and potassium than people who don’t eat them.
There has to be a drawback, though. It seems that the cultivation of avocados is bad for the planet. The water demands of avocado farms places a strain on local resources. The trend of increasing avocado consumption (estimates indicate that globally around five million tonnes are consumed each year) during recent decades is allegedly causing negative environmental and socio-economic impacts in many countries.
Monkey Minds
The avocado is a climacteric fruit, which matures on the tree, but ripens off the tree. It is difficult to make monkeys understand this. The hooligans pick the fruit, discover they are too hard and throw them away. Avocados used in commerce are picked hard and green and kept in coolers at 3.3 to 5.6 °C (37.9 to 42.1 °F) until they reach their final destination. Their final destination may be thousands of miles away and require a lot of jet fuel to get there. Some supermarkets sell ripened avocados which have been treated with synthetic ethylene to hasten ripening.
At our mountain retreat in Sri Lanka, we had ten avocado trees which gave us thousands of fruit. We did not waste water on them because there was a lot of rain . A friend in the UK asked me if I missed the Cork rain. I said I missed its moderation. We did not harm the local community because we gave away the fruit we could not eat ourselves.
Michael Patrick O’Leary is an Irish citizen who has lived in Sri Lanka with his Sri Lankan wife since 2002.
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