In the first and possibly only instalment of a new blog How Good Is….? I ask the Nation (!) to rate something in an attempt to find out if it’s good, or not good.
Introduction
Some very quick reasons I believe that the subject of avocado deserves praise:
- It looks weird – thick, bobbly skin. Like a Natterjack Toad.
- It has a hulking big stone in the middle that in almost anything else would not be worth the trouble.
- It has a great colour.
- It can be served in about 10 different ways with varying degrees of effort.
- It is suitable to eat at any meal time, breakfast (especially if you’re in Oz, more on that later), lunch or dinner/tea/supper (let’s not start that again).
- It is quite fatty, but apparently they are ‘good fats’. In your face kebab meat and chips.
However, am I alone in my love of this food of Kings, or an a(d)vo-cate (that’s not really worked) of something that others simply dismiss? To find out once and for all, I returned to the hotbed of cultural discussion, Facebook and Twitter, and asked the tough questions that people want to hear:
The Study
As you can see, the response was overwhelming*.
Analysis
Some mathematical analysis of the votes from Facebook and Twitter for avo is as follows:
36 scores were recorded.
- The median average (the one in the middle when all the votes were laid out in ascending order) was 8/10.
- The modal average (the most frequently occurring score) was both 8/10 and 10/10 with 7 x votes each.
- The median average (the total score divided by the total votes) was a surprisingly high 277, 785.021/10 (3 decimal places). I realise that to the untrained eye, that score does seem to have gone awry, and adds a strong explanation for the D grade I was awarded for A-Level maths in 2001.
However, not everything was clear cut. Some people did not stick to the strong scale I attempted to enforce…. Observe evidence A, as a random Twitter user adjudged the noble avocado to be worth only -10/10:
@ThomHoops -10—
spageti westrn hersm (@MilenaDiCaprio) February 26, 2013
Evidence B saw Georg Backer journey to the other end of the scale and award an 11:
I know what you’re thinking right now, a score of 11 should not have such a profound skew on the mean average and you’re absolutely right…..it should not. It cannot!
After some more investigating, and an extended piece of statistical analysis using only the best kit in the business, I was able to detect the cause of the anomaly See if you can spot it for yourselves in evidence C:
What I love about this screenshot is the amount of subjective opinion and differing approaches it conveys about the human psyche’s appetite in tackling an apparently simple task.
Firstly, Bex Butler deals with the chastening experience that can occur if the avocado is not ripe. From a heady 10 when on its game, the unpredictable avocado can be spat into a bin. This, in my opinion, only adds to its charm. It’s the Mario Balotelli of foodstuffs.
Luigi Fusco, gets in and out with a very solid 8. Done.
Matthew Inness has no opinion on avocado. I therefore removed him from the survey but was nevertheless thrilled with his contribution.
Polly Graham exhibits another popular approach to rating avo – the answer, with a recipe. Everyone who brought up guacamole was a huge fan, and this pushed the avocado into the upper echelons of adulation.
Jack Burton, another man’s man, also favours an 8. He likes his food in fairness so everything probably gets a +1 modifier, but even so, a good score.
Now, the source of my woe and head scratching. Helen Barker, like basically everyone who contributed to the study from Australia, is a huge fan of avocado. It’s a way of life, particularly for ‘brekkie‘ (breakfast). She scored avocado at 10,000,000 (Vidiprinter: TEN MILLION) which definitely bumped up the mean average.
Finally, Howard Mansell was keen to get involved and share his views, although having never actually eaten the fruit, he decided to grant the Lancastrian chemical distributor of the same name 7/10. I included it anyway.
Conclusions
How Good is Avocado?
It’s good. Very good. Most people absolutely love it with 66.67% of votes scoring avocado 8 or higher.
The biggest downside to avocado is that if it is unripe it’s extremely bad. This badness manifests itself in two ways:
- It quite literally leaves a bad taste in the mouth
- The disappointment of missing out on a ripe avocado appears to trigger a profound psychological effect of frustration.
When evolving from Avocado to Guacamole, it’s most powerful state, the superfruit is at its most devastatingly powerful. This transformation was covered extensively by luminaries such as Charles Darwin and the creators of Pokémon.
Avocado, like all foods, did provoke a negative reaction from a handful of responders, who awarded a few 1s and 2s and called it ‘repellent’. However, overall the people have had their say. Let us celebrate the confirmation that Avocado = GOOD.
* = Journalistic hyperbole license exacted at this point
Excellent piece of analysis Mr Hooper.Only Dr Mansell could come up with that comment about chemical suppliers. BTW Avocado was the colour of a bathroom suite in the 80s when coloured sanitary ware was all the rage.
Of course nothing in this otherwise excellent item alludes to the awfulness of growing up in the seventies when every hip and trendy bathroom was a ‘tone’ described as avocado; in reality a bilious, canal-slime colour that had the strange (and possibly positive) effect of camouflaging stray vomit flecks and limescale deposits. This is the sort of thing that stay with you and eats away at the soul.
I do love your analysis posts, the very definition of crowdsourcing; and on such an important topic. I vow to pay more attention to Facebook in future in a bid to be included in the research group.
For the record, I would give avocado a solid 8, losing one point for the effort it takes to get one out of its skin (although you do get the payoff of the awesome conker-like stone) and one more for the fact that MyFitnessPal deems it to have 22g of (albeit good) fat. I strongly back the levelling-up of avocado through Guacamole, too.