As a millennial, I’m being ruined financially by avocados. I can’t stop smearing them on every possible edible surface—and they’re so dang expensive! That’s why this little tip on how to get the most avocado meat for your buck is so exciting.
Posted on r/LifeProTips by u/passivefiness, this hack is based on the assumption that you don’t buy an avocado for the pit; apparently, the big round avocado fruits that look so good in the grocery aisle open up to reveal they’re mostly a giant seed inside. What you want is a good, oblong avo:
The rounder the avocado, the bigger the pit. For the best results, get the oval shaped ones.
Commenters joked that u/passivefiness was trying to trick everyone into buying the worst avocados—but apparently, this is legit.
Oregon Live posted in 2016 that a local reader named Steven Kale (the man knows produce) wrote in to explain the seed spotting technique. They decided to test Kale’s theory and found it to be largely true:
In three different comparisons of avocados with identical weights but different shapes, the longer, pear-shaped avocados had smaller seeds than the more-rounded ones. For instance, we opened up two six-ounce Hass avocados, and the seed from the longer one weighed 1 ounce, while the seed from the rounded one weighed 1-1/2 ounces.
The difference of 1/2 ounce may seem inconsequential, but when you consider that you’ll need two to four avocados to make guacamole, the difference in yield starts to add up.
The caveat is that seed size cannot be guaranteed in every case: You still might choose the perfect oval and get rewarded with an absurdly large pit inside. Let’s hope not, because I have a guacamole bowl to fill.