Avocados are one of the most popular dietary food. The consumption of avocado in the US has increased six-fold in the last 30 years. So nowadays you can see that it is considered a superfood or food with great benefits for your health and your eating lifestyle. But are avocados vegan?
For vegans and people who are considering adding a plant-based diet to their lifestyles, it’s often confusing when they hear that avocados aren’t vegan-friendly foods. After all, it’s just a fruit. Unfortunately, many people don’t know what this question refers to. So let’s get started!
Why Do Some Vegans Think That Avocados Are Not A Vegan-Friendly Food?
The question of Avocado being a vegan-friendly food or not started from a show. That’s right! An episode of the BBC quiz show “QI” instigated this skepticism. Contestants on this episode were asked which foods were vegan: avocado, cantaloupe, kiwi, almonds, or cantaloupe. Of course, any mundane person will answer all of them. Same way, contestant Alan Davies answered, “Any of them, to which host Sandi Toksvig replied that none of them belong to a strict vegan diet, in the same way, honey isn’t vegan. She further said that all of these crops depend on bees, and since these crops are difficult to produce, the bees are treated in an “unnatural way.”
Treating bees unnaturally here refers to migratory beekeeping, where colonies of bees are transported on trucks and forklifts from one crop field to another, usually across various states with different climates. The bees are shipped into these fields to pollinate the crops when the plants are fertile and then are sent to the next in-season field. This is dangerous to bees in so many ways, and for those obvious reasons, people following a strict vegan diet will criticize foods like avocados and almonds.
However, if avocados aren’t vegan, then neither are most crops. According to the American Beekeeping Federation, beans, tomatoes, broccoli, melons, apples, onions, carrots, and hundred of other fruits and vegetables are also pollinated by bees bred for commercial purposes.
So, if we are to avoid foods like those mentioned above, we would be left with dangerously fewer diet options.
So are avocados really vegan?
The answer to this question ‘are avocados vegan’ really depends on your definition of veganism. Avocados do not contain actual animal meat or animal byproducts. So according to the definition, avocados are vegan. However, it is all about choices and doing our absolute best according to what is practical and possible.
Yes, bees are required to pollinate avocados, as well as many of our other food crops, whether through ‘natural’ local pollination or migratory pollination. While not all farms use ‘unnatural’ pollination, some do.
There aren’t enough local bees to pollinate the huge fruit, vegetable, and nut plantations needed to feed the population in large states like California and the United States. Of course, smaller farms do not require commercial beekeeping for pollination, and we should try to buy produce from them whenever possible. However, not everyone can afford or access those.
Over 50 billion land animals are grown for meat, milk, or eggs every year. While we can’t ensure that no animals were used to pollinate the crops we eat, no avocado or almond field comes close to the devastation caused by animal-related agriculture.
So, we believe that eating food crops like avocados, almonds, butternut squash, and all of the other ostensibly non-vegan plants are perfectly ethical in the vegan world.
Are you switching to a vegan diet? Need some motivation to make the transition? Then, read these 6 Reasons Why Switching To A Vegan Diet is good for you and the planet.
