'Diet Avocados' Are Now a Thing

Spanish company debuting the Avocado Light later this month
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 13, 2017 6:24 PM CDT
Low-Fat Avocados Are Now a Thing
In this Jan. 16, 2014, file photo, avocado boxes are collected an avocado orchard in Michoacan, Mexico.   (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

It sounds about as odd as fat-free half-and-half: The Avocado Light is here. Yes, Spanish company Isla Bonita has come up with a low-fat avocado, the BBC reports. The Avocado Light, launching at a trade fair in Spain later this month, has up to 30% less fat than a typical avocado, per the company. That's apparently a big deal, because despite an abundance of health claims about how wonderful avocados are for you, an average avocado also contains between 20g and 30g of fat. Despite the fact that most of that is monounsaturated fat, which is linked to all sorts of good stuff including reducing cholesterol, the FDA has set the serving size in the US at just one-third of a medium avocado; in the UK, one-half is considered a portion size.

Even so, the response to Isla Bonita's announcement can be summed up as "unimpressed," with headlines like "We don’t need diet avocados but they exist anyway" and "Here's A New Low Fat Avocado, But Is It Really Necessary?" in abundance. Many are wondering whether diet avocados are even healthy, with one nutritional expert telling Today the avocados could still be good for you as long as they still contain "all of the same nutrient attributes—without any suspect add-ons needed to reduce some of the fat." As for how, exactly, the fat is reduced, Isla Bonita says their avocados are grown under special soil and climate conditions that provide the same nutritional benefits while resulting in a reduced-fat fruit. Many commercial avocados are grown in Mexico, California, and Peru, but Isla Bonita says it is utilizing different climates in other Latin American countries in order to produce avocados with different attributes. (More avocado stories.)

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