Your Daily Facts about Pineapples
The pineapple is native to southern Brazil and Paraguay where wild relatives occur. It was spread by the Indians up through South and Central America to the West Indies before Columbus arrived. In 1493 Columbus found the fruit on the island of Guadaloupe and carried it back to Spain and it was spread around the world on sailing ships that carried it for protection against scurvy. The Spanish introduced it into the Philippines and may have taken it to Hawaii and Guam early in the 16th Century. The pineapple reached England in 1660 and began to be grown in greenhouses for its fruit around 1720.
The first written record of the word “pineapple” in English was in 1398 and it was used to refer to a pine cone. It comes from the Spanish word for pine cone, “piña.”
Christopher Columbus found pineapples on the Caribbean island of Guadalupe in 1493 and took them back to Spain. The Spanish used the word for pine cone (“piña”) for them because they resembled pine cones.
In 1694, the term “pine cone” was created to refer to pine cones instead of “pineapple” in order to allow pineapples the sole use of the word.
Pineapples do not grow on trees, as many erroneously think. They are the fruit of a bromeliad, rising from the center on a single spike surrounded by sword-like leaves. The pineapple plant is the only bromeliad to produce edible fruit.
Commercial pineapple plants are only harvested two to three years, because the fruit begins to get smaller with each year of plant life.
Pineapples weigh between four and nine pounds on average but can reach weights up to twenty pounds.
The waste parts left from canning plants, including the skin, core and ends, are used to make alcohol, vinegar and food for livestock.
When Hawaiians first saw the pineapple, they thought it resembled the Hawaiian Hala, so they named it “hala kahiki,” meaning “foreign Hala.”
James Dole “The Pineapple King,” started his first pineapple plantation in Wahiawa, then Hawaii in 1900 and opened his first cannery in 1901.
There are a lot of foods that affect the taste of your seminal or vaginal fluids, but pineapple is one of the strongest. Eating a lot of pineapple makes you taste sweeter, and less ‘fishy’.
When you cut up a pineapple at home, you normally chuck the skin, core and ends in the bin. The pineapple canning industry doesn’t though, these bits are used for making alcohol, vinegar and animal feed.
Each pineapple plant only produces just one pineapple per year.
Unripe pineapples don’t just taste vile, but can actually be quite poisonous. Eating it causes serious throat irritation and it has a strong laxative effect.
Pineapples grow slowly, and can take up to two years to reach full size, so we pick and eat them when they are much smaller, but if they are left to their own devices they can reach up to 9kg (20lbs).
If you want to speed up the ripening of a pineapple, so that you can eat it faster, then you can do it by standing it upside down (on the leafy end).
You can’t put fresh pineapple in Jell-O because the bromelain content prevents gelatin from setting. Canned pineapple, on the other hand, can be added to Jell-O because the canning process destroys the bromelain.
Traditionally pineapple juice was used as a diuretic and to induce labour.
The Bromelain enzyme in pineapples breaks down proteins. This means that you can use pineapple or pineapple juice as a meat tenderiser.
The same Bromelain enzyme means that you can’t put fresh pineapple in jelly, because it breaks down the gelatine. You can stop this from happening by boiling the chunks of pineapple in their juice or in water for a few minutes, or you can use canned pineapple.
In case you find yourself on a sailing trip in the tropics without any Ajax, you might like to know that pineapple juice mixed with sand is very good for cleaning boat decks and machete blades.