Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Wouldn't businesses be tempted to fudge the stickers to sell more fruit? They use red die on meat.
Table-ized A.I.
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
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!!
But why not just look at the fruit itself?
The conversions everyone is giving are useless.
:P
The original article never gave a measurement of the number of fruit thrown out it mearly stated "thousands of bushels", which is akin to saying "lots of fruit".
I'm hoping lots isn't a unit of some sort or some slashdotter will try and convert it
I wish Google would do conversions for football fields and libraries of congress....
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.
Please don't wreck me for the formatting, I forgot how anal /. is... God, it's like a bunch of linux nerds run this place!
I know, but there is one thing I can't understand. Why do they have that preview button? A real linux nerd would never use it. Oh wait...
> But consumers pay, because you need to eat more fruit and veg to get the beneficial effects, and
> they don't taste as well.
Sensible consumers don't pay. Not at the supermarket, anyway. Don't get me wrong - supermarkets are good at some things. But the fruit and veg sections are terrible, here in the UK as well. The produce is picked long before it's ripe, the idea presumably being that it'll ripen by the time it's purchased, but produce doesn't work that way, so what you get is a hard, tasteless pair, or an apple that's `fluffy` because the low temperatures used to prevent decay have damaged the cells of the fruit. You're better off going to your local greengrocer/market, if you can find one that doesn't only have lower quality stuff.
When all that the poster mentions is that "thousands of bushels of fruit" are thrown away each year, what good is giving the bushel -> gallon or some metric unit conversion? It doesn't make the original comment any more specific. Basically he just says "lot's of".
> 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
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 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.