The UK’s first Avocado Week kicked off on Monday, as the Chilean Hass Avocado Association (CHAA) held its fifth annual Avocado Brotherhood lunch in London.
Avocado promotions are taking place up and down the whole country this week, including opportunities to taste avocados in supermarkets, radio interviews, magazine articles and chances for shoppers who buy avocados to win a week’s grocery shopping for free.
A fleet of 27 avocado-branded taxis has also been unveiled, which for the next few weeks will be travelling around London and beyond, communicating to passengers some simple but very important messages about avocados.
Chef and restaurateur Thomasina Miers, a former MasterChef winner, is on board with the Chilean avocado campaign for the second year running, participating in radio interviews and devising some straightforward recipes to run alongside the promotion. She gave importers and members of the national and trade media a cookery demonstration at Divertimenti cookery school, before the lunch.
CHAA president Adolfo Ochagavía said: “Four years since we began to promote avocados, we are still fighting misconceptions about the fruit. Research we carried out last month shows that up to 14 per cent of people around Britain still wrongly believe that avocados are unhealthy. Other evidence suggests that some people think them to be expensive, or even difficult to prepare.
“However, in spite of this we can see in what we hear from shoppers and read in the press that most people now understand the facts about avocados. Avocados are extremely good for you and contain healthy monounsaturated fats. They are incredibly easy to use and are not expensive and, most importantly, avocados are delicious.”
The Chilean Hass avocado season lasts until January.
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