fruits – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "fruits"

DailyDirt: Sealed For Freshness… In Plastic

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

What is a healthy meal? If you look closely enough at almost anything, you’ll find it’s not as simple as you might expect. Should you eat more fruits and vegetables? Of course you should. But what if the fruit is pre-cut and conveniently packaged (or comes with a free frogurt)? Marketing healthy (or “healthier“) foods is making it a bit confusing to know what’s really healthy and what’s just over-priced and convenient. Yay!

• Whole Foods has apologized for selling peeled tangerines in a plastic containers. Some people complained that pre-peeling tangerines and putting them in plastic was wasteful, but it seems only to apply to single fruits, not when you cut up different fruits and mix them before you sell them in plastic containers. (Or to pre-cut vegetable trays.) [url]
• Selling pre-peeled bananas, though, does seem a bit unnecessary. A few years ago, an Austrian grocery store sold bananas wrapped in clear plastic on a foam tray without banana peels. (At least the argument over which end to start peeling a banana first was neatly avoided.) [url]
• Processed foods are getting a bad reputation, but are Americans really starting to eat fresher foods? The trends point to a “snackification” of food, where people aren’t buying sit-down meals as much as pre-portioned snacks. Maybe consumers think they’re eating healthier (or trying to), but maybe not. [url]

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Filed Under: fast food, food, fruits, health, marketing, meals, packaging, plastic, snackification, snacks
Companies: whole foods

DailyDirt: Better Tasting Fruits And Vegetables

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If fruits and vegetables tasted even better, maybe people would include more in their diet. Part of what researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to do is to improve the taste and nutritional profile of specialty crops like fruits and vegetables, in the hope that Americans will adopt a healthier diet. For generations, humans have been inadvertently breeding the nutrients out of fruits and vegetables, by selecting varieties that are more palatable (i.e., higher in sugar and starch). Then, somewhere along the way, appearance became important, and farmers began breeding aesthetically pleasing varieties, often at the expense of taste. So, now we’re stuck with some pretty bland products. Here are some more tasty links.

• For the past 70 years or so, people have been breeding tomatoes for a uniform red color, but in the process, a gene that increases sugar content in tomatoes was inactivated. The gene, SlGLK2, increases the formation of chloroplasts, which are responsible for producing sugars through photosynthesis. Researchers have shown that by re-inserting an intact copy of the gene into tomatoes, they could increase the amount of glucose and fructose by up to 40%, while still retaining the uniform color ripening trait. Too bad they weren’t actually able to taste them (federal regulations prohibit sampling experimental crops). [url]
• Researchers have found that today’s Fuji apples are mealier, less flavorful, and more susceptible to disease than they were in the 1970s. The culprit: climate change. Studies in controlled temperature environments have shown that higher temperatures have been linked to a decrease in taste and texture in apples. Who knows what other crops might also have been changed due to global warming? [url]
• University of Florida researchers have discovered that they can improve the taste of fruits by exposing them to far-red light. They were able to use specific wavelengths of light to manipulate the production of volatile compounds that control aroma and taste in fruits like tomatoes, strawberries, and blueberries. Imagine your produce tasting even better after being stored in your far-red-light-equipped refrigerator! [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: apples, breeding, climate change, crops, diet, farming, food, fruits, gmo, taste, tomato, vegetables
Companies: usda

DailyDirt: The Disappearing Bee

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People usually don’t think too much about how important bees are to the quality of human life. As pollinators, bees play an important role in the survival of crops that depend on them. The mass die-off of bees, also known as “Colony Collapse Disorder,” can have detrimental effects on economies that depend heavily on pollinator-dependent crops. Scientists are just starting to figure out what might be causing these mass die-offs, while others are working on alternatives to using bees for pollination. Here are a few links related to the disappearing bee.

• A new study has found that pollen contaminated with a wide variety of pesticides and fungicides could be responsible for the mass die-offs of bees. Bees that ate contaminated pollen were less able to resist getting infected by a parasite called Nosema ceranae, which has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder. On average, the contaminated pollen contained nine different pesticides and fungicides. [url]
• The once-common-but-now-rare Western bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis) has been spotted in Washington state for the first time since the mid-1990s. This particular bee species has a very unique “white butt” that makes it instantly distinguishable. A queen and a few other bees were also spotted, and they may be the only population of Western bumblebees in the state. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is hoping to conserve and help rebuild the population. [url]
• University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources is looking at using leafcutter bees as an alternative to disappearing honey bees for pollination. While leafcutter bees are more expensive and management intensive, they’re as good as or even better than honey bees at pollinating certain crops, such as alfalfa seed, strawberries, and melons. [url]
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture is studying the use of blue orchard bees (aka orchard mason bees) as a replacement for honey bees. Blue orchard bees can pollinate a variety of crops, including almond, peach, plum, cherry, and apple, and they’re extremely efficient. For fruit trees, it takes only 2,000 blue orchard bees to do the work of 100,000 honey bees. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bees, blue orchard bees, colony collapse disorder, crops, environment, farming, fruits, fungicides, honey bees, insects, leafcutter bees, pesticides, pollination
Companies: usda