The Hass Avocado Board, which represents growers and importers of Hass avocados in the U.S. market, has for about the past year and a half been focusing primarily on nutrition research and nutrition marketing “in a way that supports the category as a whole,” according to Emiliano Escobedo, executive director of the board.

“We are not really the big player in the room” with a lot of money to run nationwide consumer campaigns,” Escobedo said. “We are playing more of a strategic role in identifying what are the nutritional benefits of avocados to humans. This year, we have two studies that have been published.”

One study, conducted by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, involved an analysis of data from a Centers for Disease Control’s eight-year National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the food consumption of more than 17,500 adults.

The UCLA analysis of NHANES data concluded that people who eat avocados tend to be healthier, Escobedo said. “Avocado consumption is associated with better diet quality and nutrient intake” as well as lower body weight, lower body mass index, smaller waist circumference, higher levels of good cholesterol and lower risk of metabolic syndrome.

Another UCLA study, published late last year, showed that adding half an avocado to lean hamburger in the diet “may improve blood circulation and reduce inflammation compared to a lean burger without avocado,” Escobedo told The Produce News in a previous interview.

“All of this research is basically now in the hands of health professionals” such as nutritionists and registered dieticians and nurse practitioners who are “making recommendations to patients,” he said.

“These are the people that really understand the science and can interpret it and make recommendations” so that consumers can “improve their diet plans.”

Several other health-related research projects, also with promising results favorable to avocados, will be published soon, he said. “We are working with researchers and research institutions across the country such as Loma Linda University, Ohio State University, Penn State, Stanford and Tufts. All of these universities are widely recognized not only in the United States but worldwide for their nutrition research programs.”

The objective, he said, is make sure that any claims and messages made by the industry about the health and nutritional benefits of avocados “are substantiated with science, so we are investing a lot of money in building the body of science around Hass avocados. Then we are going to take all of that and communicate it to our target audiences” through a unified positioning framework.

The research being conducted is “very relevant to the scientific community and to the industry,” he said. “But for consumers to understand the health benefits of any product, communication needs to be very simple and clear, and clearly communicated.”

For that reason, HAB has developed “a positioning strategy for HASS avocados and nutrition, so that whenever the industry is talking about the health benefits of avocados, or making any claims, we as an industry, members of associations, growers, importers and so on, communicate in a unified way. This will make our voice stronger and louder” as well as clearer.

In order to assure the effectiveness of any public outreach, HAB conducted “a lot of research” through focus groups and surveys in various cities throughout the United States “to really understand how the nutrition message would resonate best with consumers.” Drawing on that information, the board has developed a “unified strategy for communicating the health and nutritional benefits of avocados to various audiences.” The theme of the strategy is “Love One Today,” and Escobedo described it as “a consistent call to action” with which people can make “a strong emotional connection.”

The concept focuses on just two message points “that have been tested with consumers,” he said. Those messages are: Avocados are cholesterol free, and they contain naturally good fats.

“Even though avocados have many benefits,” those are the two that consumer research says consumers most want to hear. “So we are working with the associations” that represent avocados from various producing areas “to make sure that whenever the nutrition message is part of anyone’s campaign. The message is consistent with what resonates with consumers.”

Whether the avocados are from California, Mexico, Chile or Peru, “we have done the leg work to identify what that is, so the idea is to work together as an industry” to assure that when talking about nutrition “we all talk with the same voice and the same content.”