My American Friend and the Organic Fruits of our Loom

Some weeks ago, I met this lady in Zaria, Kaduna State of northern Nigeria. At first glance, I knew she wasn’t African but I was shocked to learn that she is an American. Seeing an American in Northern Nigeria in the last few years is almost like catching a crab in the desert. Nearly impossible with all the fear of bombing and kidnapping.

I don’t blame them, though.

After the intimating and petty introductions, we get to talking about books and writing. She shows me a couple of Nigerian books she’s gotten. I noticed most of them talked about politics. Then she showed me her American books and I noticed most talked about food. That’s how I knew she newly arrived in Nigeria and will be leaving soon. They never stay-only the Lebanese and Chinese do.

The discussion shifted to food. I have no idea why Americans talk a lot about food. I only know that the part of the body that the English man calls mouth is called a ”Pie Hole” in Americanese. Well, keeping a blog educates me a bit. I simply tell her I prefer fruits to many other foods. She didn’t like that. She wanted to meet a ”Real Nigerian” that eats lots of chilli. I assure her that I also do that.

”A yoruba man that doesn’t eat pepper is weak”.

Then she tells me about our good organic fruits that she’s tasted in the last 2 weeks. I’m a graduate student and I didn’t even know our fruits where different from American fruits. Like we have organic oranges and they have inorganic oranges….something like that. As a Naija boy, you don’t easily show what you don’t know. I listen to her VERY WELL as she explains the processing and genetic ”mutilation” (sounds like circumcision, right?) the fruits undergo to become tastier and seedless.

Then I remember that I’ve actually heard of stuff like that when I used to visit a pharmacologist in LUTH (Lagos University Teaching Hospital). He was working on making such fruits. This is something they are already eating in America, and they’re obviously tired of it. I just hope they won’t get tired of accepting the LGBT things too.

Anyway, I learnt the benefits of our organic fruits which many of my friends don’t like because of the number of minutes it takes to remove the seeds. She is staying in Abuja for a few days before returning but she tells me the most important part of her feeding experience is the good fruits she has eaten in Zaria, you should taste the water-melon here.

It made me wonder how many good things Nigeria has but doesn’t appreciate and how much Northern Nigeria loses to the constant fighting and killings. We probably even lose the opportunity to have people who will appreciate something about us.

Anyway, there’s another spin-off story of my meeting with another American in Nigeria some years ago and I’ll love to share that one. Just remembered it now because of something I encountered on the net some hours ago.

RIP….The Fourty Two Angelic little children of Federal Government College, Yobe State murdered in their hostels by He Who cannot be Named.

 

HOW DO YOU LIKE BUYING A FRUIT BY ITS TASTE?

Partly copied from ‘Sensing taste of fruits and vegetables using near infrared (NIR) Technology’. M.Sc. Thesis by Nawaf Abu-Khalaf

 

Bite That Fruityy

Tito is a lover of fruits. I really do love my fruits. Back in the university, I recall my closest friend TKB Charles often called me a monkey because of how much I ate bananas, while serving in the youth corps, another friend exclaimed on the number of garden eggs I eat, now my closest pal and colleague as a graduate student calls me ‘the cucumber monger’. You need to see me in my elements. Fruits are good but many times you buy something that looks good but eventually find it’s no good. Your plight may be over.

At present time, the consumption, marketing and grading of fruits are based on their external aspects. Fruits are stored and marketed visually, manually or automaticallyon the basis of size, color and surface defects. However, internal attributes like dry matter content, total soluble solids contents (refractive index), juice acidity, firmness, etc., are important. Most instrumental techniques to measure these properties are destructive, and involve a considerable amount of manual work.

In recent years, research has been focused on the development of non-destructive measurement techniques for quality attributes of fruits (mainly: apples) and vegetables such as pH, sugar content and firmness. NIR spectroscopy is one of such techniques. The advantages and major disadvantages of this technique are:

􀂉 Advantages:

􀂃 Its fast execution;

􀂃 More than one parameter may be estimated at the same time (by using

multivariate data analysis technique);

􀂃 Simplified sample preparation;

􀂃 Ease of implementation in process control and grading system; and

􀂃 Lack of chemical pollution.

 

􀂉 Major disadvantages:

􀂃 NIR spectrum is not easy to interpret, since most models are black box

models;

􀂃 The equipment is expensive; and

􀂃 New calibration curve is needed for each variety to obtain good results.

 

Despite these disadvantages, NIR spectroscopy is the most appropriate technique in terms of speed of assessment and cost at the present time.

Image from http://www.sephora.com

In Japan, there are a number of NIR systems in commercial operation for the on-line grading of fruit according to sweetness. There were many contributions using NIR spectroscopy in the field of non-destructive quality assessing like pH, sugar content, firmness, texture parameters, optimal picking date, light penetration of NIR in fruit and bruises.

Taste is also an important internal quality parameter of agricultural commodities, an issue not often discussed in literature. Fruit’s taste is the major asset of fruit quality. The feasibility of using NIR spectroscopy for detecting taste of fruits, based on known NIR ability to predict SSC, acidity and chemicals components.

A non-destructive NIR technique (reflectance mode) for sensing taste of fruits and vegetables may be greatly appreciated among package storage houses, and great store markets for grading fruits according to their taste quality. Since, in practice, apples (for example) are sold in batch and the internal quality of the whole batch is estimated by the average of the lab values of sample sub set. With this method (NIR technology), all apples could be controlled and the consumers will know the taste of what they’re buying.

Fruit Blend. Image from http://www.clomedia.com

How Tasty does that sound? Anyway, you should try this for taste: a blend of apples, oranges (remove the seeds, please) and bananas.