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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Podcast: How A Fruit Whose Name Means 'Testicle' Has Taken Over The World
If this generation was not called millennial, it would be labelled avocado.
The once-obscure fruit has taken over palates world over — so much so that more than three million new photos of avocado on toast are uploaded on Instagram every day! (Source: British Vogue) Its health benefits apart, it is beautiful, expensive and a tattoo to aspire to (Miley Cyrus has one).
But this is just the tip of the avocado iceberg.
If you are planning a Sunday brunch, this is the podcast to accompany your guacamole. It asks why the avocado toast has transcended cultures to become a status symbol and takes the listener on a journey with this fruit originally named after testicles.
What is compelling is not just the ancient beginnings of avocado (the earliest evidence of eating it dates back 10,000 years) but also how its rise in popularity is a story of Mexico's violent cartels, which turned avocado into ‘green gold’, the way global trade agreements span commodity explosions, and how avocado reached Hollywood and finally became a symbol of a certain way of living — healthy, and yet, stylish. It is also the tale of a how a Californian postal worker serendipitously grew a variety of Avocado that he named after himself — Hass — the most popular choice today world over.
The podcast has some quirky side notes like this one: When avocados were first grown in America, they were called alligator pears — clearly not a name that inspires buying! The growers then got together and brainstormed a new name. Thus was born ‘avocado’, a corruption of the original Aztec word that meant ‘testicle’ (evidently, calling it testicle fruit was not an option either).
The podcast doesn’t stop there. It argues that avocados are yet to reach their ‘peak’, as it were, and China is getting ready to give some buttery competition to Latin America. If China does come up with a cheaper variety, there might well be a second wave of avocado hysteria.
