Get ready for Canada’s synchronized crunch
At 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Canadians will celebrate good diets, local crops by biting apples in unison
SIMCOE, ONT.— Wake up sleepy apples, it’s time for the Great Big Crunch.
I’m talking to every Canadian apple that was picked in the fall and put into atmosphere-controlled storage. But specifically, the message is for “school apples” grown around Simcoe and stored by the Norfolk Fruit Growers’ Association.
Tom O’Neill needs you, so get ready to be inspected for defects, sorted, waxed, dried, packed and driven to Toronto for a party.
O’Neill is the association’s general manager and the unsung hero who has helped FoodShare Toronto buy small, affordable apples for students since 2000.
That makes him a grandfather of sorts to the FoodShare event Great Big Crunch that happens at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday when more than140,000 Canadians will take a synchronized bite of an apple.
People will crunch mainly in school gymnasiums and classrooms, but also in daycares, community and recreation centres, workplaces and homes.
It’s the eighth annual “crunch” to celebrate healthy eating and local food and remind people that you can get Ontario apples just about every month of the year except July and August.
O’Neill, father to four grown children, calls the crunch “a fun thing to do with apples.” He should know. He’s been in the business since 1983 and put his kids in apple bins instead of playpens.
The marketing association is owned by nine members who grow fruit near Simcoe. It stores apples in three buildings, packs them in a fourth and runs the Apple Place retail shop/bakery that’s known for apple cider doughnuts.
People used to ask why O’Neill would bother to sell small apples destined for processing to FoodShare (and now other school programs). The apples aren’t big enough for stores, but still taste great.
“It’s a perfect snack size because kids are going to take four or five bites and be done,” says O’Neill.
True enough, but here’s the hidden agenda: “If you get a child used to eating fruit, they’re likely to eat fruit the rest of their life. We’re building a market for the future.”
Besides, growers actually get more money for selling wholesale “school apples” than for selling them to juice (including fresh-pressed and hard cider) and sauce processors. Everyone loves a happy ending. Everyone also loves a funny beginning.
In January 2008, Meredith Hayes, FoodShare’s schools and nutrition senior manager, bit into an apple while taking the subway to work after a public health meeting.
“People in Toronto tend to be startled on the subway by interactions with others. My apple was crunchy and juicy and I remember all eyes on the subway looking at me.”
Instead of being embarrassed, Hayes was “really excited” by the sound of her own crunching. What if she got100 kids on the subway to bite into apples? What if she got a whole school to do it?
The first Great Big Crunch, pulled together quickly, attracted 28,000 kids. The “magical experience” has attracted more than 600,000 registered crunchers over the years.
The crunch is always during Nutrition Month on the Thursday before March break.
“If you get a child used to eating fruit, they’re likely to eat fruit the rest of their life. We’re building a market for the future.” TOM O’NEILL GENERAL MANAGER, NORFOLK FRUIT GROWERS’ ASSOCIATION
Teachers plan food literacy activities and students get to “release their energy with a burst of nutrition” at 2:30 p.m. just before going home.
“It’s a fun little idea that’s cost effective and easy for people to participate in,” says Hayes before flying to a Vancouver farm-to-cafeteria meeting where she’ll conduct “crunch training.”
You don’t even have to crunch apples. Thunder Bay, Ont., students will crunch carrots to stay local this year after raw potatoes didn’t go down so well.
As Hayes well knows, “it doesn’t have to be elaborate to get kids excited. It can be as simple as doing a countdown and making a big sound together.”
Simple works. But O’Neill wishes we all knew more about apples, like how to tell the varieties apart, why you shouldn’t store apples with car- rots (the ripening fruit produces ethylene that can make carrots bitter), and why you should keep apples in the fridge (more on that in a moment).
FoodShare — a non-profit organization that gets good, healthy food and food education to schools and communities — started buying Norfolk Fruit Growers’ Association’s apples in 2000. Last year it spent almost $200,000 on fruit — mainly apples (147,191 kilograms) but some pears (33,385 kilograms) for various programs including the Great Big Crunch.
FoodShare isn’t picky about variety, so it gets mainly Empire but sometimes Gala, Red Delicious, McIntosh or Spartan. Norfolk apple farmers actually grow about 17 kinds of apples, with Empire, McIntosh and Northern Spy (for pies) the top three.
O’Neill samples about half a dozen apples every work day and notices that Ontario palates are “moving sweeter. We’re going from the Granny and the Mac over to the Gala and the Fuji.”
He loves Empires, which haven’t been marketed very well, but will be a big player at Great Big Crunch events this year. “It’s sweeter than a Mac but a little tarter than a Red Delicious. If you pick them at the right time and store them properly, they hold their crunch.”
Apples are picked in the fall when they’re mature but not ripe and producing too much ethylene. They’re stored by variety in controlled atmosphere rooms with reduced oxygen levels. This “suspended animation” suppresses the fruit’s respiration rate so it will store until needed on the packing line.
“An apple is like a person,” says O’Neill. “It breathes oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. Each apple likes its own temperature. Honeycrisps like 40 Fahrenheit (4.4 C), Red Delicious and Northern Spy like 32, McIntosh likes 38, Empire likes 35 and all the rest float around.”
That’s why most apples are happier in the fridge than the fruit bowl.
Here’s one final apple tidbit that’s sure to intrigue kids. Just before getting packed and shipped to stores, apples are coated in food-grade, plant-based wax to extend their shelf life. You can wash it off or just eat it like O’Neill does.
“It’s the same stuff, they tell me, that makes chocolate bars shine.” jbain@thestar.ca