Patty’s Perfect Pineapple Picker

My sister Patty Gale is a veritable font of information, and she offered these tips on picking a really luscious pineapple.

Check out her blog at http://pattygale.blog.com to learn about how to choose safe and beneficial cosmetics.

Here’s the trick:

• The pineapple should be  firm, but not rock hard, and heavy for its size.

• The skin should be golden rather than green, but as the pineapple ripens from the bottom up, it’s alright if the top is green.
• The leaves should be dark green, indicating freshness, not yellow or brown. If you pull on one of the inner leaves, it should come out easily.
• Smell the bottom - the stem end. It should smell sweet and delicious, not fermented.
• There should  be no squashy or moldy areas.
• If you find an otherwise lovely pineapple that doesn’t seem quite ripe, store it on its side on the counter for a few days. laying it on its side will help the ripeness travel to the leafy end of the fruit, where it tends to ripen last. Don’t wait too long!

What you should know: According to my copy of  The Doctor’s Book of Food Remedies by Selene Yeager and the editors of Prevention, the pineapple is not only a terrific source of vitamin C, it also contains an appreciable amount of the trace mineral Manganese, which your body uses to make collagen, present in skin, bones, and connective tissue. As a further benefit, it contains the enzyme Bromelain, which has been proven to have anti-inflammatory benefits, especially for arthritis, colds and soft tissue injuries. To obtain the benefits of the bromelain, eat the pineapple on an empty stomach, otherwise the enzyme gets used to help break down proteins, its other function in the body.