Last updated on September 13th, 2017
Avocado in a low carb diet
Pictured is my low-carb breakfast this morning: two eggs fried in coconut oil, three small and crispy strips of bacon, and the flesh of half an avocado. It’s a fairly typical breakfast for me these days. I eat other things in the morning, including a goopy mixture of chia seeds, almond butter, walnuts and (LCHF purists avert your eyes!) oatmeal. But day in and day out, my breakfast is likely to include eggs.
If I’m fortunate enough to have an avocado on hand, breakfast is likely to include that, too, in one way or another.
Eating LCHF, I’ve banished most fruits from my diet in the past four years. Those include apples, oranges, cherries and pears. I have retained a few fruits, such as blueberries and strawberries, but in restricted quantities. The avocado is the only fruit that I have added to my diet.
Four years ago, when I first posted about avocado as a great low-carb food, I wasn’t even sure that it was a fruit. I’m still not sure it matters how we classify it, but one reader offered a clear explanation for why the avocado is a fruit: “everything that holds a pip, seed, stone etc., is a fruit, including tomatoes, marrows, pea-pods, cucumber . . . everything that doesn’t, i.e. potatoes, celery, cabbage, leafy greens or root veg is, you guessed it . . . a vegetable!”
Wikipedia agrees, saying that the avocado is “botanically a large berry that contains a single seed.” This is based on an article published by the California Avocado Society (“What Kind of Fruit is the Avocado?” pdf).
Certainly, as fruits go, the avocado is creamier than most. That’s another way of saying the avocado contains a lot of fat. According to USDA statistics, one whole California avocado contains about 18 grams of fat (most of it mono-unsaturated), 3 grams of protein, 12 grams of carbohydrate, and 9 grams of fiber.
That’s three grams of net-carbs and only 0.41 grams of sugar per fruit. Compare that to a navel orange, say, which contains over 14 grams of net-carbs, including nearly 12 grams of sugar, per fruit.
Of course, a whole orange will easily provide 100% of your daily requirement of vitamin C. A whole avocado will provide just 33%. But you could probably find a no-sugar way to get the rest.
My egg, bacon and avocado breakfast this morning contained 504 calories, 76% from fat, and about two grams of net-carbs. The protein totaled 23 grams.
I was left with half an avocado to store. Here’s a page with suggestions on How to Keep an Avocado from Browning.
By coincidence, I saw a post on the Diet Doctor web site this morning that gave a recipe for “Avocado Eggs with Bacon Sails.” The ingredients and nutrition are virtually the same as for my breakfast, but the presentation is far more elegant.
It’s the story of my life.
What does LCHF mean. In a lc diet, do you eat any grains and what do you replace it with.?
LCHF means “low carb, high fat.” I eat very little grains. I don’t replace grain specifically, but do eat a variety of green vegetables and nuts and seeds, which provide fiber.