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Ripe Fruit Wants to be Eaten Ripe fruit wants to be eaten. It has no other function, makes no other contribution to the collective good. It does not produce sugar to nourish the rest of the plant, as the leaves do. It does not search out water and minerals like the root or distribute nutrients like the stem. A fruit’s only purpose is to seduce animals such as you and I into becoming cheerful dupes in its secret reproductive plans. As
any grade school child can tell you, the dream of every plant is to propagate
its own genes and species. For most, this means spreading their seeds far from
the mother tree so that the off spring will not compete with its parents for
water, breathing space and sunlight. Every seed has its own means of
transportation; papery wings or balls of fluff that ride the wind, or burs that
hook onto your jeans. Fruits have another way. As spring draws into summer, they
become plump and juicy and brilliantly coloured, sweet and perfumed and
irresistible. At
least, that is what nature had in mind. Yet, how often have I ventured into the
fruit department to find the contrary argument on display? Peaches, melons,
pineapples, almost all fruit do not get any sweeter or more flavourful after
they are picked and yet most of North American agriculture seem determined to
harvest fruit earlier and greener every year. And there are no laws ensuring
that those little “Vine Ripened” stickers on the most expensive produce at
your store mean anything at all. The penalty for pasting a sticker on a hard,
tasteless piece of fruit should be the same as the penalty for printing
counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. Eternal
vigilance is the price of ripeness. Make it a habit to return unripened fruit.
The message may reach the wholesaler or the grower. For the smallest fruit,
here’s a tip: when nobody is looking, remove a berry from its little basket
and conceal it in your hand. With your other hand quickly wheel your cart into
some dark little corner, say the cheese department, and pop the berry into your
mouth. Chew. Appraise its texture, sweetness, aromatic flavour compounds, and
seediness. Then decide whether to invest in the entire basket. But first, buy
some cheese. You can never have enough good ripe cheese at home. No
matter what growers and supermarkets would like you to believe, most harvested
fruits do not ripen nearly as well as they would on the tree and some don't
ripen at all. Fruits can be divided into several groups according to their style
of ripening. The first are fruits that never ripen after they are picked. These
include blackberries, cherries, grapes, grapefruit, lemons, limes, oranges,
pineapples, raspberries, strawberries and watermelons. Almost all post harvest
changes in these fruits do not improve their quality. Like
mushy cherries, they may soften after harvest but more from decay than from
ripening and except for the citrus fruits they have brief storage lives. All you
can do is to buy them ripe, store them carefully and eat them quickly. The
second category is fruit that ripens only after being picked. The single example
of this is the avocado. The best way to store an avocado is on the tree. The
second best way is in the refrigerator for up to ten days after you’re ripened
it at room temperature. The
third group includes fruits that ripen in colour, texture and juiciness but do
not improve in sweetness or flavour. These include apricots, blueberries,
cantaloupes, figs, honeydews, nectarines, peaches and plums. They do not grow
sweeter because they contain no starch to turn into sugar. When you ripen them
at home you can expect an attractive juicy fruit no more flavourful than the day
it was picked. Category
four is for fruits that do get sweeter after picking and these include apples,
kiwis, mangoes, papayas and pears. As they mature, they convert sugars from the
plants leaves into starch. After picking they then convert these stored starches
back into sugar. They are the darlings of commerce because they can be picked
mature but unripe and the advance of ripening can be arrested by refrigeration.
Apples and pears do especially well. We are very lucky that pears can be stored
in this way because a ripe pear lasts less than a day. Bananas
stand alone in the final category because they ripen in nearly every way after
the harvest. The world champions of starch conversion, they go from 1 percent
sugar and 25 percent starch to 15 percent sugar and 1 percent starch during
ripening. In
the end, there are four villains in the ripeness story: the greedy grower, the
venal wholesaler, the shortsighted retailer, and the ignorant and stingy
consumer like you and me. |