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A University of Arizona professor is turning the process of selecting a price of fruit from "an art [to] a science." He has come up with a new way to help let people know when fruit is ripe and ready for eating, eliminating all that sniffing, poking and prodding of fruits in the market. His creation is a sticker called RediRipe that changes from white to blue as ethylene gas, a natural ripeness indicator, is released from the fruit or vegetable.
The first batch of the stickers will go straight to growers, who will be able to use them to monitor their crops and prevent spoilage of over-ripe fruits by shipping out the fruits ripening the fastest, first. It is worth mentioning that the stickers do not change to indicate overripe fruit themselves, so something that is "ripe" according to the sticker, may actually be too soft on the inside.
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7-27-2006 @3:33PM Myron said... This is great, since there's no other way to tell if fruit is ripe. Sheesh.
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7-27-2006 @4:12PM Lynds said... Evidently most people can't according to the article in my local paper.
http://journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_ColumnistArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149189591799&path=!living!food!&s=
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7-27-2006 @4:37PM Andrew said... Why did they choose white to represent unripe and blue for ripe? That seems arbitrary at best, and possibly even confusing, unless there's a key nearby indicating which is which as there's nothing inherently unripe about white or ripe about blue. Green for unripe and red for ripe makes more sense to me.
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7-27-2006 @5:55PM peggy said... Some fruits and veggies are not easily identified as "ripe" -- some melons, for instance, or some exotic fruits. I think RediRipe is a pretty nice idea, myself. Also, I like the idea of the stickers helping farmers to know which fruits to get to market first so that less food is wasted.
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7-27-2006 @6:07PM peggy said... The color of the tags is not important in my book. I really believe that when people see the tags once, that's all it will take to know which of the two colors means what. I'm sure there will be an identifier either on the tag or posted near by.
Maybe it would be an issue if there was going to be a ripeness color range that spanned 6 or 9 colors, but two colors won't be difficult for most people get, I'd venture to say. Besides that, maybe, just maybe, the outgassing of the ethylene gas is blue, and perhaps the scientist/inventor didn't have a choice in that. Who knows?
Anyway, I think the tags are a very good idea and might make things a little easier, but, heck, what do I know? That's just my opinion! There are those who would say that we certainly have been picking our fruits and veggies for a long time without identifying tags and simply find them frivolous, like our first commentor. I kind of like cool new things myself.
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7-28-2006 @1:04AM Adriane said... Hm, seems like a nifty invention but I dunno what the big mystery is about picking good fruit..the only difficult-to-detect fruit is a honeydew melon. Which fruits give people the most trouble?
And I feel like if you were a farmer, you'd already know just by looking which fruit was ready for harvest...well, if you were a GOOD farmer, that is. It's their life business, shouldn't they know this stuff?
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7-28-2006 @4:27AM calamari said... Fruit on large commercial farms is harvested by machine (where possible) and is harvested before the fruit is ripe if the fruit is capable of ripening after being picked (because unripe fruit ships better). Some fruits are given the color of ripeness by exposing them to gases after picking. That's part of why shoppers can't spot a ripe fruit.
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7-28-2006 @10:04PM Adriane said... oooh yeah...and thats why red tomatos can still taste awful (like in winter) cause they actually pick them when they are dead green. That kinda creeps me out they change the color just to trick the consumer..ew.
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7-28-2006 @10:08PM mella said... I think the problem with choosing red and green for the label colors would be the automatic association most people would have with traffic lights. Green = Go or eat this now. Red = Stop or don't eat. Maybe blue and white were chosen so there would be no other associations to confuse the issue.
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8-16-2006 @4:44AM Aarani Kaneswaran said... Again, I don't think the colour is really the problem, I believe the price is. Fresh fruit and Veg is always drilled in by the media (five a day, etc). If you are able to tell whether its ripe is great, but do we really want another hike in price??
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