Brenda Lifsey is hoping to serve as class representative in an action that will fight for the rights of Californians to have fully avocadoed guacamole dip, according to reports today. Lifsey alleges that she used Kraft Dips Guacamole in a three-layer dip last year, but was horrified by what she discovered.  "It just didn’t taste avocadoey," she told the Associated Press.

Lifsey’s subsequent research (reading the label) disclosed that the product was approximately 2 percent avocadoey, the remainder being comprised of food starch, coconut and soybean oils, corn syrup and food coloring. Lifsey alleges that traditional Mexican guacamole recipes are significantly more avocadoey, with avocado typically being the main ingredient, and she says that is what consumers would expect from the Kraft product.

It’s what the Aztecs would have expected, says the L.A. Times. It seems they invented guacamole about 700 years ago. "They made a sauce called ahuaca-mulli, which roughly translates to ‘avocado mixture,’ according to the avocado commission." (Yes, we have an Avocado Commission.) So, the Aztecs never invented steel, gunpowder, or even the wheel, but they did come up with human sacrifice and guacamole. Well done, Aztecs. Sadly, the ahuaca-mulli proved almost completely ineffective against the Spanish invaders, and so they took the recipe along with everything else. If only it had been more avocadoey.

Back in the present, a Kraft representative said the company did not think it was deceiving anyone, and pointed out that all of the ingredients are listed on the label, so the relatively low avocadoeyness quotient is not hidden at all. She said the company had not yet seen the lawsuit but was considering making changes to the label anyway.

The FDA does not have any requirements as to how much avocado a product must contain to be properly labeled "guacamole."

Link: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Link: Los Angeles Times