Kiwi Fruit

These are folks raising a funny-looking fruit that’s been around nearly 700 years but only in the U.S. for a couple of decades. Maybe the strange look and texture of the kiwi fruit has discouraged you from trying it. But Jason Shoultz discovered kiwi farmers in California are working hard to overcome your fear of this fuzzy fruit.

His first stop was at a Sacramento eatery. The lunch rush is on at the Hukilau Island Grill. In the kitchen, chef Adam Pineo is cooking up seared ahi tuna with a tangy salsa on the side. The key ingredient: kiwifruit!

"It gives it a nice tart tanginess," says Adam. "Has a melon-like flavor. Works well with fish."

Adam’s the latest fan of a fuzzy fruit that originated in China seven hundred years ago. The inside is bright green and packed with little black seeds. Tart and sweet at the same time; it’s a powerful flavor in a small package. But it’s that brown and hairy outside that, well, turns some folks off!

"When you see them at a grocery store, they don’t look friendly," admits nutritionist Judy Fields.

In 1970, U.S. growers started producing kiwi commercially. The yearly kiwi harvest begins in the late fall at Chase National Kiwi in Northern California. To get the harvest done before rainy winter weather, pickers have to move quickly. The kiwis go from the vines to individual bags then to huge bins that hold about a thousand pounds of fruit.

Grower Tom Schultz says, "Each worker will pick about four to five bins per person per day. So that means he’s picking four to five thousand pounds of fruit!"

Chase is the second largest kiwi grower in California. They grow, pack, and distribute kiwi to grocery stores all over the country. The processing room’s a hotbed of activity.

"They just keep coming," says Tom. "And as you can see, these girls right now are doing a final sort, and then they go into basically a 20 pound box, then they’re palletized and they go into storage. We produce around 750,000 seven pound trays. So if you do the math, that’s one heck of a lot of kiwi."

California kiwi farmers produce 95% of all kiwi grown in the U.S. American growers were once some of the top producers in the world. They now face increasing competition from overseas. Grower Tom Schultz has seen prices for the fruit drop and labor costs rise. So growers use a state kiwifruit commission to try to get more folks to look beyond the hair, and get hooked on the funky fruit. One of the biggest selling points: the kiwi’s nutritional value.

Notes Lindy LaFrancis of the California Kiwi Commission, "If you were going to design a vitamin pill, you’d probably just model it after a kiwi." In fact, according to the USDA, one large kiwi provides 140% of the recommended daily supply of Vitamin C. Nutritionist Judy Fields believes in the kiwi so much, she grows her own in the front yard.

"A lot of people always think of vitamin C as oranges or orange juice, or bananas," says Judy. "But the kiwi in such a small package is actually loaded."

If you’re over the psychological hurdles of trying this funny looking fruit, the next biggest challenge to overcome is HOW to eat it. You can actually bite right into that fuzzy skin, but not many folks like eating kiwi hair. You can peel the kiwi…but that’s pretty challenging because of it’s size. Well, The folks at the kiwifruit commission have this problem solved.

"We call it slooping," says Lindy LaFrancis. " Yes, slooping the kiwi. And we actually have a slooper, which is a little plastic knife on one end, and a spoon on the other. You just cut it in half and just scoop it out with the spoon."

Yeah, the kiwi is brown and hairy, and to some, a bit scary. But as kiwi connoisseurs will tell you, it’s what’s on the inside that counts!

Addtional Info:

Contact information:
www.kiwifruit.org

Did you know:
In the early 1900s, New Zealanders developed a national taste for the fruit formerly known as the "Chinese gooseberry." They gave it its new name, more precisely, their native bird, the Kiwi, did to which the fruit bears a certain resemblance.