This is pretty much my daily breakfast! Two well toasted slices of sourdough rye, lovely buttery avocado and hot sauce.

The creaminess of the avocado along with the spiciness of the hot sauce offers a perfect balance of the calm and the storm. The flavours and senses are all engaged offering a perfect jump start to the day.

I have tried different forms of seasoning on my avocado toast. I have tried paprika, nutritional yeast, just pepper, balsamic vinegar or lemon juice but none of them quite have the effect of hot sauce. Much like bread and butter, I believe hot sauce and avocado on toast belong together.

TL;DR Everything is better with hot sauce

I believe most things are better when eaten with hot sauce - except the obvious exceptions...

However, hot sauce not only makes food tastier, it also has several health benefits to its consumption. Lu Qi, professor at Harvard School of Public Health, notes in his study that 'there is accumulating evidence from mostly experimental research to show the benefit of spices or their active components on human health'.

Data has been collected and analysed from a total of 450,000 participants, with results finding that it was possible to cut overall risk of death by 10% if hot food such as chili peppers were consumed more than once a week. With spicy food consumed more than 6 times a week reducing risk of death to 14% and the discovery of 'capsaicin' in spicy foods, has been found to lower risk of death from cancer or ischemic heart and respiratory system diseases.

TL;DR ----- Avocado toast is improved by spice, but chilli oil is better at doing this than hot sauce.

There is nothing wrong with plain avocado on toast. It is an enjoyable and convenient offering. However, this does not mean that it cannot be elevated and improved. The addition of chilli oil (the ones from Chinese supermarkets are the best in my experience) brings the avocado to life by adding a depth of flavour. If the avocado is either under or over-ripe, the added dimension of spice can remove the shortcomings.

I would also say that the just adding hot sauce does not create the best avocado toast. Other additions to consider are integrating lemon juice when mashing the avocado, dried chilli flakes, smoked paprika and hummus as an alternative to butter. This is by no means an extensive list but they are a few options to consider.