Ever Heard Of A Scanner To Check Ripeness Of Avocados? This Video Is For You

The thing with avocados is it is hard to tell if they are ripe or underripe. People end up wasting avocados by cutting an unripe fruit or underestimating its ripeness and waiting too long to eat it. Many try to judge the ripeness of the superfood by pinching its skin or squishing it. This often leads to bruising of the fruit. Additionally the “hand test” is not a reliable way of testing the ripeness of avocados. Since avocados are often exported, the exporters make sure to export underripe fruits so that they do not get spoiled on the way, but this logistical reasoning makes it harder for consumers to get a perfectly ripe fruit.

Against this context, a video is going viral that shows a fruit scanner that can check if the avocado is ripe or not. The video shows a person picking an avocado and putting it on a scanner-type machine, after waiting for a few seconds the machine shows that the fruit’s “Ripeness Index is 79”. This video was reportedly taken in Zurich, Switzerland. So far it has over 44,000 likes.

Commenting on it, an Instagram user wrote, “I just needed one last good reason to move to Switzerland!” Another mentioned, “They should put these in German supermarkets as well.” People also shared “tips” to check avocado ripeness manually. Someone suggested, “Californian here: just lightly push down on the stem to check ripeness without bruising the fruit.”

Some Mexicans also joked that they can test an avocado just by holding it. Making this point, an Instagram user wrote, “Isn’t this your hands are for? Or maybe I’m just Mexican.” Another person wrote, “I’m Mexican, I can do it with my own fingers lol.”

In 2022, Fast Company, a monthly American business magazine, reported on an “avocado scanner” made by a company called Apeel. This machine operates by shining a beam of light through the fruit’s skin and uses a sensor to measure how that light reflects. It then uses machine learning, based on data from tens of thousands of avocados to assess when the avocado will be ready to eat. The machine tells consumers if the particular avocado is ready to eat today or in three to four days. Apeel argued that the scanner machine could prevent food wastage by alerting distributors about ripe avocados that can be moved to the closest store for faster sales.