Thanks to Mother Nature’s doing and human’s propensity to waste, many perishable fruits and vegetables have gone to waste. Part of the ‘gone to waste’ is often the result of nature’s doing and it doesn’t help that we, humans, just have to have more which we sometimes can’t finish. Fruits and vegetables start to turn bad (or crudely put, rot) a period after they are plucked from the trees and or pulled from the soil. As their natural protective layer erodes, they start to lose water and air permeates into them – both which enables the decomposition process.
One way to delay this inevitable process is to stash the fruits and/or vegetables in a refrigerator. However, one California-based startup, Apeel Sciences, has researched and developed a revolutionary coating for fruits and vegetables that could curtail this natural process possibly even at the source. This coating, called Apeel, serves as a thin “second skin” that will slow down the lost of water while preventing air from ‘attacking’ the fruits or vegetables, so that they can remain fresh longer.
Apeel is made from natural ingredients like pulp, peels, and seeds of other fruit and vegetables, which are turned into powder and then mixed with water to create this freshness-sustaining coating. The mixture is then applied to the fruits or vegetables by spraying, dipping, or brushing. Once Apeel dries, it forms a thin protective layer that is virtually invisible. It is almost like cling wrap, but not quite tangible and with no mess (I hate dealing with cling wrap!), and the best part is, since it is made from fruits and vegetables, it is totally edible. Now, that’s technological advancement!
In case you are wondering, Apeel Sciences was founded with a grand from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill and Melinda are clearly giving back to the society as they have always wanted, and in a major and very meaningful way. With this, we learned that Gates is not only into toilets and excited over drinking sewer water. Keep going to see Apeel in action.
Image: Vimeo (Apeel Sciences).
Source: Boing Boing.
