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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.""
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.
Actually, it wasn't red dye. It was carbon dioxide. It causes the meat to stay red longer (instead of the gray it turns at it spoils).
maybe the sticker has the reative material on the underside and the color chaning material on above? two reactions?
I'm not a chemical engineer but that sounds rather complex compaired with just picking up the food, looking at it, feeling if its firm, etc.
Mod others as you would have them mod you.
These Europeans--I mean those living on the continent-- who use the metric system are also, for better or worse, overwhelmingly learning American English now. In fact, in two of the countries in Eastern Europe I've resided in (Ukraine and Romania), I've heard British English, its orthography, lexicon, and Received Pronunciation, referred to as outright passe, and would only harm students, since what they need in the global economy is American English, i.e. it's orthography, lexicon, and General American pronunciation. So many European speakers of English now would have it "liters", not "litres".
You should try pineapples again. I've noticed that the qaulity has drastically improved in the last three or four years. Probably the result of improved logistics and shipping.
Funny you mention those countries. In The Netherlands and Belgium, American English is most spoken. Interestingly, these countries subtitle television and movies rather than dubbing it in their own language, so the people are exposed to a lot of (sitcom/movie/Oprah/...) american english at home, whereas France and Germany dub most of their TV and movies.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
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).
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.
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
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?