My father was at one time a farmhand in rural South India. He sat on the floor with his eight siblings and ate his food off of a banana leaf. In this mud-made shanty made by my grandfather, the family would very often have dessert after their feast. They may have not had running water or electricity, but they did have an entire room full of mangos and bananas. My father’s personal preference was the mango, whose full range of health implications is just becoming clear.

After moving to America and living the life of his dreams as a doctor in the West, one thing remained constant: his love for mangos. When mangos were in season, my father never failed to indulge in one after lunch and dinner. Although I grew up not knowing many people fond of the mango, it is the 5th most produced fruit in the world. Latin Americans and South Asians alike enjoy the sweet delicacy, but the seeds of the fruit tend to go unnoticed.

The seeds themselves are not the most appetizing part of the fruit; attempting to chew the kernels would not be kind to your teeth. However, if a method can be found to recycle the seeds and give them to businesses, the businesses can process the seeds for their tannins. These pure tannins, also found in some other fruit seeds, can be beneficial to humans when fighting a pathogen such as Listeria monocytogenes. A potentially deadly bacterium, L. monocytogenes was the cause of last year’s listeriosis outbreak in Canada that took the lives of 21 people. Finding a way to get seeds back to businesses for tannin extraction could be extremely beneficial if a similar outbreak were to occur again.

Christina Engels, the head researcher for this project at the University of Alberta, explains that businesses will profit by utilizing all parts of the fruit. And if an efficient seed-recycling program is developed, our health will profit as well.

Discussion Question: What methods do you think could be used to form a good kernel recycling program?

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813163200.htm
Journal: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf901621m