North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@columbia-center.org>]

To the list:

I agree with Tom, two qualities do not determine flavor. The aroma is what
is the distinguishing mark.

I remember an experiment we did in high school. Each student in turn was
blindfolded and a dab of some pureed food was placed on his or her tongue
(which can only detect sweet, salt, and bitter, as I recall). It was
impossible to identify the substance. But after swallowing the food and
exhaling one could distinguish the aroma and tell if it was pureed apple,
banana, etc.

The fruit sold in stores is tending more and more to taste like sweetened
water.

Betty

At 10:55 AM 8/7/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>And there is the rub...  A machine will check sweetness and firmness of
>every apple.  Since when can you boil down an apple's complex flavor to
>two things?  Who is to say that the same sweetness and firmness exists
>days, weeks or months after the testing was done?
>
>That would be like judging wine by alcohol content and color found on a
>single day of aging.
>
>Since I assume they are talking about commerical varieties, available in
>supermarkets they are not super concerned with taste, but primarily
>storage and eye appeal, taste ranking last of the three.
>
>Can you imagine running this test on a Melba the day it was ready, versus
>a few days later?
>
>I am just jaded I guess, and this will benefit someone in commercial
>apple production.
>
>Later,
>Tom
>
>--
>
>On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Lon J. Rombough wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ----------
>> From: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
>>
>> STORY LEAD:
>> Hi-Tech Camera "Tastes" Apples to Ensure Quality
>>
>> Wouldn't it be nice to check an apple's taste before buying it, without
>> chomping down? You surely wouldn't want an inspector pre-tasting the apple
>> you buy, but how about a robot?
>>
>> The robotic inspection cameras envisioned by Agricultural Research Service
>> scientist Renfu Lu would "taste" every single apple by bouncing light off
>> it to sense sugar content and firmness, the top two things that make an
>> apple taste great.
>
>_______________________________________________
>nafex mailing list
>nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
>Most questions can be answered here:
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex
>File attachments are accepted by this list; please do not send binary
files, plain text ONLY!
>Message archives are here:
>https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/nafex
>To view your user options go to: 
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/nafex/XXXX@XXXX (where XXXX@XXXX is 
>YOUR email address)
>NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/
>
>