Avocado Macaroni and Cheese Inspires Passionate Twitter Outrage

The compendium of crimes against avocados claimed another entry over the weekend when healthy eating Twitter account @TheFitFood shared a video demonstrating how to make — or rather, ruin — a “lower-calorie” batch of macaroni and cheese with avocado. Naturally, Twitter erupted in a swarm of disgust in response to the suggestion that a portion of the cheese could be substituted with avocado puree.

Not only does the avocado cause the macaroni to take on the hue of a dish from a Dr. Seuss book, but the recipe also calls for other unsanctioned inclusions like coconut oil and almond flour. Although the recipe technically does have cheese in it, it’s goat cheese. According to the Daily Dot, the recipe and subsequent video originally ran on PopSugar in 2015 and resurfaced on Friday. Here’s the video, which outlines the basic recipe in under a minute:

Macaroni and cheese purists quickly called out the absurdity of partially removing a key ingredient from mac and cheese — that is, the cheese — while others were offended by the unusual color:

The lowly avocado has reached cult status in recent years, even inspiring whole restaurants devoted to the pitted fruit. The cultural obsession with it has resulted in some unfortunate recipes over the years: Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on New York Times columnist Melissa Clark’s fateful green pea guacamole incident of 2015.

In a recent interview with the Eater Upsell, Clark reflected on the pea guacamole outrage, saying, “[Readers] didn’t like that we were mucking with tradition [and believed] that guacamole should only be one way. And as a food writer, as a recipe developer, I fundamentally disagree with that.” So, for as much of a negative response as avocado macaroni and cheese has inspired, perhaps there’s room for green-tinged pasta in the world, too.

• Avocado Macaroni and Cheese Is the Latest Crime Against Humanity [Daily Dot]
• Avocado Mac and Cheese Recipe [PopSugar]
• A Brief History of Crimes Against Guacamole [E]
• All Eater IDK Coverage [E]