• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The US Has An “Avocado Hand” Epidemic: Here’s How To Avoid An A&E Trip When Making Guac

March 26, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

Avocados might just be one of the most hazardous foods when it comes to finger-slicing fiascos and hand injuries. Beloved for their oily goodness and Instagrammable credentials, these trendy fruits have been responsible for a noticeable rise in 911 calls in recent years.

ADVERTISEMENT

The culprit? A phenomenon known as “avocado hand”. An estimated 50,413 people in the US had avocado-related knife injuries between 1998 to 2017, according to a study published in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine in 2020. 

Dubbing the problem an “epidemic”, researchers from the Emory University School of Medicine wrote that the figures increased over time, rising from an estimated 3,143 cases between 1998 and 2002 to 27,059 cases between 2013 and 2017. 

Incidence reached an all-time high in 2016 and 2017. The team speculated that the surge in injuries might be linked to the growing popularity of avocados in the US over recent decades. 

Notably, over 80 percent of these injuries involved women, particularly younger women between the ages of 23 and 39, who represented nearly one-third of all reported accidents. The reason why this might be the case isn’t discussed.

The issue often arises from the large, round, and slippery seed embedded in the avocado’s soft flesh, making it easy for the knife to slip and result in injury.

A 2017 medical case report described it as so: “Classically, the patients hold the avocado in their non-dominant hand while using a knife to cut/peel the fruit with their dominant hand. The mechanism of injury is usually a stabbing injury to the non-dominant hand as the knife slips past the stone, through the soft avocado fruit.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Fear not, though. While the statistics may sound alarming, you can still enjoy your avocado safely without an urgent trip to the emergency room. To make sure you slice with confidence, the California Avocado Commission has published a short online guide on their website called: “5 tips to help you cut an avocado without cutting yourself.” Here’s what they recommend:

  • Choose a suitable knife. Use a medium-sized chef’s knife or a Santoku knife for cutting avocados and avoid paring knives as they may be too short or too sharp.
  • Use a chopping board. Keep the avocado on the cutting board while cutting, rotating it around the seed instead of holding it in your hand.
  • Quarter it with care. It’s advised to quarter the avocado by rotating it 90 degrees and making another full horizontal cut around the seed, or separate the halves and place them face up on the cutting board.
  • Avoid whacking the seed with a knife (or poking it with the tip) while holding the avocado in your hand. Instead, remove the seed using a spoon or your fingers instead of striking it with a knife to prevent accidents.
  •  Peel the avocado instead of scooping it out, as peeling preserves more of the fruit and its nutrients.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Wall Street rallies on crude price jump, economic data
  2. Can You Unlearn A Language?
  3. Ol Doinyo Lengai Is The Weirdest Volcano On Earth, Maybe In The Solar System
  4. Divers Thought They’d Found A Shipwreck, But This Giant Shadow Is Alive

Source Link: The US Has An "Avocado Hand" Epidemic: Here's How To Avoid An A&E Trip When Making Guac

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version