Listeria LOVES This One Weird TikTok Avocado Trick
The FDA doesn't, though
How do you keep an avocado fresh and ripe for over a month? That’s a riddle for you, and the answer is: you don’t. Just eat the ripe avocado now, and then if you need another ripe avocado in a month, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But if you ask TikTok, the answer to how to keep an avocado ripe for a month is “keep it in a cup of water.” And why wouldn’t we listen to food preservation advice from strangers on the app with such hits as #justiceforjohnnydepp and the #cratechallenge?
The avocado hack goes like this: you keep a whole avocado submerged in water in an air-tight container in the fridge until you’re ready to eat it. Once you’re ready to eat it — in a week, in a month; it’s impossible to predict when you’ll have the desire to eat your preserved avocado — you’ll find the avocado is just as green and fresh as if you did not attempt to exert authority over nature and had eaten it during its normal avocado time period.
This hack has been tested by many on and off of the app to great success. As it turns out, the avocado hack works. And you know what else works? Storing avocados in the fridge just normally. But we needn’t pour additional salt on the wounds of TikTok, as their wounds have already been plenty salted by the FDA (a key wound preservation technique).
“The FDA does not recommend this practice,” a spokesperson for the FDA told Fox News regarding the TikTok avocado hack. “The main concern is with the possibility that any residual human pathogens — for example, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella spp., etc. — that may be residing on the avocado surface, may potentially multiply during the storage when submerged in water.”
The FDA spokesperson continues:
“Research performed by FDA scientists has shown that Listeria monocytogenes has the potential to infiltrate and internalize into the pulp of avocados when submerged in refrigerated dump tanks within 15 days during refrigerated storage. In this case, even surface disinfecting the avocado skin prior to slicing would not be able to remove the contamination.”
Damn. I know the loss of blind trust in food-related advice from TikTok must be devastating for many of you. But if it helps, I’d like to offer another technique for how to keep your avocado “fresh” — and it will take just six steps.
- Eat the avocado.
- Allow it to become one with your body.
- Experience new things.
- Don’t let stress overcome you.
- Treat every new day like a gift.
- Never stop learning.
Wow. I think we all feel a bit “ripe” now, don’t we?
