Less Food Waste? It's a Wrap.
December 13, 2016 9:34 AM   Subscribe

An (Edible) Solution to Extend Produce’s Shelf Life. "Using leaves, stems, banana peels and other fresh plant materials left behind after fruits and vegetables are picked or processed, Apeel has developed a method for creating imperceptible, edible barriers that the company says can extend the life of produce like green beans and berries by as much as five times. Apeel can even deliver a day-of-the-week bunch of bananas, each ripening on a different day." Apeel has won a $100,000 award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"The foundation has used [it] on the cassava root, an important source of calories in the African diet... grown widely by small farmers there. Cassava root also can be processed into starch for use in commercial food preparation.

Once plucked from the ground, however, the roots deteriorate rapidly, making it virtually impossible for small farmers to exploit the crop commercially.

“If not consumed or processed in 24 to 48 hours, you lose significant amounts,” said Rob Horsch, who leads the agricultural research and development team at the Gates Foundation. “That makes it hard to generate any income from what’s produced, and a lot of it goes to waste.”

Edipeel more than doubled the shelf life of cassava, helping the root retain starch long enough to get it to a processing plant. According to an analysis by Apeel, use of its Edipeel product will create $1 billion in the market value of cassava in Nigeria alone."
posted by storybored (25 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
Apeel

Eponhysterical!
posted by chavenet at 9:48 AM on December 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


aaaand I just realized that's the company's name, not a person...
posted by chavenet at 9:49 AM on December 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


Oh holy crap that day of the week banana thing would be amazing.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 9:51 AM on December 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Can they do the day of the week thing on avocados? I would pay a lot of money for access to less stressful avocados.
posted by saturday_morning at 9:53 AM on December 13, 2016 [48 favorites]


MetaFilter: Less stressful avocados.

(This is a fantastic development, though.)
posted by seyirci at 10:08 AM on December 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


(Once an avocado is ripe you can put it in the fridge for like four more days and it will stay perfect.)
posted by something something at 10:15 AM on December 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Guys, guys.

When the avocados are ripe, you need to eat all the avocados.

This is not a bug; it's a feature.
posted by rokusan at 10:20 AM on December 13, 2016 [17 favorites]


Sometimes, living in the future sucks. Other times, it's pretty awesome.
posted by Etrigan at 10:28 AM on December 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


the apocalypse will feature delicious fresh guacamole! 2016 you're OK after all
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:08 AM on December 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


seems like the next and best application of this product would be to make a full body skinsuit out of it for people so that we need never wither, age, wrinkle, spoil or decay, once out of the ground or off the tree.

the avocado application is good too
posted by queenofbithynia at 11:32 AM on December 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


the apocalypse will feature delicious fresh guacamole!

Looking back at the election threads, could it ever have been otherwise?
posted by rokusan at 11:41 AM on December 13, 2016


I'm kind of liking the retired Bill Gates.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:42 AM on December 13, 2016


More protected foods to choose from in case The Gang gets quarantined again.
posted by emelenjr at 11:54 AM on December 13, 2016




the apocalypse will feature delicious fresh guacamole!

Looking back at the election threads, could it ever have been otherwise?


Mmmm, Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise and guacamole!
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:27 PM on December 13, 2016 [1 favorite]




relevant @boredelonmusk
posted by Dr. Twist at 12:49 PM on December 13, 2016


How long before it emerges that this causes explosive farting, obesity, and paranoid delusions, kills bees and poisons the water table?

God forbid we should eat fresh local food that hasn't been fucked with, though. We'll come to love that reassuring plastic aftertaste that tells you your food has been safely coated in properly licensed product.
posted by Segundus at 1:20 PM on December 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


God forbid we should eat fresh local food that hasn't been fucked with, though.

Glad you can live with a farm next door to you. Not everyone is so lucky.
posted by Andrhia at 1:41 PM on December 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


How long before it emerges that this causes explosive farting,
I have a "staff appreciation breakfast" and a meeting tomorrow morning. Count me in.

obesity, and paranoid delusions, kills bees and poisons the water table?
Damnit.
posted by mrgoat at 2:33 PM on December 13, 2016


God forbid we should eat fresh local food that hasn't been fucked with, though.

Industrialized food production is...scary, for sure, and some of it is extremely harmful (for instance, Monsanto's aggressive abuse of patents or the use of antibiotics on factory farms and the conditions that caused the need for that). But some of it is good - the fact that food is much cheaper than it's ever been and can be grown by fewer people means that more people can afford to eat without issue and we can put the extra resources toward pursuits like technological development or leisure activities. Plus, let's not forget that even in the US, people go hungry every day because they can't afford food (which, yes, we simultaneously waste more food than would be needed to remedy that).

Plus, I have no idea what you mean by "food that hasn't been fucked with". Fruits, vegetables, and animals for meat have all been bred to be tastier, grow easier, and have more edible flesh - a process that has accelerated with GMOs but hardly started there. This article is a great overview on the causes and consequences of modern fruit (ignore the paleo bent, unless that's your thing) and links to this chart (see page 56) which lists changes that we've made to dozens of fruits. Check out these pictures, too. Food tech is pretty amazing.

I'm not arguing that fresh and local food is bad - it's totally great - but it has its limitations for sure. The health and environmental consequences of the modern diet are hardly because fresh fruits and vegetables are too accessible.

Plus, not everything should be judged by the benefit to consumers in industrialized countries with our supermarkets, widespread refrigeration and freezing, farmer's markets, transportation infrastructure, etc. etc. (though as the richer market, things are usually marketed our way). Look at the Gates support for this product (and the cassava farmers apparently clamoring for it) - sounds like it could have some awesome potential.

I hope that it's ethically and extensively (as much as is possible in a limited time frame) safety-tested and all, but omg avocados that have an extra 30 days before they go brown sound pretty awesome. Two questions though: what would the costs look like if this were deployed at scale (wouldn't experimental products in this stage at least have some idea of that?) and how am I supposed to make banana bread with those useless yellow bananas?
posted by R a c h e l at 2:49 PM on December 13, 2016 [20 favorites]


Huh, all of the cassavas that I've seen have been waxed (quick google: with vegetable waxes that are made from US FDA approved materials).

Is this method a lot cheaper? Are the machines to apply this new barrier more portable, less expensive, more efficient than existing commercial waxing machines?
posted by porpoise at 3:41 PM on December 13, 2016


Glad you can live with a farm next door to you. Not everyone is so lucky.

I'd argue that that's one of the problems with modern society and my ideal utopian vision of the future involves way more of the food supply coming from local farms BUT this invention is still awesome
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:53 PM on December 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm kind of liking the retired Bill Gates.

I'm of two minds on this right now.

Also, old Bill appears to be nearing the right hand side of the Woody Allen curve lately.
posted by rokusan at 7:45 PM on December 13, 2016


Oh, nice. Is it safe though? And how expensive is it?
Also - the brown stuff in avocados is a fungus? Gross!
posted by benadryl at 1:46 AM on December 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


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