This brilliant avocado sticker determines when the fruit is perfectly ripe


There's nothing worse than cutting an avocado open for the fruit to reveal itself as completely unripe. Selecting avocados that will yield a green and creamy fruit is a craft not easily mastered. 

Luckily, there's a new way to determine whether your avocado is ready for guac o'clock. Enter: A sticker that indicates the color of an avocado skin when it's perfectly ripe. 

Is this the symbol the world's been waiting for?Source: q0__0p/Reddit
Is this the symbol the world's been waiting for?  q0__0p/Reddit

According to the sticker, the fruit appears to be from a New Zealand company called Freshmax. (Freshmax did not immediately respond to Mic's request for comment.) A Reddit user named TrojanWabbit first posted a photo of the avocado sticker roughly a month ago in a New Zealand subreddit. 

How to tell if an avocado is ripe

While the color of avocado skin can hint at whether the fruit is ripe, color can sometimes be misleading because certain varieties of avocado are still green when they're at their peak ripeness, the California Avocados website notes. Squeezing an avocado is another way to tell if the flesh is soft and ripe. If the avocado is firm but yields to some pressure when you squeeze it, it's ripe. 

Another method: Check under the stem. Peel back the stem (which looks like a little nub) on the top of the avocado, the Kitchn, a site for home chefs, suggests. If the stem doesn't easily pop off, the avocado isn't ripe. If it pops off to reveal a sneak peek of green flesh, it's ready to eat! If you peel it off and you see brown flesh, the avocado may be overripe. 

Nevertheless, stickers noting the color of ripe avocados could help consumers make smarter decisions at the supermarket. Currently, many avocados from the Calavo, a company that sells California avocados, carry stickers that say "Ripe Now" even when they aren't at peak perfection. Don't fall for those lies, people — a "Ripe Now" sticker is an alternative fact. 

Many on Twitter bemoaned the fact that marketers use "Ripe Now" or "Ripe when ready" stickers on avocados that either freshly picked or past their prime. 

A photo posted by (@) on

Whether an avocado bears the "Ripe Now" or New Zealand color sticker, gently checking the fruit's stem might be your best bet for determining whether the fruit is ready to be luxuriously spread across, topped on a salad or just eaten straight with a spoon.