Superfood to Cooking Oil to Face Scrub: The Avocado

Nature takes care of us. It packs us sack lunches, provides skin care, and offers cooking oil alternatives. Unpeel it, and put the avocado to work for you!

Avocado is one of my all-time favorite foods. It’s creamy, satisfying, delicious, and really, really good for you! You can use it in everything from recipes to cooking to skincare.

Avocado for Eating

Move over guacamole! There’s lots of different ways to use avocado besides the traditional. Although regular guacamole is pretty darn delicious; I recently tried it with mashed raspberries… sounds odd but YUMMM!

I like to order avocado on the side for almost any meal in a restaurant. It’s full of healthy fats that will make you feel more satisfied, as well as get your skin glowing. It also has something called glutathione peroxidase in it, which helps support your liver to detox your body. When you consider most restaurant food is full of chemicals and unnatural flavorings, adding avocado to your meal will help your body deal with the extra junk.

Avocado is also super alkalizing, which can help to balance out a too-acidic-meal (most restaurant foods make our body acidic, which causes inflammation). Our body, when in balance, is slightly alkaline, so eating foods that are alkaline, like avocado, are generally soothing and balancing.

A super simple meal I like to make for lunch is to chop up avocado and tomato then sprinkle it all with Himalayan salt. This is really filling yet leaves me feeling light and energized. In my opinion, slices of avocado make almost any meal better!

Avocado can also be made into an oil: avocado oil! This is one of my favorite cooking oils, because it’s heat stable. This means the oil is safe to use at higher heat temperatures (unlike olive oil, which turns into a dangerous trans-fat when heated).

I use avocado oil for lots of different types of recipes:

• stir fry
• tossing veggies before baking or roasting
• oiling a pan for a savory dish (I use coconut oil for sweeter dishes)
• drizzling over a baguette with salt and crushed garlic, then broiling

Avocado for Skincare

Avocado can also be used as a deep conditioner for your hair. Just mash some into the ends of your hair (I don’t like to use it on my roots because they get a little greasy, but that’s your call!), and leave on for 5–10 minutes, then rinse out. Your hair will feel super soft and should have a great shine.

You can also use avocado on your skin! Our skin has a similar chemical structure to our digestive lining, so what you put on your skin is almost the same as eating it! Instead of using pricy skincare full of harmful chemicals, you can either use crushed avocado as a moisturizing face mask, or rub avocado oil on your skin at night for a moisture treatment.

Avocado Body Scrub

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup avocado oil
• 3/4 cup fine sea salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Mix everything together and then add more oil or more salt depending on how you like your scrub. I personally like a thicker scrub, but that’s the beauty of making your own!

See how versatile avocado is? What are some of your favorite uses for avocado? I’d love to hear in the comments below!