Alton Brown Is So Over This Worldwide Food Trend
We culinary mortals will undoubtedly have an ingredient (or more) that we're happy to avoid, and while it might be difficult for us to imagine, even expert chefs like Alton Brown appear to feel the same way. During a recent appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," he answered a series of viewer questions, including, "What is the one food you think you should want/want to like but you don't?" Brown made his feelings known, saying "I don't ever want to see another piece of avocado toast. I would rather eat a rotten cat spread out on bread than put another piece of avocado toast in my mouth. I've had it"
It appears Brown has a rather complicated relationship with avocado toast. As Serious Eats, pointed out, during a period when the "Good Eats" star was trying to lose weight, he ate sardine-avocado sandwiches, which the site described as "a satisfying balance of salty, oily, and avocadoey." We can only imagine how many toasts he consumed during that time.
It should also be noted that Brown has struggled with avocado as an ingredient in the past. Speaking with The Athens Banner-Herald, he admitted, "I had a devil of a time with avocados at first" when trying to figure out how to spotlight them on "Good Eats." He went on to explain, "That one really beat me until I thought that an avocado is mostly fat." So he eventually utilized the fruit to make butter, ice cream, and cake.
Alton Brown isn't alone in wanting to see less avocado toast
Even without Alton Brown's blunt takedown of the popular brunch item, chefs have told The Guardian that they have been looking to find ways to do without avocados for other reasons. While the fruit delivers on flavor and texture, The Sustainable Food Trust points out that two small avocados have a carbon footprint that is twice that of a kilo of bananas, and its increase in popularity is hurting food security in areas where they are being grown.
Avocado toast has also been touted as a symbol of excess. In 2017, an Australian real estate titan, Tim Gurner, made waves when he claimed young people couldn't afford to buy homes because they had expensive tastes. "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each," Gurner had famously said, per The Guardian. "We're at a point now where the expectations of younger people are very, very high." The sentiment was echoed by population expert Bernard Salt, who criticized the people who brunch for what he thought were their expensive food choices.
Given all this, it could very well be that Alton Brown isn't the only person that would be happy to see avocado toast exit, stage left.