You can barely survive a week without a new food craze lighting up your Instagram feeds. We’ve had unicorn frappucinos and related unicorn foods. We’ve had cloud eggs. We’ve had millennials addicted to avocado toast. The latest foods to flood our feeds has been pink pineapples.
That is, the traditional scrumptious and yellow pineapples you’ve been buying in grocery stores for decades have been turned pink. These pink pineapples are a genetically modified fruit patented by Del Monte Fresh Produce and received FDA approval back in December 2016.
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Here’s how the FDA explained it:
[Del Monte’s] new pineapple has been genetically engineered to produce lower levels of the enzymes already in conventional pineapple that convert the pink pigment lycopene to the yellow pigment beta carotene. Lycopene is the pigment that makes tomatoes red and watermelons pink, so it is commonly and safely consumed.
And though these pink pineapples haven’t hit supermarkets yet, hype online is already starting to build around them. It’s easy to see why.
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In addition to the genetically modified enzymes transforming the pineapples from yellow to pink, that change will also make the pink pineapples sweeter. Considering how sweet regular pineapples are naturally, who knows if this will be a good or bad thing. If it’s bad, well, you can just wait until the new food craze next week.
