The Daily Update: The Peasful Revolution: A Toast to Sustainability

For the past decade, avocados have been the quintessential symbol of the millennial generation, with many claiming that avocados are a sustainable superfood, when the reality is that eating them has serious environmental consequences.

However, it seems that their era of dominance might be drawing to a close, as a more humble, cost-effective, and home-grown alternative gains traction. Mushy (or smashed) peas on toast is increasingly making its presence felt in restaurants across the UK, offering an alternative to the beloved, yet pricey avocado. This shift is being largely driven by a growing awareness of food and environmental sustainability among restaurants.

As we wrote in a Daily Update last year, avocados can be grown across the world. However, the primary producers of avocados remain in South and Central America, in part due to the environmental specificity of growing the fruit. Avocado production is massively water-intensive, roughly 70 litres per fruit, more than 12 times as much as it takes to grow a tomato in your greenhouse. The UK’s imports of avocados contain over 25 million cubic metres annually of virtual water – equivalent to 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. With global temperatures rising and water becoming scarce, this has a serious impact on some local communities who do not have access to drinking water.

Then there’s the transportation. A Mexican avocado will have to travel over 5500 miles to reach the UK. Given the distances, fruit is picked before it is ripe and shipped in temperature-controlled storage, which, of course, is very energy intensive.

In contrast, peas present a logical replacement option. The UK is 90% self-sufficient when it comes to pea production, with 700 growers collectively yielding 160,000 tonnes of frozen peas annually, all delivered with considerably fewer “food miles”. 

Last month, Google searches for “peas on toast” increased by 133% and the hashtag #peasontoast has had more than 3.3m views on TikTok. 

Avocadon’t Even Get Me Started was the most popular Daily Update of 2022.

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