Somewhere in a research lab in Australia, fifty avocado shoppers were fitted with a glove covered in force sensors, the kind normally used to optimise the ergonomics of sports equipment or power tools. Instead, scientists strapped it to the hands of everyday consumers and asked them to do one simple thing: pick an avocado and decide if it was ripe.
What they found reshaped how the fresh produce industry thinks about fruit quality. 97 percent of consumers pick up an avocado and squeeze it. Harder than they think. And that squeeze, repeated by shopper after shopper across a single day, does far more damage than anyone realises.
97%
of shoppers squeeze an avocado to check if it is ripe
90%
judge ripeness by feel, more than any other method
3x
more avocados handled by shoppers than they buy
In 2015, Dr Daryl Joyce, Sohail Mazhar, and Peter Hofman published a detailed study into avocado flesh bruising for Horticulture Innovation Australia. Alongside a companion study on reducing flesh bruising and skin spotting in Hass avocados, the researchers tracked exactly how, when, and why that brown internal spot appears.
Avocados squeezed by shoppers over just a six-hour period were significantly more bruised than avocados that were left untouched. The more an avocado is squeezed, the more it bruises. The harder the squeeze, the deeper the bruise goes. And bruise severity keeps increasing every day after that first squeeze happens, long after the shopper has moved on to the next fruit.
Bruising builds up throughout the supply chain, from harvest to packing to transport. But both studies point to the same conclusion: bruising severity is significantly higher at the retail display than at any other point.
This is where the fruit meets the shopper, and where the squeezing happens most. Half of all internal defects found in avocados at retail level are bruising. Shoppers typically handle around three times the number of avocados they actually intend to buy, which leaves a lot of quietly damaged fruit sitting back on the shelf for the next customer.
The researchers found that the firmer the avocado, the harder consumers squeeze it. Shoppers are not being gentle with less ripe fruit, they are pressing harder to try and find out if it is ready to eat. That means the avocados furthest from ripeness, the ones retailers most want to protect for later in the week, are often handled the most aggressively.
90 percent of shoppers said they assess ripeness by feeling for firmness or softness. Only 8% consider skin colour, and just 2% look at any other feature. Squeezing is not a habit some shoppers have and others do not. It is, for almost everyone, the default way to judge an avocado.
Bruised fruit is fruit with a shorter shelf life and a lower eating quality, even when the skin looks perfectly fine. That mismatch between appearance and internal condition is exactly what drives food waste at the retail and consumer stages. Interestingly, less than half of Australian shoppers surveyed agreed that bad avocados had been overhandled, which shows just how invisible this problem is to the people causing it.
The researchers' conclusion was direct. Reducing or removing shopper squeezing at the retail display is described as the single most critical control point to reduce flesh bruising across avocado supply chains.
Squeeze more, bruise more, waste more. It is a simple chain, and it starts at the exact moment a shopper picks up the fruit.
This is precisely the problem OneThird built the Avocado Scanner to solve. Instead of relying on a squeeze, shoppers hold their avocado up to the scanner in store and receive an instant, objective ripeness reading, no guessing and no damage to the fruit.
Retailers using the Avocado Scanner see the results reflected directly on the shelf. Fewer bruised avocados, less waste, and shoppers who trust that the fruit they pick has their preferred ripeness. Over 350 scanners are already installed in stores worldwide, with retailers reporting happier customers as well as a drop in waste.
Squeezing avocados to check ripeness is a habit nearly every shopper shares. With the right technology at the retail display, it can be a habit of the past.
Sources
Joyce, D. C., Mazhar, M. S., & Hofman, P. J. (2015). Understanding and managing avocado flesh bruising (Final report AV12009). Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited.
Reducing flesh bruising and skin spotting in Hass avocado (AV10019), Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Talking Avocados, Vol 28 No 2, Australian Avocados.