This article was published on August 8, 2015

Banana-na! A startup is using Minions language to help fight hunger


Banana-na! A startup is using Minions language to help fight hunger

Sweden is great – Abba, The Knife, saunas, impossibly beautiful blonde people… well, the list is long – and here’s another cool product of the Swedish mindset: FoPo.

The startup turns fruit that is about to go bad into a nutritional powder that can be mixed with water or sprinkled on other food. The idea is to get more life out of fruit that would otherwise be wasted and help deal with the oppressive problem of hunger.

FoPo_Food_Powder
It’s powder but it’s also fruit. And it could do incredible things.

One of the company’s co-founder Kent Ngo told FastCo Exist that “by drying fruits you extend the shelf life from around two weeks up to two years” and that the company’s process can retain between 30 percent and 80 percent of its original nutritional value.

Turning the fruit into powder also simplifies the logistics of sending it to soup kitchens or shipping it to areas in the world where people desperately need assistance.

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FoPo collects fruit that would otherwise be rejected for being overripe, ugly, misshapen or otherwise not acceptable for picking supermarket shoppers. Mouldy or inedible items are obviously tossed.

11695440_1640599412824889_3845813821802313478_n
This fruit is dry… and that’s a good thing.

Anyway, where does the Minions thing come in? Well, look at that packaging in the picture of the top of the page: “Banana-na.” I can’t prove they were thinking about the ubiquitous yellow blobs, but it’s certainly what sprang to mind when I grokked that packaging.

Banana!
Banana!

Minions might bring a lot of joy (and frustration) to the world, but FoPo could actually help alleviate hunger and that’s something we should definitely celebrate.

FoPo [via FastCo Exist]

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