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Check the Claim: When a TikTok avocado hack turns out to be dangerous

SKILL: Check the Claim

DIFFICULTY: Challenging

SUBJECT(S): Pop Culture, General, Science

Posted: November 1, 2022

Any avocado lover can tell you that catching the fruit at its perfect ripeness requires super-human vigilance and timing. Want to store the leftover half? Good luck with that. This TikTok seems to suggest a perfect solution, but a keyword search shows the advice is actually unsafe

Related Lesson

Verification Skills Lesson 3: Check the Claim (sign-in required)

Link to Example

Fresher avocados? (TikTok)
Screenshot of TikTok with a man holding a avocado with text reading "avocado in water."

About the Example

Teacher note: If you cannot access TikTok, click here to view the video uploaded to our YouTube channel that you can share with your students.

TikTok is full of handy lifehacks, and since seeing is believing, the video can help make the claims made appear credible — even when it’s easy to manipulate meaning through the magic of editing. In this example, a TikTok user demonstrates how storing avocados in water can keep them fresher for longer.

When we conduct a keyword search to find out if this could be the answer every avocado lover has been looking for, it turns out there are bigger problems here than uncertainty over whether or not the original claim is accurate.

Several media organizations wrote about the viral avocado tip, and a FDA spokesperson told the TV show Good Morning America that while the trick may work, it is not recommended because it’s actually unsafe. There are various pathogens that can live on the avocado’s skin that could multiply with the avocado submerged in water.

And washing the skin isn’t good enough: “In addition, research performed by FDA scientists has shown that Listeria monocytogenes has the potential to infiltrate and internalize into the pulp of avocados when submerged in refrigerated dump tanks within 15 days during refrigerated storage… In this case, even surface disinfecting the avocado skin prior to slicing would not be able to remove the contamination,”

If you are looking to keep avocados perfectly ripe for longer, there are better ways.

 



Activities

  1. Show students the avocado hack TikTok, and ask them to isolate the best keywords to check.
  2. Conduct the keyword search for terms such as “avocado water fresh”
    •  The google snippet should give a clue with a headline stating: “FDA Warns Against Risky New Avocado Trend.” The snippet is taken from a site called everydayhealth.com, and it’s not clear how reliable this source is.
    • However, there should be some more familiar names on the list, including today.com and marthastewart.com. While these lifestyle publications aren’t typically known for hard-hitting fact-checks, in this case it becomes clear the FDA released a statement about the viral avocado trend advising against using the method because it is in fact dangerous.
    • If students are unfamiliar with the FDA, we can look the agency up on Wikipedia and learn that it is a US government agency that governs the safety of food and medicine — a reliable institutional source.

Optional discussion questions — 

  • Do you ever take advice from TikTok or YouTube videos?
  • When is doing so convenient? What might the risks be?
  • What are steps we can take to make sure we are basing our decisions on the best available information?

 



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