What Happens If You Eat Expired Avocado
Avocados are very nutritious and beneficial for health. But if you eat expired avocados, it may harm your health and can result in stomach issues, diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea. If this happens, you may get medical assistance from your doctor because vomiting leads to dehydration which is very harmful.
It goes without saying, but if your avocado — or any other food — is bad, you need to throw it out. Yes, a spoiled avocado, when consumed, can cause you to become extremely sick. If you eat a spoiled avocado, you can get food poisoning. If your avocado shows any signs of spoilage or starts developing molds or fungus, you should throw it out immediately and be sure to not consume it, or else you could be experiencing symptoms of food poisoning. Cover the avocado tightly with plastic wrap and store in an airtight container for up to 2 or 3 days after chopping.
Keep avocados in the refrigerator unless you plan on eating an avocado immediately once it has reached its peak ripeness. You will want to take your avocado out of the refrigerator one or two days before you want to eat it. If you do not expect to eat the avocado for the next day or two, you will probably want to store it while it is a bit firm. Once it is ripe, either eat your avocado within the next day or two, or keep it whole and uncut in the fridge for up to three days.
An avocado that is ripe and ready to eat will have a slight green hue in its flesh, with a mildly spongy, creamy texture. A perfect avocado is dark green in color, and the firmness of an avocado will yield slightly if you push it. A good avocado is light green when you slice it, while a bad avocado will have a brown or even black inside the avocado. If your avocado has gone rancid and the flavor and smell has changed from how it was when it was a light green then this can make you sick.
If you feel like your avocado has lost that creamy, light flavor and instead tastes rancid or unappetizing, then do not eat more of it. The more the avocado has degraded, the greater chance that it is going to taste rancid or moldy – either of which can potentially make you sick. The short answer is that, no, you are most likely to get sick from an avocado if it is overripe and has gone bad. An avocado has likely gone bad when it is black, and you can make a hole in an avocado by gently pressing down on it.
| Signs | |
| Mold | If you see mold growing on your avocado then it has gone bad |
| Color | If it starts to turn black, then it has gone bad |
| Texture | If it becomes so soft that you can make a hole in it, then it has gone bad |
If the skin is dented or distended — check it out before picking up your avocado — then it has probably gone bad. If the avocado is already got sunken areas, or looks deflated before you crush, it is probably past its prime. Generally, if an avocado has blackened skin, has mold on its outside, or feels rubbery to the touch, that means the fruit is well past its prime.
A small pockmark can mean the avocado is overripe, but it is still edible, but large pockmarks, or feeling like the fruit is crushed within the skin, means that it is not going to be great for eating. If crushing leaves small indents, avocado might be too ripe for cutting, and it would be best mashed.
You should throw out an avocado, because mold may be spreading throughout the soft flesh, but it might not be completely visible. When cutting the avocado, you should not eat it if you notice the flesh contains a lot of stringy fibers. When cutting, a mature avocado will have flesh throughout the interior of the fruit that is either yellowish or brownish.
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Because ripening starts at the tip of the stalk and proceeds down, you can probably use some of the avocado that is ripe, as long as the flesh has not started turning brown. If your avocado looks as though it has brown or black spots all through its pale green flesh, that could be a sign your avocado is overripe.
The brown parts of the avocado may not look appealing, and may have a bitter flavor, but they are still safe to eat. With this status, if your avocado is only slightly brown, but it still smells, looks, and tastes fine, there is no reason to avoid eating it.
An avocado with moldy interior is not going to taste great, and if it has mold, then it is already past its prime. Do not try to salvage any parts of an avocado that is rancid, smells bad, or has mold on it, because the rancid has the potential to make you sick (2, 5, 6). A whole avocado should be that nice deep-purple colour, and it should have no cuts or holes in it, where germs could easily infect the flesh within.
While you should never eat an avocado that is not perfectly good, there is a certain point when it becomes just a bit too runny for cutting, but is still mostly okay to eat. Aside from negative health effects from eating spoiled foods, an avocado that is just slightly overripe is safe to eat, but rather unappetizing.
If you understand avocado shelf life and how best to store one, you will find yourself enjoying this delicious fruit all the time rather than throwing it out. If you are planning on finishing a chopped avocado in one day, you can keep it in the refrigerator exposed, but make sure you finish it fast, because it becomes unappetizing when stored like that for more than 24 hours. If you are not using the correct container and keeping the avocados openly in the refrigerator, then your cut avocado pieces will not survive more than a day in the refrigerator.
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If your avocado is not fully ripe, you can leave it out on the counter and it should ripen in the next 4-5 days, though it depends on how firm it was when you bought it. If you consume large amounts of avocados that are not yet ripe, then you may have upset stomach or diarrhea because of the high amount of fiber avocados have. Of course, eating an excessive amount of either ripe or unripe avocados can result in an upset stomach or even diarrhea because of the large amount of dietary fiber found in avocados.
Can a bad avocado give you food poisoning?
Although healthful, avocados can make you sick. Due to the presence of listeria, avocados have been recalled. Salmonella and listeria are both frequent causes of food illness from avocados, and they can both happen when the fruit is chopped when the bacteria move from the peel to the flesh.
Can I use out-of-date avocado?
Even while an overripe avocado may not seem very delicious, it is still edible (as long as there isn’t really mold on it, of course). Simply remove the really black parts before using them in recipes or as a do-it-yourself beauty treatment.
Can avocado go bad in the fridge?
Avocados must ripen on the counter for about a week. They keep in the fridge for around 3 to 5 days after they are ripe. If well wrapped and kept chilled, avocados can last up to three to four days after being chopped and mashed.