Americans eat billions of dollars of Mexican avocados every year. Demand is such that drug cartels and other criminal elements have muscled in on the business, centered around the Mexican state of Michoacán. This reality got worldwide attention Super Bowl weekend, when the American government announced it was temporarily suspending any avocado imports from Mexico.

Today, we talk about this development — and why Americans are so obsessed with avocados in the first place.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: L.A. Times Mexico correspondent Leila Miller, and L.A. Times acting deputy food editor Daniel Hernandez.

More reading:

Avocado imports from Mexico are blocked. What does that mean for you?

How we got to peak avocado: Super Bowls to Mexico’s drug cartels

Inside the bloody cartel war for Mexico’s multibillion-dollar avocado industry