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Pop Culture Series: Avocado

History of the Avocado

Bill Petro
4 min readFeb 5, 2025

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Why are avocados, especially guacamole dip, considered a required food for Super Bowl Parties? What’s the background?

Californian Avocados

California, which has 60,000 acres of avocado orchards, has an avocado growing season running from March through August… not exactly friendly to the date of the Super Bowl. The popular “Hass” variety does not ripen until March. So, where do Super Bowl Avocados come from?

Mexican Avocados

In the run-up to the Super Bowl, 80–90% of all avocados shipped to the U.S. come from Mexico; the rest come from Chile. During the Super Bowl this year, American appetites crave over 330 million pounds of avocados, increasing 600% in the last three decades. Avocados’ history goes back thousands of years to Mesoamerica.

What Changed with Avocados?

In 1994, NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) opened the U.S. market to Mexican-grown avocados. The Mexican Avocado industry began promoting guacamole as a Super Bowl food.

By far, Mexico is the largest exporter to the U.S., mainly from the western Mexican state of Michoacán. Indeed, over 300 million pounds of…

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Bill Petro
Bill Petro

Written by Bill Petro

Historian, technologist, blogger/podcaster. Former Silicon Valley tech exec. Author of articles on history, tech, pop culture, & travel. https://billpetro.com

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