The avocado has recently claimed the top spot in America’s fruit baskets. (Yep. It’s a fruit—a fleshy, seed-associated structure.) In the 1990s, the average American ate about 1.5 pounds; in 2012, he ate 5 pounds. In the same time-frame, by comparison, per capita consumption of fresh apples has actually declined by half a pound.

Avocados have always been somewhat popular in California, but their uptake was slower in other parts of the country. A few forces have helped them along: In the late 90s, the U.S. government lifted a ban on avocado imports from Mexico, the world’s largest producer, and now the fruit is available year-round. Many experts believe the rapid growth of the U.S. Latino population has also been a factor.

But although people of Latino descent may buy avocados more often, everyone else is increasingly snapping them up, too. In 2007, the Hass Avocado Board found that 97 percent of Hispanic shoppers bought avocados, but so did 49 percent of the general population. Even in 2003, one study described the “typical U.S. avocado purchaser” as being between 25 to 54 years of age, having an income of at least $50,000, and being an “upscale,” college-educated, and health-conscious woman.

Annual U.S. Avocado Consumption, by Source

Giannini Foundation of the University of California

The story of how avocados went from being an obscure West-Coast cash crop to the juggernaut of the Midwestern produce section is one of extreme feats of marketing and major shifts in ideas about nutrition. It is a story of a desperate renaming, a PR Hail-Mary, and of the changing nature of the Super Bowl. It is a tale best enjoyed with a squeeze of lime and generous sprinkling of cilantro.

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The avocados of the early 20th century were still called “alligator pears” for their bumpy, olive skin. The moniker, suffice it to say, was not appetizing. The association with the swamp-dwelling, man-eating reptile was “ruining the avocado business,” the California Avocado Growers’ Exchange complained at the time. The group began pushing to replace the name with the more-exotic and less-menacing “avocado,” a word that was adapted centuries ago from the Aztec “ahuacacuahatl,” or “testicle tree.” (I suppose “testicle fruit” did not make the short list for the rebranding effort, either.)

“That the avocado, an exalted member of the laurel family, should be called an alligator pear is beyond all understanding,” the trade group moaned in a 1927 statement.

The growers eventually got their way—in coming decades the emerald ellipsoids were termed avocados or “avocado pears” or sometimes “butter pears”—but they then faced another problem: How to get people to eat a fruit that wasn’t sweet, didn’t cook well, had a slippery texture, and ripened off the tree.

“The growers in Southern California were wealthy and white, and even though they strenuously marketed their crop, their efforts were limited, because they could not imagine (nor could the American food consumer) the ‘Mexicanized’ tastes of society as it is today, where avocado routinely appears in tortillas, on sandwiches, in green salads, and even on toast,” Jeffrey Charles, a professor of food history at California State University at San Marcos, told me in an email.