Thursday, July 27, 2006

Is My Watermelon Supposed To Be Brown?

The United States Department of Agriculture is at it again. The have announced that watermelon is less nutritious when cold. It’s due to some scientific changing process type transformation thing that I’m too lazy to research or type out. Apparently a room temperature watermelon is a more nutritious watermelon. The best part of this groundbreaking discovery is how much room will be freed up in the fridge now that we can all remove the watermelon and place it on the counter. Of course now counter space will become a premium across the U.S.

Things must be pretty slow this time of year at the USDA when you see reports like this. Were two scientists sitting around bored when one bet the other that a cold watermelon is actually worse than a lukewarm room temperature one? Did everyone in the lab get excited and place bets as if it were the Super Bowl office pool? I’d always thought that a rotten watermelon would be pretty devoid of anything nutritious, but I guess I would have lost big if I’d been betting. Shouldn’t the USDA people be figuring out how to keep packaged meat red longer or how to remove the chicken bone from a drumstick?

As if the idea of warm watermelon wasn’t well, juicy enough check this out. Parts of Switzerland have been experiencing the same type of intense heat and high temperatures we have. The Zurich Zoo has decided to do something about it for their animals. Apparently they maintain better zoos than we do because U.S. zoos have been eerily quiet about what they’ve been doing for their animals in this hot weather. Folks at the Zurich Zoo are feeding their larger animals ice cream. This ain’t your grandma’s homemade self-churned vanilla though. It’s a delicious mixture of frozen berries, meat and bones (maybe it was made using the animals that expired in American zoos). If it works and the animals like it, maybe Ben and Jerry’s will introduce it here stateside. They could call it Cherry Chunky Carcass.

3 comments:

Pawlie Kokonuts said...

I think watermelon's a mess and not too nutritious ripe or not. But that's me. And those pits! Man, did we love spittin' them all over the yard as kids! Go Jints! They suck!

Unknown said...

Ok. The official word on watermelon from a professional meloncutter. As a certified food safety handler, I was taught it is a definite fact that cut melons stored at a temperature of 40 degrees to 140 degrees can probably be a serious breeding ground for salmonella,e coli or ptomaine bacteria along with some staph germs. In the grocery business fresh cut fruit is considered the highest risk of outbreak of these maladies among the customer base. Even moreso than meat. Also cut uncooled watermelon will break down very fast and not hold it's texture much longer than 4 hours off of refridgeration. I would recommend that you keep it cool.

Besides, warm melon will make you fart.

Check for the link on my blog. Glad to have ya aboard.

Later Yall.

Michael C said...

Well there ya go. Facts that support my warm watermelon argument. I can't possibly say anything more about it. I'll take less nutrients and continue to eat my fruit cold, thank you very much!