Discover the health benefits of avocados and easy avocado cooking tips and avocado recipes for incorporating this nutrient-packed veggie into your diet. Learn how to enjoy avocados in various dishes for better heart health, healthy weight, and more.
It’s tough to talk about healthy, delicious eating without including wonderful avocados. That rich, creamy texture and earthy, satisfying flavor is quite unique in the plant world. So, it’s no wonder that avocados are celebrated for health and flavor today! Whether it’s in avocado toast or avocado superfood smoothies, everyone just can’t get enough of the healthy green stuff! Living in Southern California, I have always grown a variety of avocado trees in my garden. In fact, pictured above is a Fuerte avocado freshly picked from my tree.
Avocado Nutrition and Health Benefits
Avocados are more than just a creamy, flavorful addition to your meals—they’re packed with essential nutrients that support overall health. From boosting heart health with healthy fats to enhancing skin glow thanks to special plant compounds, avocados are a must-have in a balanced diet. Indeed, avocados are nutritional superstars. Every serving (one-third of an avocado) is packed with a bounty of heart-healthy fats, gut-friendly fiber (3 grams), and twenty different vitamins and minerals, including vitamin K (10% Daily Value), vitamin C (4% DV), vitamin B6 (6% DV), vitamin E (6% DV), folate (10% DV), and potassium (6% DV). Research shows that avocados are also full of disease-fighting phytochemicals, including lutein and zeaxanthin. It should come as no surprise that a body of research has found benefits in eating avocados, including improved bone health, decreased LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, increased HDL (good) cholesterol levels, better blood glucose control, and even enhanced skin appearance.
Top 5 Avocado Cooking Tips
Avocados are so versatile in the kitchen! Try these top ways to include avocados in your everyday meals.
1. Use Avocado as a Butter
Yes, we love our avocado toast! Because avocados are so rich and creamy, they are the perfect healthy fat to use as a spread to replace butter on toast and sandwiches, and even as a fat for baking (see below). You can create your own avocado toast variation at home with a variety of toppings in my simple avocado toast recipe.
2. Top Off Your Salad
What’s better than a fresh salad packed with healthy, tasty avocado slices? A perfectly ripe avocado can be the delicious focal point for any filling salad, plus the healthy fats can help make nutrients in the salad more bioavailable. Check out some of my favorite avocado-topped salads, including Spicy Sorghum Avocado Salad, Avocado Papaya Salad, and Grapefruit and Avocado Salad with Lemon Cumin Vinaigrette for inspiration.
3. Bake with Avocados
Avocado has a wonderfully smooth, creamy texture that can blend perfectly in most recipes, and help replace less healthy options for fats, such as butter. Baking with avocados is also a great way to use up avocados that have gotten a little too ripe. Avocados serve as the healthy fat component in these healthy Chocolate Zucchini Power Muffins, which can be a great breakfast or snack on the go.
4. Blend Up Avocados
You can even blend avocados into a variety of recipes, such as soups, smoothies, and dressings, to add a velvety texture and yummy flavor. Try a Cucumber Avocado Cold Soup for a cool, creamy start to your meal, mix up an avocado banana smoothie for a healthy family-friendly snack, and whip up an easy Green Goddess Dressing to top your salads. I love to use my Nutribullet to blend up avocados in my kitchen.
5. Max Out Your Power Bowl
Do you love power bowls? Then you’ll really want to take advantage of gorgeous, nutritious avocados as a delicious topping on your next bowl. Just slice up avocados to add to a variety of flavor profiles, including burrito bowls, green goddess bowls, and glow bowls (pictured above). Or create your own simple power bowl by layering a cooked whole grain (rice, sorghum, quinoa), seasonal sliced veggies (pepper, tomatoes, broccoli), plant protein (chickpeas, edamame, tofu), and a flavorful sauce (tahini, ranch or cashew cheese) as a great solution for lunch and dinner. Try out this Chipotle Tomato Rice Power Bowl and Green Goddess Grain Bowl to get your creative juices flowing.
Check out one of my favorite recipes using avocados in this video of Pomegranate Avocado Quinoa Salad.
Top 10 Healthy Avocado Recipes
Try some of my favorite plant-based healthy avocado recipes below.
For other tips on how to use plant foods, check out the following:
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References:
Fulgoni, V. L., Dreher, M., & Davenport, A. J. (2013). Avocado consumption is associated with better diet quality and nutrient intake, and lower metabolic syndrome risk in US adults: results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2008. Nutrition journal, 12, 1. doi:10.1186/1475-2891-12-1
Tremocoldi, M. A., Rosalen, P. L., Franchin, M., Massarioli, A. P., Denny, C., Daiuto, É. R., … Alencar, S. M. (2018). Exploration of avocado by-products as natural sources of bioactive compounds. PloS one, 13(2), e0192577. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0192577
Deepti Dabas, Rachel M. Shegog, Gregory R. Ziegler and Joshua D. Lambert, “Avocado (Persea americana) Seed as a Source of Bioactive Phytochemicals”, Current Pharmaceutical Design (2013) 19: 6133. https://doi.org/10.2174/1381612811319340007
Martin J. Shearer, Alexandra Bach, Martin Kohlmeier, Chemistry, Nutritional Sources, Tissue Distribution and Metabolism of Vitamin K with Special Reference to Bone Health, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 126, Issue suppl_4, April 1996, Pages 1181S–1186S, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/126.suppl_4.1181S
C.N. Ishiwu, J.E. Obiegbuna, N.M. Aniagolu, “Evaluation of Chemical Properties of Mistletoe Leaves from Three Different Trees (Avocado, African Oil Bean and Kola)”, Nigerian Food Journal, Volume 31, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 1-7, ISSN 0189-7241, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0189-7241(15)30070-9.
