Side Dish
Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.
Bob was complaining to Fred about his favorite holiday side dish: Jell-O.
"I grew up eating it. My mom made it for all sorts of occasions," Bob said, "but whenever I make it, it looks like fruit soup."
Fred looked stunned, "Well, what are you doing to it? It only requires boiling water."
"Well, mom always made it with fruit cocktail," replied Bob, "but that stuff tastes awful, so I use fresh fruit. In fact, I like to make what I call my 'International Salad' with all sorts of fruits from all over the world. Of course only one of them can be found in the fruit cocktail mom always used."
Fred rolled his eyes. "Let me guess..."
What was wrong with Bob's Jell-O?
Answer
"...Pineapple," Fred finished. "Are you also using papaya, mango, and kiwi?"
"How did you know?" Bob asked. "I made that fruit salad up myself. Have you been spying on me?!"
"Calm down, Bob. I haven't been spying on you, I just know that when you do something wrong, you tend to do it really wrong."
Bob looked a little hurt. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, read the box of Jell-O. It tells you not to use fresh pineapple. It should warn about other 'exotic' fruits, but doesn't. All of those things in your fruit salad have various proteases," Fred said, pedantically.
"What's a 'protease'?"
"It's an enzyme that breaks down proteins. Bromelin is in pineapple. Papain is in papaya. Even figs have ficain!" Fred was on a roll, now.
Bob interrupted him, "Hold on, Mr. Science. Just tell me what to avoid."
Fred visibly composed himself. "Sorry. Avoid fresh pineapple, papaya, kiwi, mango, ginger, figs, and guava. You can cook or can any of them to denature the proteases, but when fresh, the enzymes will take the protein in your gelatin and break it down into peptides and water, giving you that lovely fruit soup you mentioned."
Bob looked perplexed, "Wait, Jell-O is protein? What kind of protein?"
"Oh," Fred replied with a smile, "let's not bring that up right now."
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Comments
karenokupniak  
Nov 19, 2007
| All children of the 60's will know this easily. |
lizard68 
Nov 21, 2007
| mmm... gelatin...  |
4demo
Nov 23, 2007
| Great teaser!  Somehow, I was reading the teaser and the word "pineapple" came to me out of nowhere. Strange... 
Uh... so what kind of protein is it? |
mosca
Nov 26, 2007
| Very neat teaser! I knew about the pineapple, but not about the other fruits, so it was educational! |
DeeOhGee
Nov 28, 2007
| I should have looked on the box before taking this one on. |
zonarita
Dec 17, 2007
| Wonderful story Phrebh. Very enjoyable - I don't eat jello anymore unless I put it dry in a cottage cheese and dream whip dish with PINEAPPLE. |
miker
Jan 02, 2008
| For those who asked. Gelatin come from the tallow in beef bones. Beef bones are boiled until the tallow comes out of them. You know how manufacturers are, they throw nothing away. |
dswilborn
Jun 15, 2008
| Cool! I knew that about pineapple, but I did not know other tropical fruits would do the same! |
Zag24
Apr 12, 2009
| Great teaser, but it should be in Science, not Trivia. |
zigthepig 
Jun 05, 2009
| I love how humourous you make these stories Fereb |
MusiK 
Jan 09, 2010
| @4demo, I think it's like colloquial protein or something
"let's not bring that up right now"
lol |
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