Eat More Fruit

(CBS)  This segment was first broadcast on April 13, 2008.

The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.

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From the time you're very young someone is always telling us to eat more fruit. Well, I think we would eat more fruit if we knew for sure that it was going to be any good when we bought it. So expensive. We went to a good store in New York called Fairway the other day and looked at their fruit.

Grapefruit - better than they used to be. When I was a kid my mother would cut them in two and sprinkle sugar on them and leave them overnight.

How would you like to have the job of stacking fruit in a fruit store? So, it didn't fall down.

Lemons - one of the great fruits, so versatile. So many things you can do with them. Of course you can't eat them.

Mango, they're good but the pit is strange shape and very hard to get at, you need a sharp knife and it takes about a half hour to get at what you want to eat.

Not too familiar with a papaya. I would buy one, but I don't know whether I would know what to do with it, whether to eat it for breakfast or dessert.

I suppose over the years I've wasted more money on melons then anything else I'd ever bought. I've bought a thousand honeydew melons but only three of them were ripe over the years.

I don't want to buy six or eight bananas, you get them in a package. I just want one or two bananas.

I don't like green fruit. Green is for vegetables.

We used to climb the mountain and pick these when I was a kid. But we didn't call them blueberries we called them "huckleberries."

Strawberries they are all from California these days. I mean if you're from New York, the strawberries should have been grown in New York or New Jersey.

I think a cherry is the only thing that I ever stolen from a store.

One of the great mysteries to me is how they make a grape without any seeds in it. And where is the next generation of grapes coming from if they don't have seeds in them?

Why do they have tomatoes in with the fruits for? I know there are people that argue that tomatoes are a fruit. Tomatoes are a vegetable. I don't care what they say.

I hate to have a sticker on a piece of fruit.

Now here's something I never heard of: a California pluot. What in the world is a pluot?

The three of us here in the office had a contest the other day to see how many fruits we could name. I think Susie won with 27. See how you do!
Written By Andy Rooney

[kelseyV111]

I just want to say that blueberries and huckleberries are actually two different things; they look very similar so I understand the mistake.

[SunDog8259]

I agree the blueberry is likely the best of the lot, especially the wild variety. They can also be frozen. Most cultivated fruit is too sweet for my taste, a banana for example. They didn't come to America until about 1880. Modern fruits are nothing like their ancient cousins from 10,000 years ago. The tomato is a fruit as is one of my favorites the avocado. Andy you could use some moisturizer on those hands, I suggest coconut oil. Is coconut a fruit, nut or a vegetable? LOL

[tommydak]

I am an Andy Roony fan, and have been since I was a kid. "Did you ever...?" Is a staple joke, eh? Well this video hit home with me as I have a website www.BestFruitNow.com where I make suggestions on what fruits at the market are best now.

[vlg9450]

Oh, I forgot one more....the cucumber. But then, if you don''t consider a tomato to be fruit, you surely will balk on the cucumber. (But look it up!)

From the same fruit lover from Texas

[vlg9450]

Mr. Rooney....I took you up on your challenge to name more than 27 fruit, so here are 37: apple, orange, banana, grapes, peach, nectarine, plum, pear, blueberry, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, boysenberry, coconut, pineapple, lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangerine, tangelo, watermelon, cantelope, honeydew melon, papaya, mango, star fruit, kiwi, apricot, cherry, kumkwat, persimmon, fig, cranberry, crabapple, prune, raisin, and tomato.

I know you don''t consider tomato a fruit (but it is), and you may not want to accept prune and raisin since they are dried versions of fruits previously mentioned. However, you will notice I did not include pluots because I had never heard of them before your segment!

From a fruit lover in Texas!

[carolynblocher]

Here are some more:
banana, break fruit, casaba mellon, currents, guava, gooseberry, lichee, marionberry, musk mellon, passion frujit, pommegranite, quince, ugli

[djmitchells]

Dear Mr. Rooney,
We just watched your segment ''Eat More Fruit''. June 22.
We wanted to share the secret of choosing ripe Honey Dew Melons. I was taught by an older gentleman when I was suffering once again, trying to "Choose the right one". We, too, had spent many years in the Russian Roulette of melon picking!
Here the secret...
Don''t pick up the melon just lightly run your palm over the melons. Most will feel smooth, when you feel one that is slightly sticky, that is the one. I hope you have many ripe melons ahead of you!
We always look forward to your portion of 60 minutes.

Thanks for doing what you do, so well!

Jeannie and Deryl Mitchell
Tacoma, Wa

[sungyun]

Maybe it''s just me but... Andy Rooney segment is really getting horrible. He talks about one useless topic after another. It''s especially disappointing when he used to make great social commentaries. Now, he talks about absolutely NOTHING! How many watches he as around the house? What fruit can be found in the local fruit store? Come on...

[hypnotoad72]

Andy, as always your comments are terrific! I recall last year''s segment about going to the movies, and while discussing fruit doesn''t have the same appeal as the underlying comment about how movies used to be events that brought people together, you ALWAYS have something interesting and/or amusing to say.

Thank you.
D. P. Cole

P.S. No fruit should be green (except certain apples, I suppose), tomatoes are indeed vegetables, and lastly I love eating lemons, but I''ll agree - people think I''m strange for enjoying their taste. Still, every time they take a deep whiff of that lemon-scented ammonia, I tell them they are even more strange. :)

[medicinewoman1]

Huckleberries are wild and cannot be grown as a domestic crop. Blubery is a different fruit. I use both huckleberry and blueberry in my medical practice for natural medicine. A correction needs to be made. Huckleberries grow wild in my area of Montana and need to be protected.
Dr. Scyntiya Bower Medicine Woman
medicinewoman.com
[e-mail]
406-821-4372(HERB)

[sungyun]

Maybe it''s just me but... Andy Rooney segment is really getting horrible. He talks about one useless topic after another. It''s especially disappointing when he used to make great social commentaries. Now, he talks about absolutely NOTHING! How many watches he as around the house? What fruit can be found in the local fruit store? Come on...