The end is nigh for avocado hand, that malady you may not believe catapults as many people as it does straight to the emergency room every year.
After all, the avocado is a tricky fruit for the klutzes among us. The seemingly harmless task of de-stoning an avocado can lead to some gnarly slippage and severed limbs. Picture it: You’re in the middle of slicing open one of these fertility fruits when, uh, shit! There it goes, fumbling out of your hands and onto the ground as the blade with which you’re cutting it slashes your skin. Blood spills everywhere. You are utterly incapacitated, forced to trek to the hospital. One bandaged claw and unseemly medical bill later, you are without an intact hand or a slice of avocado toast.
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It’s a terrible situation, really. Avocado hand is a malady that’s resulted in glib, callous mockery—doesn’t anyone know how to perform this utterly basic kitchen task?, some may ask—but there’s no need to dance around the fact that this is an issue. Some have proposed making pitless avocados and pre-cut avocados more widely-available as a solution, though such ideas have inspired their own kind of ridicule, too. (It’s crucial to remember such products serve their own purpose for some demographics, particularly for disabled folks who can’t always depend on their hands.)
Anyway! A group of schoolchildren in Brighton College in the United Kingdom, the Telegraph reported on Wednesday, may have found yet another fix. It’s an instrument called the “Avogo,” a hooked blade cast from pewter. You jut the blade directly into the top of the fruit, searing its skin and flesh as your hand circumnavigates the surface. You take the two halves apart and then affix the hook to the stone, removing the seed from the cavity as you pull the fruit away from your body.
These students were a group of six 13- and 14-year-old students who banded together to create this device as a response to a class prompt from their design and technology teacher, Sarah Awbery. One of the students, Shiven Patel, reportedly fell victim to this very condition of avocado hand when preparing breakfast for himself. So he and his friends decided to develop a prototype for a product that’d ensure he never had to deal with this again. Patel tested it on his parents and it worked wonders for them.
The team entered their invention in the London’s Design Museum’s Design Ventura challenge, where these good teens nabbed the top prize in the International and Independent Schools category in late February, with the judges declaring it a “handy and stylish tool for preparing avocados.” (When reached by email on Friday, the London Design Museum declined to provide further comment regarding why its judging panel chose this as the winner in that particular category.)
The Independent reported that the group plans to begin a Kickstarter page in the hopes of pooling enough money to make 250 Avogos that will be sold for £10, just under $14, each. All profits will reportedly be donated to charity. (Neither the students nor Awberry could be reached for comment on Friday by MUNCHIES.)
If you need a product like this, I swear I won’t judge you—cleaving an avocado is hard shit, and not all of us have hands that function easily.
There’s always, too, the option of learning how to pit an avocado safely without maiming yourself (see above). But honestly, who has the time?
