Could an Israeli-created innovation end world hunger?

[shira]

Talk about a BDS challenge...

Pimi Agro has figured out a natural way to extend the shelf life of produce by 1,500%, and prevent disease and fungus, too

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Between a third and half of the food grown today never makes it to market. Produce of all kinds is “lost” to spoilage and disease, due mostly to transportation, storage, and other logistics issues. As a result, hundreds of millions of people still go hungry – but they don’t have to, thanks to an invention by Israel’s Pimi Agro. By applying a formula based on hydrogen peroxide — “with a few key additions,” said Nimrod Ben-Yehuda, CTO and co-founder of Pimi – fruits and vegetables remain fresh and viable for up to 10 weeks, significantly cutting losses due to rot and deterioration during the transportation process.

Technology like this, he believes, could make a major dent in world hunger. In the coming months, Pimi plans to introduce these inventions to the United Nations and other international institutions. “For places like India, China, and Africa, this is huge, especially because the transportation systems in those areas are slow and refrigeration is hard to come by,” said Ben-Yehuda. “You could walk from one end of India to the other over a period of 10 weeks, and the vegetables and fruit you carry will still be fresh for the entire time.”

It sounds like a fantastic claim, but one Pimi can prove through the extensive scientific studies the company has undertaken over the past decade – studies that were persuasive enough for agricultural and food authorities around the world, including in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, China, and many other countries, to approve Pimi’s all-natural, zero-chemical method of preserving produce.

They’ve also been persuasive enough for no less than Wal-Mart and SunPacific – one the largest retailer in America, and the other the largest shipper of citrus fruit there – to conduct large-scale field tests of Pimi’s technology, with an eye towards licensing it for everyday use, said Ben-Yehuda. “We’ve been speaking to Wal-Mart about how to market produce treated with our products. They’re not necessarily organic, but they are much healthier than ordinary produce – besides having a much longer shelf life – because farmers can cut down significantly on the use of fungicides.”

more...
http://www.timesofisrael.com/could-an-israeli-created-innovation-end-world-hunger/#ixzz3HkVkRF6j

[Scootaloo]

1. End world hunger? Nope. Prevent mildew on the shelf without use of copper-based fungicides? Yes.

Spray a vegetable with hydrogen peroxide and yes, you'll be dealing with the funky spores and bacteria and whjatever might be trying to take root on them - becuase peroxide is a rapid oxidizer. it essentially burns microbiota to death. Now the tricky thing is... it doesn't just burn microbiota, it burns pretty much any cell.

When you splash H2O2 on a scrape, you're not just searing away the germs that might have gotten into it, but you're also incinerating the blood cells, skin cells, all that other stuff. it also causes capillary embolism, which can cause your skin to turn white for a little while after prolonged contact. The fact it burns away your cells and shuts off capillaries is why it's no longer used as a topical disinfectant in professional medicine; it actually inhibits healing by restricting blood flow and searing away newly-formed cells. And the slower a wound is in healing, the more likely an infection is.

And this is the 25% stuff you get for a buck fifty at the drug store. In higher concentrations, it can actually be pretty dangerous.

So yes, you can hose a head of lettuce down with this stuff, and it'll inhibit bacterial and fungal growth. But it'll also damage the head of lettuce. Of course, a wilted, kind of soft head of lettuce is better than a moldy rotten one that smells like the after-effects of asparagus... but it's not what i would call "fresh". Especially given that the cell damage caused... actually makes it easier for decomposing fungus and bactria to get a foothold, over the long run.

So, kudos to the folks at Pimi Agro for coming up with compound that does the fungicide work without all the chemical runoff (peroxide decomposes into water pretty rapidly after contact with ANYTHING, after all). And a well-deserved eye-roll to the Times of israel editorial staff for their sensational headline-writing.

[grossproffit]

2. Wow. What a game changer this would be.