I drool, you drool, we all drool, for ... this?

I bet you, too, would drool for this--"A mango, cranberry and avocado salad"

Hmmm.... maybe I will try making this one of these summer days.  Will have to make do with some inferior mangoes that we get in this part of the world.

The source didn't include any recipe; I wonder if there is any dressing involved ... maybe a slight drizzling with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a dash of fresh ground pepper, and mozzarella cheese?  In a way, then a mango/avocado variation of the caprese salad? Will cilantro go well in this combo, I wonder!

BTW, why are the cranberries looking like currants in this photo? :)

Tainted mangoes, India, and the FDA

Yes, we have no mangoes that haven’t been tainted

The mango is a standard example in the freshman course that I teach. The fruit’s Latin name is Mangifera, which gives away its origin in the Indian subcontinent because the name comes from south Indian languages — in Tamil, it is pronounced “maanga.”

Accounting for more than half the world’s production, India is the largest producer of mangoes. However, very little of the fruit is exported.

For a while, the export of mangoes to the United States was suspended because our Food and Drug Administration wanted to ensure that the mangoes and their packaging materials would not contain fruit flies and weevils.

Having overcome that barrier with sophisticated irradiation technology, India has resumed exporting mangoes, this time employing cargo ships instead of using air freight — which is expected to halve the retail price of Mangifera indica.

I was excited about this, because I missed the succulent and fantastically tasty varieties of mangoes that are available in India.

After arriving in Chennai, in my initial excitement of seeing hundreds of mangoes, I quickly dismissed my 11-year-old niece’s warning that some of the fruits might have been treated with chemicals that are harmful to humans. However, it turns out that my niece had the correct information after all.

Last week, most national newspapers, including The Hindu, reported the destruction of mangoes by government authorities in Chennai because chemicals had been used to ripen ones that had been harvested prematurely, thereby triggering their golden color. The chemicals included calcium carbide, arsenic and phosphorus.

To say that I am shocked is an understatement. Arsenic to improve the appearance and marketability of fruits that humans consume?

My parents were nonchalant about the news. “This happens every year,” was their comment.

I am even more appalled that such destruction of mangoes — because of illegal chemical usage — is an annual affair. I can only think that the manipulators are heartless sociopaths who need to be institutionalized for the rest of their lives.

Yes, India has laws and regulations in its books — from the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act to the Insecticide Act. But as a resource-starved developing country, India does not have sufficient enforcement mechanisms that we take for granted in America. I assume that the 7,500 kilograms of mangoes that were destroyed represent a much larger amount of fruit treated with these illegal chemicals.

However, the story of Indian mangoes is not unique.

As countries compete in the global market, a few producers succumb to the temptation for quick profits through various shortcuts. I bet many of us still remember the tragic experiences with tainted dog food and toothpaste from China, among other horror stories associated with imports from that country.

All it takes is a few unscrupulous producers to spoil the reputation for an entire industry, and the country as a whole. Sometimes, it is not the intentional acts but slippages in production processes that cause immense problems for consumers, as was the case with E. coli infected spinach or beef in the United States.

Thus, I am now even more appreciative of our regulatory agencies such as the FDA. Thanks to them, we rarely think twice about the fruits we buy in grocery stores, or even the anti-allergy pills we stock up on in order to be able to deal with an atmosphere that is full of grass seed pollen.

I am now convinced about the importance of strengthening the FDA, which has been systematically weakened over the years. We ought to recognize the importance of the FDA as a prime consumer protection agency and correspondingly increase the resources allocated for its various functions.

Given the extensive and ever-­increasing level of importation of various food and drug items from all around the world, I urge our elected officials to explore ways for the Food and Drug Administration to inspect major production facilities outside the United States, too, to ensure the safety and well-being of Americans.

Such a structure could have an added benefit. Our consumer safety standards would then quickly spread to other countries, and even kids such as my niece will be able to enjoy the juicy mangoes that I did when I was young.

For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Monday, Jul 20, 2009

Longer school year not a panacea

Like most people in these United States, I believe that our public school system, and our higher education system as well, needs continuous overhauls to ensure that our youth will have fantastic futures.

Therefore, I followed with immense interest President Obama’s recent speech on education; I liked many aspects of it. However, I am not quite in agreement with the president’s observation that one way to get our children ready for a productive and engaged life is by lengthening the school year.

Obama compared our academic calendar with South Korea’s, noting, “Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea — every year. That’s no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy.”

A longer school year is not a necessary condition for success in the 21st century. It was not even a good model for the 20th century, which is when I was a student in a school system that has some of the longest school years.

As I look back at my childhood, it seems as though I was always in school. In the southern part of India, where I grew up, the academic year began in early June, and we had classes six days a week. It was a huge reward when we had the second Saturday of every month off — and, boy, did we look forward to that two-day weekend!

School ended in mid-April, in time for the peak summer heat, when we kids then spent our time climbing the mango and tamarind trees and playing cricket and football, darkening our already naturally tanned complexions.

Yes, the school system graduated quite a few successful students. But then, in a country with a population of more than a billion now, even a small percentage translates to hundreds of thousands of successes.

Later in life, as a parent here in America, I was excited by the educational system that my daughter went through — in a public school. I would have way preferred to be a student here than in India. And it was not at all because of the five-day school week or because of the long vacations.

I was blown away by a number of wonderful aspects of schooling here: from “learning by doing” to physical education to arts and music to student government. In contrast, I went through a system that emphasized learning by rote, not learning by doing. Music and the arts had only token representation in the curriculum, and we certainly did not learn civic responsibility through student government.

What ultimately mattered to me as a parent was not the length of the school year, but what went on when school was in session. Equally important, on weekends and during summers, kids are able to be kids — although like many parents, I sometimes preferred it when the kids were in school, because they can be stress agents at home!

Thus, having experienced two strikingly different systems, the question for me is a deceptively simple one: What is the purpose of education?

The more we begin to explore this question, the more it becomes intensely controversial, because of the profound differences in opinions. We might disagree because of the different weights we attribute to science, social science and language courses. Or how much we think the arts ought to be emphasized in schools.

These immensely controversial issues are precisely the ones we ought to focus on. What if the subjects that were taught in the 20th century will not have any “value” at all in the 21st century? Or what if the way in which we taught a subject in the 20th century will not work in the 21st century?

Furthermore, a child entering the first grade in September 2009 will graduate high school in 2021. I am willing to bet that none of us has any realistic idea of what might be the important issues in this country and the world 12 years down the road.

So, if we are trying to figure out how to prepare this kid to be constructively and productively engaged from 2021 until retirement in 2071, well, let us be honest here: We are all involved in a guessing game about the future.

I don’t have the answers. All I know is that Yogi Berra was, as always, on the mark: “The future ain’t what it used to be!”

I am convinced, however, that longer school years are no panacea for the complexity and uncertainty about the future economy and polity. Merely retaining students in classrooms for a lot more days of the year will not necessarily guarantee that they will graduate as young adults with the ability to successfully negotiate the economic and civic challenges they will face for the rest of their lives.

For The Register-Guard
Posted to Web: Sunday, Mar 22, 2009 11:47PM
Appeared in print: Monday, Mar 23, 2009, page A7