10 Mostly Unknown Facts and Uses of the Avocado Seeds We Waste

Avocados are widely known as a guacamole dip/sauce or a dessert or snack food, right? What else is there to it then? It can actually be a useful non-food but important natural resource!

In March 2016 an avocado seed eating craze came about because of a viral video¹ on how to prepare the pit. This made plenty of buzz about if it's edible and healthy to eat or not. Since then, there has been more articles and videos than before, claiming it is a superfood.

The demand for and production of this Mexican native fruit has grown exponentially in recent years. ² Naturally the seed waste would grow too, right? Well, if we learn more about it, the waste could be reduced and used instead. Here's 10 fascinating facts and not commonly known uses of the often wasted avocado stone.

10 We can make art or jewelry out of it.

Did you know, we can carve out some art from the fresh and soft seed? Or we can wait 'til it's a bit dryer before any carving is done.³ Once carved and properly dried you can even paint on the item if color is preferred.
One needs skill, sharp tools and lots of practice to make excellent figures though.

Why not take some time to hone your sculpting skills using this otherwise wasted resource? Carved seeds can be polished or varnished with oil. You can then sell or give some away as jewelry and decorative item. Some people make cute accessories out of these too. Others have been using it simply as a sculpting material.⁴ Either way is fine for art's sake.

9 Avocado pits are a natural source of ink or colorants for food and absorbent materials!

During the Spanish Conquests, the avocado seed was used as an ink source. They used its milky liquid which turns red or brown upon oxidation. Some of the documents it was used on are said to be found in a Popayán archive in Colombia.⁵

To experiment on making some ink and discovering the best formulation, first you need to ground the seed. Next, boil it in vinegar, alcohol and agar-based water gel solution.⁶ Let it cool then strain the liquid with a cheese cloth.⁷ Once done, have fun writing! You can use it in painting too.

As for using it as a dye, the stone/s can be chopped up and boiled or even fermented to get the color out. Use the resulting colored liquid for anything, like cloth or yarn.⁸ Out of curiosity, I once boiled a seed after eating the flesh and surprisingly the water became a red purplish color. A bit of the seed’s oil came out too. I didn’t think of using the liquid as dye though. I’ll definitely try it next time!

A group of scientists were also able to extract the orange color out of the seeds.⁹ This prompted them to get into the food coloring business in 2016. Their company produce mainly yellow, orange and red colorants. Now that’s definitely making money out of other people’s trash by upcycling.

8 Eating raw or cooked avocado seeds is like eating solid beer/wine minus the alcohol effect.

Before doing experiments on the seed for any form of consumption, be sure to dry it first. Tannin makes the pit bitter. The same thing makes the avocado flesh brown or reddish upon exposure to the air.¹⁰ The flavor is said to disappear as soon as the seed is dry.¹¹

Here's what you can do instead of throwing the pits. Grind or pound the dry stone to your preference. Prepare yourself before tasting the powder so you’ll know if you can tolerate the bitterness.

After the past craze, a number of people have been powdering the seed. They add or mix it in their smoothies and food to cover up the taste. Many online alternative health websites suggest using the powder in health drinks. People mainly ingest it to get the jampacked vitamins and minerals even if it doesn't taste too good. Avocado experts¹² and nutritionists¹³ do not recommend eating it.

7 Ground avocado seeds can be used to poison rodents.

Aha! Don't throw those avocado stones just yet! Make an all natural rat poison with it instead. How? Mix the ground seed with cheese¹⁴ or cornmeal and voila! We now have an alternative rat and mouse poison!

Mice can die as fast as 2 to 3 days with 10 to 12 grams consumption of the 50-50 mix ratio.¹⁵ Or they can live up to 2 weeks upon regular ingestion. The poison effectivity might depend on the mix ratio, quantity eaten and the avocado variety though. Still, wouldn’t it be a fun experiment?

The tannin in pits makes it dangerous to pets and other animals except humans. Its presence is mainly considered part of the avocado plant's protective mechanism to survive in the wild.¹⁶

6 You can use avocado seed flour for baking, cooking or even making candy!

Mostly the powdered seed is used in smoothies or teas. Some creative and inquisitive people apparently use it differently!

Any inquisitive mind will find various uses for this fruit stone. Some people have found out the pit powder can be used for cooking. One university experiment found out that using it purely resulted in bad tasting and textured cookies. They advise to use it only as a baking additive instead.¹⁷

Others have used it as a main candy ingredient.¹⁸ Once properly processed, the bitterness can be removed or diluted and covered up. Healthy avocado seed candy anyone?

5 Avocado stones’ nutritional composition vary based on the season, among other things.

There are several varieties of avocados. Most notable are the Hass breed followed by the Fuerte variety. Any kind is good but if you’d like to have more of certain nutrients read on.

The biggest composition percentage of Avocado seeds is mainly of starch.¹⁹ The highest mineral content is Potassium. It also contains small amounts of calcium, magnesium and fatty acids.²⁰

In 1951, a study was done on the Fuerte variety. Researchers gathered avocados from November 1950 up to April 1951. They found out the nutritional value of the seeds vary depending on when it was harvested.²¹

Based on their research, the fruits harvested in early December to early January had the highest Potassium content. Harvesting avocados during this period would be the best choice to take advantage of the healthy seed content. Avocados harvested in February proved to have the lowest Potassium seed composition. In comparison, the Hass variety contained higher Calcium and Magnesium than the Fuerte counterpart but had lower Potassium levels.

4 Experts say the avocado seed extract is more beneficial than consuming the bitter stone itself.

The pit eating benefits written all over the internet are mostly about the research done on the extract, not the stone itself. This can be quite misleading yet people still consume it. Why? Powdering the pit is definitely quicker and easier to do than making an extract out of it.

Studies have shown the stone extract contains many nutrients like Protein, Carbohydrates and Vitamin C. Tannins, Saponins and Flavonoids, which are also good for us, are also present.²²

The avocado stone extract can be used as a natural preservative as well. Researchers discovered the effectiveness of using it as a natural food preservative.²³ Its antioxidant properties can most probably be used on other things that need preserving too. For optimal health, scientists mostly conclude in their research that more investigation and study are needed to fully take advantage of this underutilized natural resource.

3 It can be made into Granular Activated Carbon (GAC).

GACs are used for water treatments like filtering and cleaning water for drinking, cleaning aquariums or adsorbing chemicals in the air or liquids (e.g. phenol, ammonium, lead or dyes, etc.). There have been several researches done on the seed and peel of avocados specifically for making GACs. Why not use the otherwise thrown away seeds to help clean the environment right? This can rid the world of some of the pollutants we are producing and dumping every day for the sake of world progress.

In 2015, a University Master’s thesis at a prestigious public research university in Kenya discovered something. They found that GACs made from avocado pits can be used as a commercial alternative. It's an easily accessible adsorbent resource for heavy metals in wastewater and agricultural wastes in our environment.²⁴ Another research done in 2017 from a top technical University in Madrid, Spain also found it useful. They concluded avocado seeds can be an excellent raw material to help in waste adsorption.²⁵

At this point a commercial avocado stone based GAC is yet to be made but it looks like we’re getting there.

2 The seed husk is also a source of several medicinal and industrial compounds.

During any preparation for seed consumption, the husk is always removed before the pit is ground or powdered. Even for seed experiments the husks are always thrown away. As it is still part of the avocado stone, it's no surprise they found it is also packed with useful compounds. What they found are mostly good for humans or industrial products.

In 2017, researchers from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley found hundreds of important compounds in the "waste of waste" avocado seed husk produced wax and oil.²⁶ The most abundant are the following:

• Docosanol - an emollient, emulsifier and anti-viral compound, lauric acid that can lower heart disease risk.
• Butylated hydroxytoluene - can be used as a food preservative as it is an antioxidant.
• Benzyl butyl phthalate - although this is toxic, it is a useful plasticizer used in various products like vinyl tiles and artificial leather.²⁷ It is possibly what protects the seed from microbial infections.

1 Bioplastics can be made out of the seed flour.

Want to save the world from century or millennia degradable plastic trash we people use and throw away everyday? One way is to make bioplastics from tons of otherwise wasted avocado seeds! You won’t necessarily need to produce them on your own. Just gather them from bulk avocado commercial establishments or perhaps buy or ask them from anyone and voila! Cheaper resource material for bioplastics!

Mexico is the leading producer of avocados in the world. It is no wonder that since 2012,²⁸ a Mexican company have already been producing bioplastics from the otherwise commercially wasted seeds.²⁹ They make bioplastic cutlery out of avocado pits too. This can save the environment from plastics that may take millennia to decompose! How's that for making money out of trash? An Indonesian university study in 2015 was also able to use avocado seeds for bioplastic experiment. This means the pits are definitely a good source of ecofriendly material.

Hopefully with increased awareness, we won’t throw away avocado stones anymore but use them for something productive instead.

<sub>Sources:
• ¹Facebook • ²NZ Avocado Growers Association Inc. (NZAGA)
• ^{3, 26, 29}YouTube • ⁴@avocadostonefaces
• ^{5, 10, 15}Purdue University • ⁶123Slide.org
• ⁷GraduateWay • ⁸artstarphilly.com • ⁹Wiley Online Library
• ¹²California Avocado Commission • ¹³Health.com
• ^{11, 22}ResearchGate • ¹⁴Ecocrop, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
• ¹⁶Cornell University • ¹⁷Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
• ¹⁸International Journal of Agriculture Innovations and Research
• ^{19, 21}avocadosource.com • ²⁰Centerchem • ²³NCBI
• ²⁴Kenyatta University Institutional Repository • ²⁵CEST 2017
• ²⁷Proposition 65 Warnings • ²⁸Tecnologico de Monterrey


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