The nutritional benefits of choosing avocados are immense and are packed with nutrients.

Half a medium sized avocado does give us 132 calories, but this is a lot fewer than a typical 50g cereal bar which though we perceive it to be ‘healthy’, gives us 204 calories (and the equivalent to four teaspoons of sugar).

The skinny blueberry muffin you pick up in a typical coffee shop weighs in with 361 calories, a typical slice of organic carrot cake with 399 calories and four multigrain crispbreads 148 calories.

And the 132 calories in half an avocado is even 8 less than you glug down in a 250ml individual bottle of fruit smoothie, another of those products we think of as being so good for us.

Not only are you getting fewer calories and a whole lot less sugar than most of these foods, with avocados, you get heart-friendly monounsaturated oils which have the massive benefit of helping to fill you up so that you don’t feel peckish again so quickly after eating.

Packed with sunny goodness, so add an avo!
Avocados are packed with goodness, and are a great source of monounsaturated fats, which helps lower blood cholesterol levels.

The Food Standards Agency is currently recommending us to eat less saturated fats and more monounsaturated and unsaturated fats, and recommends avocados as part of the diet switch.  In fact, adding an avocado to your daily diet can result in eating less fat generally, as you reduce your cravings for ‘bad’ fats.

Great nutritional value for your £
Having busted the ‘avocados are fattening’ myth, it is time to look at their real-life health benefits as well.

• Avocados give us a super nutrient that lowers cholesterol: Called ‘beta-sitosterol’, it has a very similar structure to cholesterol and when you eat it in avocados, it competes with cholesterol for absorption by your body – and wins, the result being potentially lower levels of cholesterol in the blood. Beta-sitosterol belongs to a group of plant compounds known as ‘phytosterols’ which food manufacturers add to things like yoghurts and spreads which are marketed specifically to lower cholesterol.
• Beta-sitosterol has also been shown in laboratory studies to stop excessive cell division. This may mean that it can help to prevent the growth of cancer cells which reproduce at an otherwise alarmingly rapid rate.
• Avocados also top the charts gram for gram among fruits for the B vitamin folate which we need for healthy nerves and circulation, potassium which helps to maintain blood pressure, magnesium for strong bones and vitamin E which we need for our skin. They even give us fibre, which is surprising given how smooth textured they are.

and you get all this at great value too. While even the least expensive individual 50g cereal bar costs 47p, a 250ml smoothie a socking £1.75 and a cholesterol-lowering yoghurt 50p, half a medium avocado is typically around 30p - 40p which means that pound for pound you are not just getting great nutritional value, but fabulous £ for £ value as well.