Pine cone? No, pineapple...

While at Sam’s Club today letting my mom use my membership to buy heat-and-eat brisket at prices so good…how good are they?...so good you can’t imagine how good they really are. Anyway, she was trying to repay me for taking time out of my day by offering to buy me things. Everything we passed she tried to entice me with. “Soup? Noodles? Nacho cheese?” “No,” I would say. I had just been to the grocery store three times in three days (forgot some stuff, broke some stuff, long story). But we passed the fruit section I couldn’t help but be taken in by the pineapples. I love pineapples. They had the oversized plastic container of pineapple spears (basically big wedge sections of the good stuff in the pineapple, if you didn’t know) that I knew I couldn’t ignore. I walked away with the magnificence of the pineapple spears and she has enough brisket to feed thirty people. Fair trade, don’t ya’ll think? I have decided then to learn more about the delicious pineapple and to share that knowledge with you. Here we go!

Pineapple (Latin name Ananas comosus) is the common name for an edible tropical plant and also its fruit (although technically multiple fruit merged together, and perceived as one…that’s right, mind blowing). The word “pineapple” in English was first recorded in 1398, when it was originally used to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now termed pine cones). When European explorers discovered this tropical fruit, they called them pineapples (term first recorded in that sense in 1664) because of their resemblance to what is now known as the pine cone. It is native to Paraguay and the southern part of Brazil (hooray, South America…something good other than dogs and Venezuelan food). Pineapple is eaten fresh or canned and is available as a juice or in juice combinations. It is used in desserts, salads, as a complement to meat dishes and in fruit cocktail (by the way, fruit cocktail with cherries…the bomb). While sweet, it is known for its high acid content (perhaps malic and/or citric). Pineapples are the only bromeliad fruit in widespread cultivation. It is one of the most commercially important plants which carry out CAM photosynthesis (Crassulacean acid metabolism, look it up).

The pineapple is a herbaceous (in botanical use simply herb, is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level) perennial plant which grows to 3.3 to 4.9 ft tall with 30 or more trough-shaped and pointed leaves 1.0 to 3.3 ft long, surrounding a thick stem. The pineapple is an example of a multiple fruit: multiple, helically-arranged flowers along the axis each produce a fleshy fruit that becomes pressed against the fruits of adjacent flowers, forming what appears to be a single fleshy fruit. The fruit of a pineapple are arranged in two interlocking helices, eight in one direction, thirteen in the other, each being a Fibonacci number (read a Dan Brown book for explanation, he’s in love with Fibonacci). The leaves of the cultivar (a cultivated variety of a plant) 'Smooth Cayenne' mostly lack spines except at the leaf tip, but the cultivars 'Spanish' and 'Queen' have large spines along the leaf margins. If you’ve seen a picture of a field of pineapple plants it resembles an agave field (if you haven’t seen an agave field, then you aren’t drinking enough).

Pineapple contains a proteolytic enzyme bromelain, which breaks down protein. Pineapple juice can thus be used as a marinade and tenderizer for meat (it’s a favorite of mine…some people like orange better, but screw you). The enzymes in raw pineapples can interfere with the preparation of some foods, such as jelly or other gelatin-based desserts. The bromelain breaks down in cooking or the canning process, thus canned pineapple can generally be used with gelatin. These enzymes can be hazardous to someone suffering from certain protein deficiencies or disorders, such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (doctor?). Raw pineapples also should not be consumed by those with hemophilia or by those with kidney or liver disease, as it may reduce the time taken to coagulate the consumer's blood. Didn’t realize there were so many health considerations with dealing with pineapple. Wow, glad I’m healthy enough to enjoy them (notice I said healthy enough…exactly). Consumers of pineapple have claimed that pineapple has benefits for some intestinal disorders, and others believe it serves as a pain reliever (it’s true, my knees were killing me right before I had some pineapple and now they are not…could just be because I sat down); still others claim that it helps to induce childbirth when a baby is overdue. Medicinal uses include taking the root and fruit and either eating it or applying it topically as an anti-inflammatory and as a proteolytic agent. It is traditionally used as an antihelminthic (drugs that expel parasitic worms) agent in the Philippines. Pineapple is a good source of manganese (Manganese is an essential trace nutrient in all forms of life), as well as containing significant amounts of vitamin C and vitamin B1.

The natives of southern Brazil and Paraguay spread the pineapple throughout South America, and it eventually reached the Caribbean. Columbus discovered it in the Indies and brought it back with him to Europe. The Spanish introduced it into the Philippines, Hawaii (introduced in the early 19th century, first commercial plantation 1886), Zimbabwe and Guam. The fruit was cultivated successfully in European hothouses, and pineapple pits, beginning in 1720. Commonly grown cultivars include 'Red Spanish', 'Hilo', 'Smooth Cayenne', 'St. Michael', 'Kona Sugarloaf', 'Natal Queen', and 'Pernambuco'. The pineapple was introduced to Hawaii in 1813; exports of canned pineapples began in 1892. Large scale pineapple cultivation by U.S. companies began in the early 1900s on Hawaii. Among the most famous and influential pineapple industrialists was James Dole, who started a pineapple plantation in Hawaii in the year 1900. The companies Dole and Del Monte began growing pineapple on the island of Oahu in 1901 and 1917, respectively. Maui Pineapple Company began pineapple cultivation on the island of Maui in 1909. In 2006, Del Monte announced its withdrawal from pineapple cultivation in Hawaii, leaving only Dole and Maui Pineapple Company in Hawaii as the USA’s largest growers of pineapples. Why is this important? You need to buy American in order to help the economy, so only buy Dole or Maui Pineapple Company pineapples…seriously.

Fresh pineapple is often somewhat expensive as the tropical fruit is delicate and difficult to ship. Pineapples can ripen after harvest, but require certain temperatures for this process to occur. Like bananas, they are chill-sensitive and should not be stored in the refrigerator. They will, however, ripen if left outside of a refrigerator. The ripening of pineapples can be rather difficult as they will not ripen for some time and in a day or two become over-ripe, therefore, pineapples are most widely available canned. Now, as a pineapple purist, I say that fresh is best, but having pineapple on hand and the necessary tools to cut it can be a pain in the butt. Canned or cut and packaged pineapple is still the best fruit ever, so just go with it. That’s pretty much all I have to say. I hope you got as much out of this as I did. If not, I’ll throw another little opinion bone to you…those of you running out to get the new iPhone 4 who are complaining about it being on AT&T (or those of you already possessing an iPhone) maybe you should’ve thought two about buying a phone from a computer company rather than a phone company. I have a Blackberry on AT&T and don’t have any issues at all. That’s my two cents.