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Bill Gates Backs A Company That Doubles the Shelf Life of Vegetables (cnn.com)
Slashdot reader pgmrdlm shared this article from CNN Business:
One company is doubling the shelf-life of avocados, citrus and other produce by taking a chemical-free cue from nature.... After researching the issue, Apeel CEO James Rogers realized spoilage was at the root of the problem. In 2012, he founded Apeel Sciences, which aims to extend the shelf-life of food and reduce waste. Rather than relying on chemical agents to preserve fresh produce, it develops a special protective coating to slow down the rotting process. The company is backed by Micorosoft cofounder Bill Gates and venture capitalist Andressen Horowitz, and has raised $110 million dollars in financing to date. Walter Robb, the former co-CEO of Whole Foods, recently joined its board of directors....
Food typically rots when moisture exits, oxygen gets in and mold takes over. To prevent this, Apeel takes the skins, seeds and pulp of homogeneous fruits or veggies -- such as grapes from a winery or tomato skins from a ketchup factor -- and presses out an oil rich in fat lipids. The company turns the oil into a colorless, odorless, tasteless powder that is tailored for each type of produce to which it will be applied. It's then mixed with water by the suppliers before it arrives at the store. The produce is either rinsed in or sprayed with the mixture at packaging facilities, essentially creating a second "peel"...
Apeel says the process is doubling the shelf life of fruits and vegetables and can triple it inside their lab. It aims to extend the life of some produce by four times.
The article points out that nearly a trillion dollars of food still goes to waste each year around the globe -- and at least one store testing Apeel's product has already reported a 50% boost in their profits on avocados thanks to the longer shelf life.
The FDA recognizes Apeel's product as safe, and it's already being used in more than 200 grocery-selling stores in the U.S., including Costco and Kroger.
Food typically rots when moisture exits, oxygen gets in and mold takes over. To prevent this, Apeel takes the skins, seeds and pulp of homogeneous fruits or veggies -- such as grapes from a winery or tomato skins from a ketchup factor -- and presses out an oil rich in fat lipids. The company turns the oil into a colorless, odorless, tasteless powder that is tailored for each type of produce to which it will be applied. It's then mixed with water by the suppliers before it arrives at the store. The produce is either rinsed in or sprayed with the mixture at packaging facilities, essentially creating a second "peel"...
Apeel says the process is doubling the shelf life of fruits and vegetables and can triple it inside their lab. It aims to extend the life of some produce by four times.
The article points out that nearly a trillion dollars of food still goes to waste each year around the globe -- and at least one store testing Apeel's product has already reported a 50% boost in their profits on avocados thanks to the longer shelf life.
The FDA recognizes Apeel's product as safe, and it's already being used in more than 200 grocery-selling stores in the U.S., including Costco and Kroger.
is not by and of itself "news". Except if you're a derp.
There are lots of those about. Derping.
Altered Carbon has a much more interesting notion of a "sleeve".
Solve for the latter, you solve for the former.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Isn't that saying the same thing 3 times?
What's done with all the skinny lipids?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Instead of making more memelenial fruits.
I get what they are tryin gto imply here, but saying it doesn't use chemicals but then say it applies a protective coating. Is the coating not made of chemicals???
If we feed everyone today, soon we will have ten billion people on Earth. We have already reduced wilderness by a radical degree and are killing off natural species as a result. Letting humans starve now prevents both ecocide and having to let more starve later. Gates' plan will work about as well as Windows 10...
Alternative Right.
They make a fridge with a special compartment with a lower percentage of oxygen that extends the shelf life of anything perishable you put in there.
I can't be the only one wondering about the nature of this miraculous product which uses no chemicals, yet somehow manifests in the material world as a coating.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
we've already got more than enough food to end world hunger. The problem isn't production, it's distribution. Stuff like this makes me love science.
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The more you process food, the more flavor is lost.
And maybe shelf life isn't the problem.See, in merchandising (marketing) you have to have your shelves and bins full all the time. And empty shelf is a turnoff to sales.
In other words, running out of stock is considered bad while throwing out stock is factored in.
Next time you're in a supermarket, go to the seafood case. Half of that will be thrown out. Complete waste.
This is a prime example of where free markets are just stupid. And where they destroy the commons.
Just think about that when you hear about fisheries under extreme pressure.
chemical-free cue from nature
The company turns the oil into a colorless, odorless, tasteless powder
Found the product of the American education system.
The problem of expensive housing, in most of the world, is political and not technological. Bill Gates and friends are technology people, not politicians. While that's not saying they can't solve the problems of high housing prices, it only means that they are not the right people for the job. Part of the problem is that people don't recognize the problem. Rent controls don't lower housing prices, it only adds overhead and more costs. Minimum wages, universal basic income, and other means of giving people money from the pockets of taxpayers won't solve the problem either. What will fix it, and this has been shown over and over again, is an open market where competition can drive prices down.
Also, nothing says we can't work on both problems at the same time. I like fresh fruit and if someone found a way to make the fruit last longer and still have them taste good and be healthy food then I'm happier for it.
The grocery stores were ordering X amount of product because everyone knew that on average a certain percentage was going to spoil. Now that order is going to be less because of less spoilage, and lower prices.
Does this work better than wax applied to apples and other fruit? There is a paper on wax coating avocado's from 1997
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/v...
So I'm not clear what this new company is bringing to the table - does wax (lipids) extracted from peels contain other beneficial compounds.
So he's developed chemical that he sprays on shit and calls it chemical free? This is a true marvel of modern marketing.
exPloited that. A
You would be amazed how much of hong kong is actually non developed land.
it's a political choice problem, which has roots in .. well. you need to still have facilities to handle all the extra population. where the income generators are tends to end up being expensive to live.
like, inexpensive housing is already really really inexpensive. but it's not in the right place. way under 100km from hong kong you can rent a house for the same money that gets you a literal metal fence box in hong kong. like a real house with bedrooms, bathrooms and stuff. a hut that does for a dwelling is a lot more inexpensive than that then again.
anyhow, that a trillion dollars worth of food just spoils tells that spoiling food is actually really cheap, hence it ending up spoilt and not eaten.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Does that mean, we get tomatoes back?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Remember the videos showing the protective wax coating on apples when you submerge them in hot water. This is quite interesting
The new part is not the idea of coating to delay rot. That has been done for years, usually with waxes or gases.
Apparently, they are simply working out a new coating that like many others before it has its origins in nature, followed by many manipulations that one does not find in nature.
anyhow, that a trillion dollars worth of food just spoils tells that spoiling food is actually really cheap, hence it ending up spoilt and not eaten.
When I'm not working, I live in Thailand.
While it is "not a secret" that in Germany e.g. supermarkets alone throw away 40% of all fresh food (obviously not canned food etc.) similar amounts get thrown away by the population. Thrown away! Not fed to livestock or animals.
Here in Thailand the amount of food thrown away feels to be 90%. Stuff I would eat, my GF throws away as "might be spoiled". While from the outside it looks like a poor country, food is so cheap, no one cares. I mean: no one cares about keeping food stored properly and eating it next day. Yesterday we made rice ... oh, we only eat half of it? But it is "normal rice"? I want "sticky rice" now! So we cook sticky rice, and tomorrow we throw away the rice from yesterday ... we not even eat 50% of the rice we cook.
Unbelievable. My parents were born during and shortly after the war. I was raised as in "you don't throw away food" ... and most importantly if it is meat or fish. Here they have family of 5, but buy for ten to share with neighbours or relatives. But those do the same!! So we walk to the neighbour give him 2 roasted fish and he gives us a roasted chicken.
At home he and we still have 2 times as much as we can eat.
And that happens every day.
What I meant with "not fed to livestock" at least vegetables here are fed to buffaloes, cattle or elephants.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
in about half the time the wholesale does.
We've had it for decades. It is rarely used.
Iocane! I bet my life on it!
I advocate mass killing of NAZI FAGGOTS LIKE THE ALT RIGHT! Kill those fucking nazi faggots DEAD.
Good thing those are all chemical free. Don't want chemicals in your food do you?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The FDA approves a lot of things that you really probably shouldn't put in your body on the regular and vice versa. GMOs are ok in a pinch, but natural whole food needs to comprise the majority of your diet the majority of the time. Bill Gates is a moron.
I'd be delighted if I could buy sulfite-preserved shredded lettuce at the grocery store. I don't have sulfite allergies, so they're harmless to me... and I absolutely HATE wasting most of a $2 bag of shredded lettuce because it ends up turning brown before I have enough time to use even half of it.
I feel the same way about cat food. Somewhere along the line, marketing departments got the crazy idea that high-quality cat food has to be "all natural" and free of artificial flavors. The problem is, a cat who's been eating artificially-flavored cat food since birth won't EAT cat food made without artificial flavorings, because it just doesn't taste good to them. To an average cat, high-quality "all natural" food made without artificial flavorings is about as appealing as liver & broccoli to a small child (or adult, for that matter). Humans will eat almost anything if we're hungry and desperate enough... cats won't. They'll literally starve themselves to death before eating food that they don't like. So... I continue my quest to find anything better-quality than Fancy Feast that my cats will actually eat, and keep spending $1.50-2/can on random high-quality foods to try every few days that they ultimately just sniff at & walk away from in protest.
I am under the impression that many fruit are already sprayed with a neutral edible wax?
Wikipedia says this has been done since the 12th or 13th centuries (for fermentation? How does that work? Do you end up with alcoholic apples? Sounds neat!), and since the 1920 commercially for preservation and aesthetic purposes.
I agree that assuming "not synthetic = safer" is a fallacy. But in this particular case, Apeel's coating is extracted from fruits that are already Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by national food regulators.
How much more artificial than a featureless white powder can you get?
Or does anyone still believe, that that kind of extreme processing does not alter the chemical state of the thing at all? Or that the secondary and tertiary structure is not important, when it is key for proteins working as intended.
It's a bit like Beardyman, who says "all the things you hear, will be made with my mouth", and then puts his voice into the most complex audio processing tool the world has seen, so his voice has a smaller part on the outcome, than if he had just replaced it by a sine wave generator.
What's the issue? Is Gates having problems with Big Wax? Are we that near Peak Wax?
I thought it was already standard, that fruits are sprayed with beeswax, to achieve this. Here in Germany, it’s definitely the case, if it makes sense. (E.g. I doubt they do it to raspberries, but they definitely do it to apples.)
My wife learned long ago to extend the shelf life of apples, oranges, grapes, lettuce, and other fruits and vegetables by letting them soak for 5-10 minutes in a solution of one cup of white vinegar to a gallon of tap water. She leaves the stems on. Then she rinses them off and put them in the refrigerator crisper.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Kill the Satanic monster Vladimir Putin!
What you do not smell is called Iocaine powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.
They should also invest into something that makes the fruit/veggies cheaper to grow. It's ridiculous when good quality apples or salad mix cost the same (or more!) as pork or chicken breast. In the case of apples, I'm sure it's not because they go bad quickly, if the retailer was worried about that they'd reduce the price to move inventory.
Lower your fridge temperature (but not too close to freezing) and add an ozone generator to the inside of your fridge and most everything in it will last longer. The ozone generator only needs to send out a pulse of ozone occasionally so it can run on batteries. There are a lot of them for sale on eBay. Seems like a better solution than modifying the vegetables.
Most just sit there and stare into space all day, granted some drool a bit. Isn't keeping Gram alive to 140 wonderful?
In terms of food handling, how easy is it to remove this new coating? Or do they assume everything will be peeled?
Funny, the solution changes a chemical composition, but it's somehow chemical free? What was the change done with, protons? Quarks? Gluons?
Methinks people are scared of a concept that makes up all matter.
Is suing yet another company for using rectangles while rubbing has hands and arse.