Is there a ‘right’ way to slice an avocado?

Apparently, there’s a debate going on about how to slice an avocado.

To find out what’s going on, I visited the Haas Avocado Board’s Love One Today site, which is unsurprisingly entirely dedicated to avocado love. This site instructs users on the typical, traditional method of avocado cutting: Set it on its side and press your knife lengthwise from tip to bottom, rotating the avocado 360 degrees on the knife’s edge.

But an avocado enthusiast at Lifehacker has a different take. She admits that the lengthwise slice works well enough if you’re eating the entire avocado in one go. But if you only want to eat half of the avocado, there’s a better way: Slice it horizontally.

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Why does this make a difference? Her explanation cites the ripening process, which is admittedly a very important issue in the world of avocados. (People are forever trying to figure out how to ripen avocados faster and how to keep them fresh longer.)

She explains that avocados ripen from the tip to the bottom, so oftentimes, the smaller end is ripe before the bulging end. If you’re only going to eat half an avocado, cut it in half horizontally and choose the smaller end, which ripens faster, to eat first. If you slice it length-wise, you’ll get unevenly ripened slices.

This makes sense, but it does beg another question. Who eats just half of an avocado? Commenters on the article were quick to bring this up, and eating the whole thing does save you the trouble of choosing a trick for keeping a cut avocado fresh in the refrigerator.

Though the idea of questioning the avocado status quo and slicing it horizontally is intriguing, I do have to point out that when Simplemost interviewed four chefs about the right way to slice an avocado, all four agreed with the Haas Avocado Board: avocados should be sliced lengthwise.

What do you think? Will you try slicing an avocado horizontally from the stem, or stick to the tried-and-true lengthwise cut?