Talk about avocados

[goodsamaritan]

This lunch time me and my staff drove into Farmer's market in Cubao and had lunch, they had their cooked chicken and I had my raw tuna sashimi.  For desert I got some durian, curious it was there and I had a small avocado. 

This avocado was the creamy special kind without lots of "veins" inside.  The sellers call this "lagkitan" for sticky type, for me, it just has no veins and tastes a whole lot better.  Pretty cheap I got it for 70 pesos per kilo.

It was a fitting finish desert to my raw tuna which wasn't fat enough.  The durian and the avocado fat made me full the rest of the day.

In times when we buy lots of avocado the combination I like is some raw honey + the avocado.  Avocado is seasonal so we eat up when it is in season.

How do you eat your avocado's?

[Guittarman03]

with steak, or as guacamole at a restaurant.  oh yeah, very rarely I'll mix with soft boiled eggs.  sounds weird, tastes great.

[Hannibal]

Avocados are great when they're combined with raw egg yolks and honey

[TylerDurden]

I'll eat an avocado or two once every few months but I really don't get any benefit from the raw vegetable fat in avocado.

[wodgina]

Avocado's contain the toxic fungacide persin, a fatty acid derivitive.
Avo's should be avoided.

[Raw Kyle]

If it's a fungacide does that mean it harms non fungal organisms, like humans?

[RawZi]

How do you eat your avocado's?

    I don't eat them often, but when I do, it's normally with white tuna, toro or salmon sashimi.  Very occasionally I've eaten it with buffalo. 

    When I go with my family to this Vegan restaurant, I get the "avocado salad", which is a sliced avocado with sauce.  I order it without sauce and I mash the avocado.  Last time the waiter came by and stared at it, as he apparently did not recognize it from their menu.

[Hannibal]

I really don't get any benefit from the raw vegetable fat in avocado.

the same is with me
I haven't eaten it for several months. But in the winter when I ate them almost every day I realized that I became hungry quite rapidly after eating them. The same is with egg yolks.
animal fats like suet and marrow are simply the best!

[rafonly]

avocados, bananas, etc. contain tyramine

here's some info for a general sense of the issue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foods_containing_tyramine
"Tyramine is an amine which causes elevated blood pressure and tachycardia by displacing norepinephrine from storage vesicles. Tyramine is generally produced by decarboxylation of the amino acid tyrosine during fermentation of food products. All protein-rich foods which have been matured will contain more tyramine depending on the temperature and how long they have been stored. Properly refrigerated foods will not be affected."

{tyramine is not only in fruits but also in fermentations such as beer, cheese, high meat, etc. even in green tea, it seems}

http://www.appliedhealth.com/nutri/page15.php/
"Tyramine is an amino acid, which is found in various foods and is an indirect sympathomimetic that can cause a hypertensive reaction among patients receiving MAOI therapy.?
"Monoamine oxidase is found in the gastrointestinal tract and inactivates tyramine; when drugs prevent the catabolism of exogenous tyramine, it is absorbed and displaces norepinephrine and epinephrine from the adrenal glands, disrupting the nervous system. Patients may experience a severe occipital or temporal headache, even cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac failure, and intracerebral hemorrhage have developed in patients receiving MAOI therapy that did not observe dietary restrictions (Brown & Bryant, 1988)."

http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/vegetables/avocado.htm
"Warning: Avocadoes can interfere with the action of some drugs, especially with those people taking MAO inhibitors (monoamine oxidase), which are used as antidepressants or antihypertensives. They inhibit the action of enzymes that break down the amino acid tyramine so it can be eliminated from the body. Tyramine is a pressor amine, a chemical that constricts blood vessels and raises blood pressure. By eating such a food as an avocado that contains tyramine while taking an MAO inhibitor, the pressor amine cannot be eliminated. The result can be abnormally high blood pressure or a hypertensive crisis.
"Avocadoes can also create a false-positive for carcinoid tumors which can arise from tissues in the endocrine system, the intestines, or the lungs. These tumors secrete serotonin, a natural chemical that makes blood vessels expand or contract. Because seratonin is excreted in the urine, these tumors are diagnosed by measuring the levels of seratonin by-products in the urine. Avocadoes contain large amounts of seratonin, and eating them three days before an endocrine tumor test can produce a false-positive result that will suggest the presence of a tumor that is really not there. Other such foods that can create a similar false-positive tumor test are bananas, eggplant, pineapples, plums, tomatoes, and walnuts."

[Raw Rob]

Avocados were actually the last of the plant foods that I gave up. I used to love making guacamole with them. I kept things simple with just cilantro, garlic, and lime juice. Sometimes I mixed in onions and tomatoes if I had them. I could just tell that plant foods were not good for me though. 

For those that still eat them, they really are good with egg yokes, as others have noted. I never added honey into the mix, but honey would make anything taste better for me. I just can't have it though.

[rafonly]

me too!
i had my last fruit meal -- avo + chirimoya -- in mid-august last year
until the adrenaline fit that ensued, i had thought i could never possibly live without avos

now, here's more on the mood swing enticer:

http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/327054

"In organic chemistry tyramine (4-hydroxy-phenethylamine, para-tyramine, p-tyramine) is a monoamine compound derived from the amino acid tyrosine. Tyramine can cause the release of stored monoamines, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine."

Occurrence
"Tyramine occurs widely in plants and animals and is metabolized by the enzyme monoamine oxidase. In foods, it is often produced by the decarboxylation of tyrosine during fermentation or decay. Foods containing considerable amounts of tyramine include meats that are potentially spoiled or pickled, aged, smoked, fermented, or marinated (some fish, poultry, and beef), most pork (except cured ham), chocolate, alcoholic beverages, and fermented foods, such as most cheeses (except ricotta, cottage cheese, cream cheese), sour cream, yogurt, shrimp paste, soy sauce, soy bean condiments, teriyaki sauce, tofu, tempeh, miso soup, sauerkraut, broad (fava) beans, green bean pods, Italian flat (Romano) beans, Chinese (snow) pea pods, avocados, bananas, eggplants, figs, red plums, raspberries, peanuts, Brazil nuts, coconuts, processed meat, yeast, and an array of cacti."

Metabolism
"In humans, if monoamine metabolism is compromised by the use of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and foods high in tyramine are ingested, a hypertensive crisis can result as tyramine can cause the release of stored monoamines, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine. The first signs of this were discovered by a neurologist who noticed his wife, who at the time was on MAOI medication, had severe headaches when eating cheese. For this reason, the crisis is still called the "cheese syndrome"

Physical effects and pharmacology
"A large dietary intake of tyramine (or a dietary intake of tyramine while taking MAO inhibitors) can cause the 'tyramine pressor response,' which is defined as an increase in systolic blood pressure of 30 mmHg or more. The displacement of norepinephrine(noradrenaline) from neuronal storage vesicles by acute tyramine ingestion is thought to cause the vasoconstriction and increased heart rate and blood pressure of the pressor response. In severe cases, adrenergic crisis can occur.
"However, if one has had repeated exposure to tyramine, there is a decreased pressor response; tyramine is degraded to octopamine, which is subsequently packaged in synaptic vesicles with norepinephrine(noradrenaline). Therefore, after repeated tyramine exposure, these vesicles contain an increased amount of octopamine and a relatively reduced amount of norepinephrine (noradrenaline). When these vesicles are secreted upon tyramine ingestion, there is a decreased pressor response, as less norepinephrine (noradrenaline) is secreted into the synapse, and octopamine does not activate alpha or beta adrenergic receptors.
The possibility that tyramine acts directly as a neurotransmitter was revealed by the discovery of a G protein-coupled receptor with high affinity for tyramine, called TA1. The TA1 receptor is found in the brain as well as peripheral tissues, including the kidney. The existence of a receptor with high affinity for tyramine supports the hypothesis that tyramine may also act directly to affect blood pressure regulation."

[Guittarman03]

wow, that's a lot of pharmacology!  I have done just a bit of tyramine research as a result of doing MAO inhibitor research.  Mono amine oxidase inhibitors block the actions of various enzymes in the body allowing certain compounds to enter the blood stream unaltered (tyramine being one of them).  In addition this enzyme inhibition increases the level of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin.

Thus, MAOIs are often used as antidepressants.  I don't know names for lab created ones, but herbs like St Johns Wort, Yohimbe, and Syrian Rue are all MAOIs.  And foods containing tyramine should not be consumed for a couple hours after taking these (time will vary with dose and strength of MAOI). 

Unless consuming one of these MAOIs, you should generally be okay to handle moderate amts of tyramine; and I'm sure everyone has varying sensitivity to it - it does seem to be a vasoconstrictor.  Avocados don't seem to give anyone major problems, but for some seem to be not entirely ideal.  I would hesitate to lay the finger of blame on tyramine just yet, maybe just a finger of blame.

[Tim]

ive been limiting my plant foods more and more, but i still love avocados and enjoy them mashed up with kim chi over my beef. i have always loved guacamole/avocados, and my friends said i should get an avocado tattooed on me, so i did!

i have also just been researching the MAOI issue too though.

[Iguana]

Avocados were actually the last of the plant foods that I gave up. I used to love making guacamole with them. I kept things simple with just cilantro, garlic, and lime juice. Sometimes I mixed in onions and tomatoes if I had them. I could just tell that plant foods were not good for me though. 

For those that still eat them, they really are good with egg yokes, as others have noted. I never added honey into the mix, but honey would make anything taste better for me. I just can't have it though.

Do you all think such mixtures were commonly available and ingested during the paleolithic era ? 

Cheers
Francois