Monday, August 27, 2007
Some people look at a square watermelon and ask Why? I look at a square watermelon and ask Why not? It wasn't so long ago that the idea of a seedless watermelon was utterly preposterous. After all, where would new watermelons come from? Impossible! Yet someone had an idea. Perhaps watermelons are like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, in the absence of a mate, they simply...split like amoebas...or something...anawho...I'd buy this (but not for $83): Square fruit stuns Japanese shoppers
For years consumers struggled to fit the large round fruit in their refrigerators.
And then there was the problem of trying to cut the fruit when it kept rolling around.
But 20 years ago a forward-thinking farmer on Japan's south-western island of Shikoku solved the problem.
The farmer, from Zentsuji in Kagawa prefecture, came up with the idea of making a cube-shaped watermelon which could easily be packed and stored.
Fashion food
To make it happen, farmers grew the melons in glass boxes and the fruit then naturally assumed the same shape. Today the cuboid watermelons are hand-picked and shipped all over Japan...
[via PJM]
Update: What I'd really like is an analysis of the geometry here to tell me if there's going to be more good meat in a cube rather than the traditional shape. Also, would the process of compression result in more red meat, and a thinner rind, or just the opposite? These are important questions.
As the link says, this is decades-old news...
What I'd really like is an analysis of the geometry here to tell me if there's going to be more good meat in a cube rather than the traditional shape.
There'll be less. Assuming constant thickness of rind, a sphere (with its minimized surface area) will have the least rind and most meat. A traditional watermelon will have a higher rind ratio, and a cube will be still higher.
Wow, sorry I haven't found the very freshest links and news for you. I will try harder to please my obviously worldly and well-informed readers. Have you heard that Alberto Gonzales has resigned? I'm pretty sure that happened today.
Now, what do you think the effects of growing in a constrained space would be on watermelon?
Melons? Or pods, designed to turn us all into Ashkenazi ethnic fundamentalist Zionist interloping invaders and lackeys (which is to say the bad guys, in the event that isn't clear to someone)?
The answer, at least for some, is obvious.
Disney has been doing Mickey shaped cucumbers for years (the slices are mickey shaped). They tried tomatoes, but the skin was too soft to hold the shape. They do pumpkins though and, I think, watermelons too. I think I saw the cubed melons on a Food Network show a while back, that then talked about the Disney greenhouses.
Sorry, I hit Post too soon. The stories I saw laid some emphasis on skin thickness, just to be able to hold the shape. I think J Singer is right, there will be less good red bits for fruit of a given weight... but does that matter?
Back to the Disney place... their fruit is frighteningly uniform and 'perfect' as they grow it all hydroponically, suspended from overhead supports. Compression, as such, doesn't factor in, I would expect a more uneven thickness of the skin with thicker rind in the corners and a more 'rounded" mass of red in the middle. It's really growing naturally, just having the skin guided into a specific shape.
But think about once it fills the shape...Does it continue to want to grow, and if so, does the rind thicken or does the meat (particularly the red, sweet part) fill more space at the expense of the rind which becomes thinner -- or is there no effect? This is important stuff.