I thought I had a pineapple curse.
I’d bring home a bunch of fruit and let it sit on the counter to ripen, and my peaches
and cantaloupe ended up delicious, but my pineapples were always awful.
That’s because I didn’t know then what I do now about how - and why - fruit ripens.
Welcome to MinuteEarth.
You see, plants have a reproductive problem.
Since they’re stuck in place, many of them rely on animals to gulp down their seeds and
move them - often unceremoniously - to where the seeds have room and resources to grow.
But plants don’t want critters to chow down too early; seeds that get carried away before
they have what they need to sprout are wasted.
One answer to this de-lemon - I mean, dilemma - is fruit.
Before the seeds are ready, a fruit’s thick skin, hard flesh, bitter chemical compounds,
and camouflage work like a defense system to ward off critters.
But once the seeds are mature, the fruit starts to transform.
Its skin begins to thin, and its hard, bitter flesh starts turning into soft, sweet deliciousness;
a scrumptious smell and flashy pigments are the metaphorical cherry on top of...the cherry.
By the end of this transformation - which we call “ripening” - the fruit is no longer
a deterrent; it’s an irresistible bribe for seed dispersers.
But not all fruits go from yuck to yum by the same mechanism - it’s literally a matter
of comparing apples and oranges.
Some fruits, like oranges and pineapples ripen by importing sugars and ripening hormones
from other parts of the plant.
As the fruit pulls in more of these ingredients, it continues to get tastier and more tempting.
But once the fruit falls or gets picked and is no longer connected to the plant, ripening
stops.
That’s why trying to ripen a pineapple in my kitchen was fruitless; at harvest, it was
as already tasty as it was going to get, and was just going bad on my counter.
But other fruits, like apples and bananas, don’t need to be hooked up to a plant to
get tastier; they can essentially ripen cordlessly.
By the time their seeds are mature, these fruits have already stored up tons of starch
that they can convert into sweet sugars.
And the hormone that coordinates this conversion - a gas called ethylene - is produced by the
fruit itself - and can even get absorbed from other cordless fruits ripening nearby.
So sure, a banana can ripen on its plant, but since it doesn’t need any additional
resources from the plant, it can also ripen on the forest floor or your countertop.
Which seems pretty convenient...so why aren’t all fruits cordless?
We aren’t exactly sure, but one idea is that fruit is better off ripening where its
dispersers hang out.
For instance, mangos - big fruits whose big seeds are generally dispersed by big, ground-dwelling
critters - probably benefit bigtime from being able to ripen on the ground, but cherries
- whose tiny seeds are usually dispersed by small, tree-dwelling animals - may be better
off ripening up high, still plugged in.
Of course, most modern humans don't dwell in the canopy or the forest floor, but rather
in the supermarket, where we have easy access to tons of different fruits.
But that makes it hard to know how all these fruits ripen.
While you can make some pretty good educated guesses, here’s some help to make your fruit-eating
experience that much more fruitful.
This food-a-licious video was sponsored by HelloFresh.
And I’m gonna be honest, I had written off meal kits because of all the packaging...that
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But MinuteEarth is all about science, and when I actually dug into the research, I found
out that despite the packaging, meal kits like HelloFresh actually have a much lower
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The meals were quick, easy, and fun to make - even with tiny helpers - and were a huge
hit with everyone.
I can legitimately say that I am a meal kit convert!
To give HelloFresh a try, go to HelloFresh dot com and use code “EARTH14” to get
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Go get cooking!