Lori05871Open wide! Like really, REALLY wide.
It’s safe to say UMass students are overachievers. Staff and students there celebrate the start of every school year by making a record-breaking amount of food, complete with certification from the Guinness World Records. This year was no different:
About 500 students and staff at the Amherst campus on Monday sliced, diced, pitted and peeled 150 varieties of fruit to create a salad weighing more than 15,000 pounds. The salad was mixed in a 15-foot diameter swimming pool.
It included 20 varieties of apples weighing more than 3,600 pounds; 19 varieties of melon weighing more than 2,500 pounds; peaches, bananas, oranges, and berries as well as more exotic fruits including quince, passion fruit, and rambutan.
Was it organic? Who would want to eat salad out of a swimming pool? WHAT IS RAMBUTAN? The winds of academia blow a single tumbleweed past as we silently await the answer.
(Aha: UMass staffer Ken Toong says half the fruit was local, and it will all get eaten, whether in the dining hall or donated to the Amherst Survival Center.) I still want to make sure nobody’s swimming trunks are mixed up in the salad, though. Yuck.
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