In Afraid to Ask, we’re answering food-related questions that may or may not give you goosebumps. Today: What are Avocado Hands?
Alanna Clark was making breakfast at a friend’s apartment when it happened. It was the fall of 2022, and the 32-year-old Paris-based business consultant was slicing a plump avocado. Clark was chatting with her friend while using “a really sharp Swiss knife” to remove the pit when she absentmindedly “bumped” it through the buttery flesh and into the palm of her left hand, just between her index and middle fingers between. “I completely collapsed on the kitchen floor,” she told me. Clark had the nerve severed and underwent hand surgery the next day.
It’s no secret that avocados have become a superfood star over the past decade. U.S. avocado retail sales will reach $2.7 billion in 2022, up from $1.1 billion in 2014. But unfortunately, the market isn’t all picturesque cereal bowls and lush guacamole. Injuries like Clark’s are now so common that they’ve earned a special term: “avocado hand,” which describes puncture wounds and lacerations sustained while slicing or pitting an avocado.
Over the past few years, researchers have written various medical papers on this phenomenon. Avocado hands have gone from being a kitchen nuisance to a legitimate source of concern for surgeons. In some cases, the wounds “can be quite severe,” says Mary Elizabeth Rashid, MD, a hand surgeon at Great Plains Orthopedics in Peoria, Ill., who has been “constant” over the past few years. “Seeing the damage caused by avocados. In some cases, like Clark’s, the consequences can be severe.
How common is avocado hands?
The avocado hand has to be one of the most ridiculous injuries. Can you imagine showing up to the emergency room, bleeding, dramatically holding your hand, and admitting to a medical professional… guacamole? Many victims feel this shame. “It was an embarrassing injury,” said Delaney Vetter, a public relations expert who stabbed her in the hand in college. “I cook a lot, so this is especially bad for my self-esteem.” No need for meat Author Alicia Kennedy even has a permanent, mocking reminder of her avocado slip: “I have a smiley face scar on my left ring finger,” she said.
In 2020, researchers at Emory University called avocados an “epidemic.” They estimated that there were 50,413 avocado-related knife injuries between 1998 and 2017, with a 40% increase between 2013 and 2017. (These numbers don’t include people who are too embarrassed to ask for help.)
Unfortunately for me, avocado hands hurt Millennial women the most. Of the cases studied by Emory University researchers, 80.1% of the patients were women, and nearly half were between the ages of 23 and 39. They note that the increase in cases is almost entirely correlated with the increase in avocado consumption in the United States. A study by the Haas Avocado Council also found that Millennials spent an average of $24.99 on avocados in 2018 (5% more than non-Millennials).