Some clever people at Duda Farm Fresh Foods have figured out how to grow hollow celery that you in turn can use as your fancy dictates. Sounds Bloody Marylicious to me. From Iconoculture via Cool Business Ideas
Wow! We at Duda Farm Fresh Foods are really excited to see how much interest our DANDY celery straws are generating in cyberspace. Over the past week we have seen a lot of information generated about our product and we think we should weigh in on the discussion in order to answer some of the questions we’ve seen and correct some of the information that has been posted.
First of all, our DANDY celery straw is not engineered in any way. It is a naturally-grown celery stalk with a hollow core. Using traditional plant breeding methods, we cross pollinated one of our own celery varieties with a hollow-stemmed wild celery – found on one of our farms in Texas. The results of this cross were selected again and again and re-crossed with traditional celery until a larger, more mild-tasting, hollow-stemmed celery was produced. It has taken a number of years to develop the celery straw we have today.
While we are very proud of our celery straw, it is by no means as sleek as the photos we have seen floating around on various blogs. Our celery straw still resembles a stalk of celery – just a hollow stalk. Photos are available if you would like to post them on your site.
For those of you who are interested in knowing how to get your hands on our straws, we are still test marketing this product to find the right channels for distribution. We have seen definite interest from both the foodservice and retail areas and we are actively pursuing both markets. Our main push will be through foodservice outlets and we will continue educating buyers for hotels, restaurants, and other high-end, premium market places about the benefits of this specialty item: it is unique; environmentally sound; a healthy alternative to a straw; adds taste to any drink it is paired with; and is versatile - piped with any filling, it can be served as an appetizer.
Foodservice and retail buyers can contact us at celerystraws@duda.com. And, we encourage all you consumers out there to ask your retail and foodservice suppliers to start offering DANDY celery straws. Have a DANDY day!
It doesn't seem any creepier to me than Mendel messing around with smooth and wrinkled peas. People have been doing selective breeding since prehistory. This is just on a micro rather than a macro scale. If they'd put frog genes in the celery, now, that would have been creepy.
Some people argue that a vegetarian diet can’t support a large life-form. They obviously haven’t met the blue whale (Balenoptera musculus), a massive creature that survives on plankton.
Plankton consists of phytoplankton, bacterioplankton AND zooplankton: (from Greek zoon, or animal), small protozoans or metazoans (e.g. crustaceans and other animals) that feed on other plankton and telonemia. Some of the eggs and larvae of larger animals, such as fish, crustaceans, and annelids, are included here.
So, the Blue Whale is most definitely not a vegetarian!
Sloths move so slowly on land that they only come down from the trees to poop once every (I think) 3 days (it may be longer, but it's definitely not shorter). They can't just poop in the trees because predators would smell it and kill them 'cuz they'd still be in the same tree. So they climb down to the ground, dig a hole, poop in the hole, and BURY the poop.
BURY!
They poop in a hole and cover it with dirt because they're too lazy to have evolved the ability to move quickly on land.
The male platypus is one of only two known venomous mammals.
Actually while not common there are several venomous mammals including the Eurasian water shrew, Southern Short-tailed Shrew, Northern Short-tailed Shrew, Cuban Solenodon, and Haitian Solenodon. And of course the platypus.
Also there is the sort of venomous Slow Loris. These mammals have poison glands on their elbows which they suck on to get poison in their mouths subsequently delivering a poison bite.
Could the "author" of the article please respond regarding the inaccuracies pointed out in the comments? I'm not criticizing - just curious and confused.
The major reason why blues and other whales can get so big has nothing to do with their diet. It is that water supports their weight, so their skeleton doesn't have to.
The weight of an animal goes up with its volume, which is measured in meters cubed, while the strength of its bones goes up (roughly speaking) with its cross section, which is measured in meters squared. As an animal gets bigger and bigger, the bones required to support its weight must get bigger, faster, until eventually the animal reaches a practical size limit, where as much of it is bone as possible (and it is virtually a stationary tower.) (And that, by the way, is why you cannot have an ant the size of a skyscraper, 50's horror movies aside. If you just scaled up the ant, the weight would go up faster than its structural strength. A skyscraper ant would collapse on its belly, immobile.)
But with whales and other creatures whose weight is supported by water, the limit is set by availability of food, and that is a very high limit. I imagine even larger animals than blue whales could evolve, eventually.
Incidentally, that is also why bigger dirigibles are more cost-effective than small ones. You can double the fabric in a dirigible, and get much more than double the lifting power.
Comments (6)
First of all, our DANDY celery straw is not engineered in any way. It is a naturally-grown celery stalk with a hollow core. Using traditional plant breeding methods, we cross pollinated one of our own celery varieties with a hollow-stemmed wild celery – found on one of our farms in Texas. The results of this cross were selected again and again and re-crossed with traditional celery until a larger, more mild-tasting, hollow-stemmed celery was produced. It has taken a number of years to develop the celery straw we have today.
While we are very proud of our celery straw, it is by no means as sleek as the photos we have seen floating around on various blogs. Our celery straw still resembles a stalk of celery – just a hollow stalk. Photos are available if you would like to post them on your site.
For those of you who are interested in knowing how to get your hands on our straws, we are still test marketing this product to find the right channels for distribution. We have seen definite interest from both the foodservice and retail areas and we are actively pursuing both markets. Our main push will be through foodservice outlets and we will continue educating buyers for hotels, restaurants, and other high-end, premium market places about the benefits of this specialty item: it is unique; environmentally sound; a healthy alternative to a straw; adds taste to any drink it is paired with; and is versatile - piped with any filling, it can be served as an appetizer.
Foodservice and retail buyers can contact us at celerystraws@duda.com. And, we encourage all you consumers out there to ask your retail and foodservice suppliers to start offering DANDY celery straws. Have a DANDY day!
Plankton consists of phytoplankton, bacterioplankton AND zooplankton: (from Greek zoon, or animal), small protozoans or metazoans (e.g. crustaceans and other animals) that feed on other plankton and telonemia. Some of the eggs and larvae of larger animals, such as fish, crustaceans, and annelids, are included here.
So, the Blue Whale is most definitely not a vegetarian!
sloths can swim pretty fast.
BURY!
They poop in a hole and cover it with dirt because they're too lazy to have evolved the ability to move quickly on land.
Actually while not common there are several venomous mammals including the Eurasian water shrew, Southern Short-tailed Shrew, Northern Short-tailed Shrew, Cuban Solenodon, and Haitian Solenodon. And of course the platypus.
Also there is the sort of venomous Slow Loris. These mammals have poison glands on their elbows which they suck on to get poison in their mouths subsequently delivering a poison bite.
Viva la beef
The major reason why blues and other whales can get so big has nothing to do with their diet. It is that water supports their weight, so their skeleton doesn't have to.
The weight of an animal goes up with its volume, which is measured in meters cubed, while the strength of its bones goes up (roughly speaking) with its cross section, which is measured in meters squared. As an animal gets bigger and bigger, the bones required to support its weight must get bigger, faster, until eventually the animal reaches a practical size limit, where as much of it is bone as possible (and it is virtually a stationary tower.) (And that, by the way, is why you cannot have an ant the size of a skyscraper, 50's horror movies aside. If you just scaled up the ant, the weight would go up faster than its structural strength. A skyscraper ant would collapse on its belly, immobile.)
But with whales and other creatures whose weight is supported by water, the limit is set by availability of food, and that is a very high limit. I imagine even larger animals than blue whales could evolve, eventually.
Incidentally, that is also why bigger dirigibles are more cost-effective than small ones. You can double the fabric in a dirigible, and get much more than double the lifting power.