MW This Super Bowl snack can help slim your waist - and spare your wallet

By Brett Arends

Also: What a Patriots Super Bowl appearance could mean for stocks and bonds

You can help yourself to more guacamole without guilt.

Heading into Super Bowl weekend, here is some good news: Avocado prices are way down, and that means guacamole will be cheaper than last year.

The average price of a Hass avocado is 90 cents right now, down 22% from $1.16 a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Read: Buy the dip! Your guacamole for Super Bowl Sunday is the cheapest it's been in decades - and chip prices are down, too.

And here's some even better news: Even though avocados have a lot of calories, they are also surprisingly good for your health.

Which means that you can help yourself to more guacamole without guilt, although the same is not true of chips, beer or most anything else.

Avocados are good for your gut health and can actually change fat distribution in women, reducing the amount of very unhealthy deep visceral belly fat, according to researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The fruit can lower your levels of bad cholesterol and improve overall diet quality, say researchers at Penn State.

They're also good for your heart, according to the American Heart Association. A 30-year study involving over 100,000 people found that even when adjusting for other cardiovascular risk factors and overall diet, "study participants who ate at least two servings of avocado each week had a 16% lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 21% lower risk of coronary heart disease, compared to those who never or rarely ate avocados."

And despite their high calorie content, avocados may actually help you lose weight, either by suppressing appetite or at least by making you feel fuller, especially when eaten in place of carbohydrates, according to this report in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nutrients.

Avocados may also help people manage obesity and even prevent diabetes, according to researchers at the University of Guelph, near Toronto.

On the downside, though, researchers at North Carolina State University report that avocados are radioactive. Yikes.

Most avocados come from Mexico. In recent years, as many as 90% of the avocados consumed in the U.S. were grown south of the border.

President Donald Trump initially tried to slap hefty tariffs on imported avocados but rolled them back late last year.

Nonetheless, U.S. growers - principally in California - are trying to ramp up production. Limoneira $(LMNR)$ is nearly doubling its total production, although it says it will be several years before the new trees start producing. And grower Mission Produce (AVO) is buying rival Calavo $(CVGW)$.

An acre of avocados generates between $12,000 and $15,000 in profits a year, according to Adam Peck, chief investment officer at Milwaukee-based Riverwater Partners. (Lemons, apparently, are a break-even product.)

As for the big game? Years in which the New England Patriots have appeared in the Super Bowl have been, on average, bad for the stock market and good for bonds. During those 11 years, which occurred between 1986 and 2019, the S&P 500 generated average real returns of 4.75% a year. ("Real return" means after deducting for inflation.) That's way below the average annual real return on the index of 7.9% a year during the entire Super Bowl era, which dates to 1967.

Meanwhile, in those same years the 10-year Treasury bond earned, on average, 6.5% after inflation, or nearly three times the average annual real return of 2.2% during the Super Bowl era. Past Patriots appearances coincided with massive double-digit gains on bonds in 1986, 2002 and 2008.

Am I being serious? That's what the math says. Does it mean anything? Ask me in a year's time.

Everyone on Wall Street will tell you past performance is no guarantee of future performance - while acting as if it is.

But at least that guacamole is pretty good for you. This Sunday, I'm on Team Guac.

-Brett Arends

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 07, 2026 08:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.