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Ripeness Sticker Coming to Supermarket Fruit
Adam Weiss writes "A biosystems engineering professor has just announced a "ripeness sticker" for fruit. According to this AP article, grocers throw out thousands of bushels of fruit a year because it ripens too fast (1 bushel is about 9 U.S. gallons). Mark Riley's RediRipe stickers turn from white to blue as fruit ripens. The stickers react with ethylene gas, a chemical which is released as fruit or vegetables ripen. However the article says "there are still bugs to be worked out: The stickers do not change color to reflect an overripe or rotten piece of fruit. Also, not all fruit produces enough ethylene to be detected by the sticker.""
It would have been friendly of the editors to provide a metric equivalent for the large percentage of their readership outside of the United States. Running GNU units on 1 bushel tells me that it is just over 35 liters.
Wouldn't businesses be tempted to fudge the stickers to sell more fruit? They use red die on meat.
Table-ized A.I.
i'm sure i've seen one of these before
Thanks for the conversion but why would you measure fruit in gallons or bushels? Perhaps some measure of mass would be more appropriate, say Kilograms, Pounds, Tons or Tonnes.
And this will save grocers money how?
Pay more for the stickers.
Throw out more fruit as people only choose the least ripe.
Letter To Iran
Why not use two stickers, or two halves of one sticker, that react at different rates?
One half would indicate ripeness, the other over-ripeness.
So you have a pile of fruit, each with this sticker. If the chemical these stickers detect is a gas, how do I, the consumer, know that the sticker changed color because *this* fruit is ripe, and not the one next to it? If said fruit was tossed in a crate and shipped, would all the stickers turn?
Bork Bork Bork!!
...use the old-fashioned method, scratch and sniff.
But why not just look at the fruit itself?
Interesting, in Sweden just a day ago a newspaper reported that they had tested fruits and vegetables sold in Sweden with a refractometer, and out of 120 tests on produce sold in different stores, 64 were poor and 56 average, not a single fruit or veggie were "good" or "exceptional".
The low Brix numbers measured indicate poor taste and nutrient levels, and are caused by too early harvesting, and speeding up growth with fertilizers and greenhouses (not enough time to accumulate nutrients from earth). Understandable, since this lowers risk for producers and allows them to ship long distances, for instance from New Zealand or Argentina. But consumers pay, because you need to eat more fruit and veg to get the beneficial effects, and they don't taste as well.
Note that this newspaper is very pro-trade, pro-globalization and generally rightwing.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Anybody who buys fruit regularly can tell how ripe it is by touching it. I've been making a lot of smoothies this summer and I can pretty much tell what a banana, peach, or mango will taste like with a very gentle squeeze. I'm okay with tomatoes but it seems like they vary.. sometimes they are hard but ready to eat. (My girlfriend can explain.. just kidding).
And actually, I don't see how this sticker will reduce the amount fruit the grocers have to throw out.
SO I;m probably one of the only people that visists this site that actually was a "journeyman" produce guy and have dealt with ordering and throwing out massive quatities of produce for various stores (Vons, Henrys, and Bristol Farms). Any good produce manager already knows what he's got in his cooler and how ripe it is, without some sticker to mislead him. Sometimes different fruit give off different amounts of gas at the same ripeness level depending on where it was grown, how long in it was in cold storage, etc... Since produce is in the USA is constantly coming in from all over the world, I don't think these stickers would be very reliable. Also I don't think the stickers would help much with waste because buyers over order on purpose when they can get a good deal. Buyers and district managers will push the dept managers to order more as well to get it outta the warehouse before it goes bad too. A lot of the time, (unlike other grocery items) produce sales (5 grapefruit for a dollar etc...) are based on availability of particular crops at good prices. THe buyer will order a crapload, the chain puts 'em on sale and hope that the product sells before they go bad. Cold storage can make some produce items last surprisingly long (several months sometimes) but a LOT of the time stores end up throwing out tons of the stuff, totally wasteful, but hey thats capitalism! I think the only thing these stickers would be good for would be to inform customers that don't know when their fruit is ripe. However, the afformentioned problems would still arise and it is doubtful that they would be very reliable. I think this was mentioned in the article, but don't know for sure cause I don't have time to read it - typical /. style ;-)
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
In picturing the amount of fruit thrown out, I don't want to estimate the density of an apple to figure out what 200 kg of apples would look like in a dumpster.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
With no simple way to tell whether fruit that looks good on the outside will taste good on the inside, consumers often buy peaches, pears and melons they can't eat because they're under-ripe or overripe.
You could taste it! Every store I worked at encouraged sampling fruit for customers.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
We have had this in New Zealand for a while now, the product is Ripe Sense invented by scientists at Hort Research New Zealand.
Had these on Pears for years. They simply drive up the price of the fruit and add to the global plastic waste problem. The pears are packaged in packs of 4 in a plastic container.
Just squeeze the pears for crying out loud.
I wonder how long it will take before some kid sticks one to his forehead to try to see if he's "ripe" or not. :P
Perhaps this technology could be applied to detecting staleness of online technology news on specific punctuationally named websites, as a further benefit to humanity.
It would confirm whether I was negelecting to drink the milk after I got it or if the milk automatically went bad when I got it home. I really hate tasting bad milk.
I don't know about you, but I buy my fruit by the pound.
it's like a mood ring for fruit?
A small modification of these stickers (e.g. amount of alcohol in blood) would make them very suitable for blind dates.
Mhhhh... glue.....!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Yummy...
LifeTime Gamer
Primates' brains are wonderful at determining the ripeness of fruit. They've got the color perception evolved (err, I mean designed) practically just for that. That's like using a dog to help you climb trees.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
> grocers throw out thousands of bushels of fruit a year because it ripens too fast [...] RediRipe stickers turn from white to blue as fruit ripens
Looks like a solution in search of a problem, because it sure doesn't address the stated one.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you start eating a fruit and find it's not yet quite ripe, heat it in the microwave for a minute. This releases more of the fruit sugar and makes it taste sweeter. I've done this with mangos.
I guess this gives a complete different meaning to "raping fruits" ;)
You'd have to pry that mango out of my cold death hands before you put that one in the microwave!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
that stuff's toxic!
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I know a few coworkers I could stick a "ripeness" sticker on...
1989 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units
You have: bushel
You want: gallon
* 9.3091775
/ 0.10742088
You have: bushel
You want: drygallon
* 8
/ 0.125
You have: bushel
You want: peck
* 4
/ 0.25
You have: bushel
You want: quart
* 37.23671
/ 0.026855219
You have: bushel
You want: liter
* 35.23907
/ 0.028377593
there are still bugs to be worked out: The stickers do not change color to reflect an overripe or rotten piece of fruit.
Well the bugs don't need a sticker to tell when an overripe piece of fruit is ready to be consumed or discarded.
Only very inexperienced fruit consumers do.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Its my experience in Europe that in a lot of cases the fruit you can buy has hardly riped at all which really doesn't do much good for the quality of the product. Take for example banana's. Those are plucked while still being green (so far from being riped) under the excuse "They'll ripe more during transport" resulting in me having to buy green banana's.
Well, unlike some others I really don't fancy that stuff. So could it be that I'm not alone with this and that this isn't an issue of riping too fast but consumers simply ignoring the product (and so buying it too slow) ?
It's amazing... We can launch rockets to space, we walked on the moon, but we can't come up with a simple solution like coolboxes so that we can pluck the fruit once it has fully riped and then slow the riping process down so that the consumers can buy fully riped (and tasty) products. Wanna bet that the selling rates go up?
Seriously, when reading crap like this I'm becoming more and more convinced that humanity will eventually irradicate itself. Not through means of total war or nuclear meltdowns. No, much more subtle. Due to greed. Being greedy enough to tamper with the very source of our existance: the foodchain. By being so arrogant to believe we can change our food genetics without caring for the result. Thats because we're too narrow minded (or clueless) to realize that the eventual effects may well show itself over a period of dozens of years. Its a simple fact that eating a raw banana may have much worse results than eating a banana which is a little too ripe (not rotting, just a little too ripe).
in the old days, we used to look at and feel the fruit to see if it was ripe or not.
Kids these days with their stickers.
Ahh.
Now I understand.
You could always put up pictures to help people with how to tell what ripe fruit of whatever variety looks/feels like. It's relatively easy with bananas, but you cant' squeeze tomatoes to tell if they're ripe. The only thing we need stickers for is mangoes, because no one in the world knows when a mango is ripe!
stuff |
Can we also have a ripeness sticker for politicians as well? The sticker could monitor the amount of bullshit instead of the amount of ethylene coming out of them.
it'll be so simple to kick-out a grocery store i don't like: just spread a little of that ethylene gas around..
cut this signatures madness. stop reading them now!
I work for a Community Kitchen that serves the homeless, and we could certanly use that food.
Several institutions could. Just look arround your local community.
I thought I had seen this sort of device already and a quick search shows that I rememberred correctly. Check out Ripesense and here and Juicy Idea and I am sure many more. Can a professor get in trouble for plagiarism???
Just like a lot of people are making their own biodiesel from used restaurant grease, this too ripe fruit seems like a good source of feedstock for some ethanol production.
Of course, the stores could solve the problem by just dropping prices right off the bat so they sell the stuff before it goes bad.
If this is a sticker then it operates based on touch. What happens if Apple A which has a sticker has the sticker touching Apple B. If Apple B is rotten, wouldn't it set off Apple A? It's working on a gas emission.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
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I think they could probably just coat the front of the sticker, and allow the gas to seep in through the sticky side.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
farmers in the EU use metric units? ... they use metric tonnes.
Errr
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Now it means I don't have an excuse to go round squeezing peoples melons (yes I know its a bad joke)
Cheap UK and US VPS
Need one of these for girls:
"18 yet? Let me check the sticker....Giggaty giggity gig!"
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Instead of inventing some fancy sticker nonsense, how about just putting the ripe stuff out where people can get at it.
Let's hope it doesn't react to Ethanol C2H6O as well as Ethylene C2H4 *_* :/
Rather embarrassing if all those stickers turns blue to signify that you had a proper good 'ol binge-drinking adventure the previous night, isn't it?
PS: Also, slashdot needs to support the sub and super scripts so that I could have used a better chemistry notation here....
So would you.. if you could
Since when do we need stickers to tell us the difference between not ripe, ripe and rotten?
You are missing Aussie Rules Football and Gaelic Football as well. Heck we could go on for ever.
I always have a problem when they compare things to football fields in documentaries. Then again, it's better then some other examples :
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it! -- Grandpa Simpson
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
there are still bugs to be worked out...
Presumably, the stickers prevent bugs from working their way out of the fruit. Obviously they should experiment with smaller, thinner stickers.
This has been around for at least 5 years in Australia. I think its a bit pointless though, and it seems to add about $5 to the price of the fruit, compaired with just selecting rip ones from the piles they have at the supermarket.
Quagmire : Hey there, how old are you
Connie D'Amico : 16
Q: 18? Your first...
C: Moooom!!
Q: I like where this is goin. Giggety-giggety-GIGGETY.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
We have been able to buy pears in containers with these here (Ottawa,Canada) for the last year or so. They use yellow to orange I think, can't check threw the container out.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Also, if amount of fruit is apparently measured by volume, are fruits that pack better more expensive?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
if grocers would simply get their produce from local (farmer's) markets. Problems with "ripeness" are really just about delivery. Crating metric tonnes of fruit and sticking them in a cargo container isn't the best way to assure "just in time" ripeness. Getting it from your local producers is. "Exotic" fruit can still be had from elsewhere, only it won't be as good...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
According to this AP article, grocers throw out thousands of bushels of fruit a year because it ripens too fast
Why throw it out?
Why not ferment it and turn it ethanol to use a fuel?
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
This is the kind of good use of technology that I like to see. I hope that they can figure out how to make it work the way the article advertises it.
Another useless intention for those of you who don't want to listen to and squeeze your fruit.
Why are we solving problems that don't exist?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
The consumer is concerned with three states:
1. Unripe
2. Ripe
3. Overripe
This sticker covers only two states:
1. Unripe
2. Ripe
So in essence this is not a sticker to tell you a fruit is ripe, it's a sticker to tell you that it is not unripe.
This is a step in the right direction but does not seem worth it without the full range. Consumers will just use whatever method they prefer to test ripeness when they learn the stickers cannot be trusted.
So, THEY have come up with this new type of sticker just when grocers have figured out how to replace sticky product labels with barcodes burnt into the fruit with lasers:
h tml?ei=5090&en=3a2eb1eaf127773a&ex=1279425600&page wanted=print
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/dining/19fruit.
THEY must be in cahoots with the sticky label industry.
But consumers pay, because you need to eat more fruit and veg to get the beneficial effects, and they don't taste as well.
I've worked as an editor before and I think this is the first time I've ever seen this error. You often see someone misuse "good" when they should be using "well," but not the other way around. If fruit tasted good, you probably want to eat it. If fruit tastes well, that means it is the one doing the tasting. I'm guessing this is an overcorrection and you were trying to stop misusing "good?" Anyway, I don't mean to be harassing you about this and don't normally point these things out. I certainly make enough mistakes myself. For some reason the psychology of this usage just piqued my curiosity.
Didnt the Alton mention something once about how exposure to ethylene gas mostly only changes the color of a given fruit to resemble its ripe state and actually has little impact on developing the flavors that we associate with ripeness?
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
It's being used in New Zealand, manufactured by a company called ripeSense since 2004!
http://www.ripesense.com/
Unfortunately for this professor, Avery Denison's Industrial and Automotive Products division in Strongsville, OH developed and patented this product about 3 years ago. I hope this guy has good lawyers.
You think that they can develop one for women?
"oh shit, her stickers red, don't even look at her..."
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
1 US bushel = 4.32860312 × 10-9 cubic furlongs
Man, you really need that seminar!
This isn't new. I've got four pears in the fridge right now with a ripeness sticker. I'm on the East Coast of the USA; they are commonly available from PA to NC at least.
I've had these stickers on my powerbook for years now.
The moment Steve Jobs says "and one more thing" it turns blood red and it's time to buy a new one.
In northern climates, like Canada, fruit from warmer places (e.g. oranges) is picked and shipped green, then artificially ripened using ethylene (which is why the citrus fruits in Canada are only half the size they should be). So all the stickers would always be blue when the fruit shows up in the store.
"A biosystems engineering professor has just announced a "ripeness sticker" for fruit."
Already saw it twice on Beyond Tomorrow.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Most resources (my favourite is John Robbins' "The Food Revolution") on food will tell you that they use chemicals to artificially ripen fruit/vegs all at the same time, so that they can harvest the whole crop in one go (sometimes, the produce is genetically modified so that it will "activate" with the proper chemical).
The downside in this is that it is designed to be at its most luscious only at the time that it is important for profit-making: when it is on the shelf. Because of the "accelerator" chemical, they continue to ripen quickly, and don't last nearly as long once they are ripe.
I've experienced this. At one (non-super-) market, the regular carrots go limp after only a couple of days, whereas when I buy organic ones, they stay firm and tasty for weeks.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Who here hasn't been eating since birth?
And what have you been eating - food, I presume?
And of that food, at least some quantity has been fruit?
Have you ever had an apple? OOr, a blueberry? Or a tomato? Or a melon? An avocado? A banana?
So you know what a ripe one looks, feels, or sounds like, vs. an unripe one, right?
So why exactly is this kind of thing necessary?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Well, it basically all boils down to the fact that it is usually much cheaper for networks, in say Australia, to buy programming from US networks, rather than to produce programming themselves. So if they had their way, programming would probably be 100% US (maybe apart from news/current affairs, for obvious reasons). It's not just TV btw, also music/film/art you name it.
o utcomes/11_audio_visual.html
...and now a non-government organisation's (yes, that is "organisation" not "organization" he he) take on the issue: http://www.tradewatchoz.org/AUSFTA/Index.html#Cont ent
:-)
To stop this, governments often regulate how much foreign content is allowed to be shown, however this has certainly been watered down a lot over recent times (at least in Aus).
Here is the Australian Federal Government's take on the "Free Trade Agreement" between Aus and the US:
http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/
Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against US culture (some of my favourite music is from the US), but I think most people would agree that it is important for countries to preserve their own unique cultures (not to say that cultures can't change overtime), otherwise the world would not be such an interesting place. Having a decent amount of local TV content is an important part of this.
Sheesh, just my two cents worth for Friday morning
Actually, the official unit of stink is hobo power.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
But, speaking of, I've got a friend of mine in Australia recommending I listen to a band called Wolfmother...know anything about them? I hear they have a great classic rock sound...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
yeah wolfmother are tops. if you like black sabbath style hard-rock, then you will like these guys. i have seen them once, and they were great live. i think they recently did a tour in the US, so you may have just missed them (assuming that's where you're from).
They have full sings on their site: http://www.wolfmother.com/
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
sings is typical dutch spelling by the way (to keep on topic in the rest of this offtopic thread). At least it must be.
I might have meant "songs"
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)