The Super Bowl is on Sunday, and the actual game is totally for the San Francisco 49ers fans who already have several “SIX RINGS”-related tweets in their drafts folders and the long-suffering Kansas City Chiefs supporters who weren’t alive for Super Bowl IV. For the rest of us, it’s an excuse to eat a half-dozen potato skins, drink entirely too much, and watch Mr. Peanut’s third-quarter funeral.
The Super Bowl is also the reason why January has become the biggest month of the year for avocado exports from Mexico to the United States. And why not? Guacamole is the perfect party food, and almost every guest can eat it, whether they’re doing keto, on the Paleo diet, or just a picky asshole.
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According to Bloomberg, the week that ended on January 19 was the best week of all time for avocado exporters, as more than 75 million pounds (37,500 tons) of the fruit were shipped across the border. The Haas Avocado Board said that was a 3% increase over last year’s already impressive total.
That number slightly fluctuates, depending on which organization is counting, but it’s still a lot of avocados; the Association of Mexican Avocado Producers, Packers, and Exporters (APEAM) said that it broke the export record by shipping 33,814 tons during that week, and that it has shipped around 22,000 tons every week this month. Mexican daily newspaper El Heraldo de México reports that more than 1,400 trucks leave the state of Michoacán for the U.S. every week, which is the equivalent of sending one truckload every six minutes.
“We hope to be part of a great day in the world of marketing and the country in general,” Alvaro Luque, the president of nonprofit trade group Avocados from Mexico, said. “Avocados from Mexico are healthy, delicious and always in season.” (And yes, Avocados from Mexico will be running one of its own commercials during the Super Bowl, making it six straight years that they’ve reminded an international viewing audience that avocados exist.)
Another avocado-adjacent company also knows that events based around enthusiastic quantities of alcohol don’t always pair well with food-prep. Wholly Guacamole, which makes refrigerated ready-to-serve guac, is offering a year’s worth of “Avocado Hand Insurance” to more than 50 people.
The company says that in 2018, around 8,900 people had to go to the ER because they’d sustained some kind of injury while slicing an avocado. (The year before that, the former head of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons said that he was treating “four patients a week” who had serious avocado-related cuts on their hands.)
Unsteady avocado slicers are encouraged to retweet the ‘avocado hand” post from Wholly Guacamole by February 3, and 54 winners will get a year’s worth of its pre-made guac –– which it says is essentially avocado hand insurance.
Anyway, good luck to the 49ers, to the Chiefs, and to anyone who’s using a kitchen knife on Sunday.
