Beware "Avocado Hand"



Emergency room doctors have noticed a trend in the last ten years or so of people coming in with grisly injuries to their non-dominant hand, often requiring delicate surgery to repair tendons, nerves, and pulleys. These injuries were incurred in the process of cutting an avocado, leading to the term "Avocado Hand."

The overwhelming majority of injuries occurred when attempting to remove the avocado's large, hard seed, called a "stone".

"All patients reported that they had pressed the knife tip down perpendicularly onto the avocado seed and that it slipped off it and plunged into their hand," the doctors wrote.

And the injuries were not at all minor.

Prevention is a matter of learning how to cut an avocado without cutting yourself. Along with a description of the injuries, there's a step-by-step tutorial on avocado preparation at Real Clear Science.


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-chuckle- Had to research this a bit. From the two studies:
U.S.: The most common demographic injured were 23 to 39-year old females (32.7%)
U.K: The median age of patients presenting with these injuries was 33 years, with majority of injuries occurring in the 21–30 age group. Most of the patients were male.
I'm glad it's not an all (fe)male thing as the first thing that entered my mind on this was millennials and their avocado toast. . . .
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All you do is take a spoon or a butter knife and slowly carve a path around the seed. Once you've dug enough around it, it pops right out. You never have to use a sharp knife to get the seed out.The problem is that chefs on youtube stab the seed and pull it out. People see that, and they think all avocados are like that. If you've eaten as many avocados as I have, you know those seeds are often stuck on other side.
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