Have you ever wondered why there aren’t very many blue fruits or vegetables in nature? I know I have. In fact, most fruits and vegetables that people usually offer as examples of azure produce are actually purple.
And, no, blueberries aren’t blue; they’re purple too. Sorry.
Yes … the strawberries you see in the photo that accompanies this article really are blue; they’re genetically modified.
That’s right; the only reason they’re blue is because a couple of mad scientists injected genes from a fish called the Arctic Flounder Fish into the fruit.
That’s cheating, folks.
Introducing a Truly Blue Fruit
With that in mind, do you notice anything out of the ordinary in this picture?
Yes, that’s a miniature blue apple sitting in my kitchen fruit basket — and, obviously, it isn’t real. It’s actually a product called the Bluapple and it serves a very valuable purpose: it extends the shelf life of the the real fruit in that basket by at least a week. No, really.
So … how does it work? Well, according to the folks at Bluapple, ethylene gas is given off naturally by fruits and vegetables as a signaling mechanism in order to coordinate uniform ripening. The downside is that ethylene gas builds up when you store your produce in fruit bowls or your refrigerator’s crisper — and that speeds up the ripening process and hastens spoilage. This is where the Bluapple can help: It’s designed to absorb that ethylene gas for three months in the typical home refrigerator produce bin or storage container.
Trust me: it works. Before I started using the Bluapple, my family was constantly tossing overly-ripened fruit and veggies into the trash. The prime culprits for us were tomatoes — which I refuse to refrigerate because they become mealy when stored there — as well as bananas, avocados, limes and strawberries (no, not blue; the red ones).
Thankfully, those days are gone.
How This Blue Fruit Saves Money
We now keep one Bluapple in the fruit bowl and a second one in our refrigerator’s crisper. As a result, the shelf life of our fruits and vegetables is much longer than it used to be. In fact, I estimate that, by reducing waste, our household easily now saves about $35 every month. Yes; that’s more than $400 annually. Not too shabby!
The only trick is in remembering to replace the ethylene absorption packets every few months to ensure that your Bluapple is working at peak efficiency — but that’s no big deal at all if you’re looking for an easy way to reduce your grocery bill.
If you’re interested, I recommend trying a Bluapple One-Year Combo Pack
Best of all, it will reduce your grocery bill too — and who could ever be blue about that?
Photo Credits: (strawberries) DailyBuzzy; (fruit bowl) the Honeybee
Interesting. Lots of stuff here.. Serious Eats did a test on the “no tomatoes in the refrigerator” rule and found after 1 day, there was no detectable difference between those stored in the fridge and those not. http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerate-tomatoes.html But.. taste is subjective 🙂
Curious that your bowl (if that picture is your bowl) would have a problem trapping ethylene, as it’s not really solid – it’s just a wire form. I wonder if a hanging wire basket might be a better place to store fruit…
I have found that wrapping the stems of bananas in plastic wrap traps the ethylene they produce and slows ripening. (That seems to explain why I seem bunches of bananas in the store with their stems wrapped.)
A great resource for all types of food info like this is Harold McGee’s “On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen”
Thanks for the comments, Shaun. Very cool.
I’m surprised at the Serious Eats timeframe; one day is a very short time span. If they’re like me, most people who put tomatoes in the refrigerator — or in my case, used to put them there — do it because they don’t plan on eating them for several days or more.
As for “trapping” ethylene, since it is constantly being produced by the fruit, there is no need for it to be trapped to do its damage.
Thanks for the tip on the bananas — I will definitely try that! I always buy them slightly green — that usually buys me an extra day or two.
Sorry – I wasn’t clear. The SE article said after 1 day, there was a detectable difference in the tomatoes. Tomatoes refrigerated longer than that, however, did not show a detectable difference.
Ah … yes, that makes more sense to me.
We hang a few bananas in our greenhouses every fall. The ethylene gas produced rapidly ripens all our tomatoes. We then freeze 90% of the tomato crop and have tomatoes all winter for sauces and soups. In fact, two days ago we used up our last bag of them in a spaghetti sauce….at least one imperial gallon worth. The new tomato plants for this year are flowering already, despite our cold spring. This is all done at 50deg north on the BC Coast. The only veg we buy in winter is lettuce when affordable, some long english cukes, and cherry tomatoes. Celery. Everything else we grow ourselves and usually freeze. (Two freezers)
Not worth the cost to heat the greenhouses, but we do start eating fresh lettuce by February some years, and save our own seed for everything not hybrid. The lettuce sows itself. We grow everything from Bok Choy, to cukes, pretty much everything a store offers. Chanterelle mushrooms are free to find in the bush after the first fall rains.
Growing our own saves us thousands of dollars every year and no pesticides or herbicides ever used. Nada. The work is mostly puttering around….not too onerous. I found, seriously….found, all the glass that went into our 600 sq foot greenhouse. The structure build is yellow cedar from a local sawmill. For other folks reading this, when apartment buildings or condos have their windows replaced…in particular sliding glass patio doors, you can often get their old glass for free. I have seen sliding glass doors go for $10 per. Safety glass…tempered. My son bought a property near me and one day I spied a pile of tempered glass panels hiding in the grass near the old original house. 4’X6′ panels. The rest of the greenhouse was made up from free windows from jobsites. Brought it all home….very carefully.
A friend of mine with a chemistry degree told me about the banana trick 30 years ago. As everyone knows, bananas start turning brown on the way home from the store. At least they are good for something…..first mass harvested to feed transported slaves to the US in the 17-1800s. Hard to like, imho.