Now they come with a Michelin recommendation, maybe avocados really will cause a housing crisis

If I skipped a month’s rent maybe I could just about afford Michelin-starred avocado toast – or perhaps some ‘white miso tofu filled with avocado mousse, topped with caviar and a warm roast chicken broth’

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I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the boardroom meeting during which the Michelin Guide team decided it would be a good idea to undertake an avocado-themed revamp. I imagine it went something like this.

Senior white, middle-aged man working for Michelin: “We’re rich, influential, powerful… but nobody under the age of 35 gives a damn about whether a restaurant has 200 stars or minus 50. They’re all too busy on Tripadvisor trying to find food that costs less than a McDonalds AND comes in regular portions. Or they’re trying to get reservations at some shed that isn’t even a real restaurant. What on earth can we do to seem ‘hip’, ‘trendy’, ‘down with the kids?’"

There follows a long pause, lots of head scratching, before another older man says: “Millennials like avocados don’t they?”

The rest, as they say, is history.

No, you are not reading The Onion. The Michelin Guide has teamed up with the World Avocado Organization (who knew there was such a thing) to celebrate all things avocado pear. In a special edition guide, titled Avocado: The fruit of life, 33 restaurants across the UK are recommended as good places to eat the fruit, alongside heavily airbrushed pictures of women with Sixties perms posing with – you guessed it – avocados.

“The avocado, known as the fruit of life, has the unique ability to transcend cuisines… its diversity is similar to the varied portfolio of Michelin awarded restaurants,” the introduction to the guide boasts. Really.

It feels like only yesterday young people were being told that if only we stopped buying so much avocado on toast for Saturday brunch we’d have £20,000 to spare for a house deposit in no time at all. Now we’re being told that what we really need is not to shun the avocado at all, but to consume more expensive foods made from the ingredient.

I think we’ve established that the claim that avocados are the leading cause of the UK housing crisis doesn’t quite add up – but if we all got on board with the Michelin Guide’s latest recommendations, it really wouldn't be so far from the truth. Now it all makes sense; I’ve obviously just been eating the wrong kind of avocado.

I’ve never been to a Michelin-starred restaurant, but if I skipped a month’s rent maybe I could just about afford some avocado on toast for breakfast at one of the organisation's top recommended spots. Or perhaps some “white miso tofu filled with avocado mousse, topped with caviar and a warm roast chicken broth” – one of the dishes included in the new publication.

The Michelin brand and all that it stands for is snobbery at its finest. Even if I could afford the prices of the top starred establishments, I cannot think of anything more grotesque than consuming a meal the value of which (by which I mean the price being charged) is equal to the sum that could literally keep someone off the streets for a month. Give me a greasy bag from the local chippy instead – or an avocado bagel from a high street cafe. Or, preferably, my grandma’s lovely fasulye – a Turkish dish of beans and potato stewed in tomato sauce.

Young people have been mocked for enjoying avocados until the tipping point; now we're being treated like our indulgences can be of profit. One minute we're being laughed at for our culinary habits; the next the world's most prestigious food and catering brand is making a special guide in a desperate attempt to attract us in.

Sorry, Michelin, but you’re simply not “cool”. Maybe old institutions like yours will just have to realise that my generation is bored of overpriced, under-sized food. We prefer potluck dinners with our mates or a sandwich from Tesco Express.