What you see: A avocado with a brown or blackish spot near the pit, possibly also a hole. But the rest of the avocado looks fine.
What it is: An internal bruise.
Eat or toss: Cut around the problem spot – it won’t taste good. As long as the rest of the avocado is ripe, it should taste fine.
An avocado with an internal bruise is still OK to eat
When a ripe avocado is bruised, the damage is obvious. You can see the darkened spot, usually just below the peel, where the avocado suffered the impact. Like in the avocado we wrote about in this previous post, afflicted by little bruises from someone pressing too hard to test for ripeness. Or this avocado, which may have simply fallen on its bum.
But while a soft, ripe avocado might dent like a ball of pliable clay, a hard, unripe or semi-ripe avocado can experience the force differently. A bruise can still show up anywhere, but on those harder avocados it’s often the flesh closest to the pit that will suffer. Scientists aren’t sure exactly why.
So, in the case pictured here, the flesh near the avocado was damaged, breaking open cells, which enabled compounds normally kept separate to mix with each other and oxygen, creating the brown color. The impact also dented the flesh around the seed, creating a hole.
While it might be easy to worry that the avocado is infected, this injury is clearly internal. There’s no evidence that anything breached the avocado’s skin to get into the fruit. So the damaged area is unlikely to be a good eating experience, but as long as the rest of the fruit still tastes good, it’s fine to eat.
SOURCES:
- Mary Lu Arpaia. Cooperative Extension Specialist. University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources.
- Previous avocado posts on EatOrToss.com.
