What makes fruit ripen?
Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist.
Jam:And I'm not.
Melissa:And welcome to chemistry for your life.
Jam:The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.
Melissa:Jim, how are you doing today?
Jam:I'm good. I've got coffee. It's a Bearable temperature outside here in Texas, and I'm doing well. How about you?
Melissa:I'm great. I'm at my sister's house. The last week before school starts, I decided to come social distance with her. Nice. Well, I guess, Social distance from the world with her.
Melissa:Mhmm. So I'm looking out over her window for her back porch, and there's trees, and it's just gorgeous.
Jam:Nice. What if I was like, mostly, you know, that's how how it works. Right? Yeah. Social distance with somebody.
Jam:It actually it means that you're supposed to be distanced from Nem.
Melissa:Oh. Oh, that's out. I've been doing it wrong this whole time. So, I've had a really good week here, and it's a little bit of a lighter week before school starts. So I'm I'm pretty I'm soaking it up.
Melissa:I'm enjoying it. It's cooler here than it is in Texas. So
Jam:Yeah. Awesome. Very cool.
Melissa:Well, speaking of my sister, I was Looking up this week's topic, and
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:We're outside on the back porch, and I was like, wow. This week's topic is ripe with information Mhmm. Instead of ripe because we're talking about how does fruit get ripe.
Jam:Nice. I
Melissa:love Ripe with information.
Jam:Also, very smooth move. Thinking of a pun about the topic before I have even told the topic. Yeah. Total head start there.
Melissa:I thought about it while I was writing.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And this is the first time I've thought of a pun on my own, I think maybe ever. Yeah. So
Jam:Listener Sam did point out to us that you said upon in the fire episode that
Melissa:On accident.
Jam:On accident that neither of us noticed in the moment. I did notice it when I was editing it later, but Neither of us, we do did both totally miss it during the recording.
Melissa:And once listener, Shayl, wrote in about how you missed the century Magazine pun cassette. I said it'd been around for a long time.
Jam:Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Dang. So you guys are keeping us on our toes, noticing the puns that we miss.
Melissa:Sending those corrections in. Okay. So what makes fruit get ripe? Do you know, Jam? Do you know anything about Fruit getting riper and why?
Jam:Okay. I know just a little bit. So I know
Melissa:lay it on me.
Jam:I know that some fruits, If you put them maybe it's all of them. I don't know. That part. You put them in a, like, paper bag together, that something they release helps ripen them. And I feel like I have heard what that is even called, Trying to dig in my brain and find out what it is.
Jam:Is there an ETH in there?
Melissa:There is an ETH. Do you want me to say the word?
Jam:Yes, please.
Melissa:Ethylene gas.
Jam:Dang. That was hanging out somewhere in my brain somewhere.
Melissa:That was. I'm very impressed.
Jam:But I don't know why they released it. I don't know anything about that. So there's a lot I don't know.
Melissa:Well, there's also a lot that scientists don't know.
Jam:Woah.
Melissa:As usual, as we're finding is more and more common, There's a level of complexity to the reppining of fruit that we maybe don't fully understand at this time. So one thing we do know is we, I say, I didn't study this. One thing Fruit scientists, whatever their official name is, no, is some fruits, when they're going through the ripening process, generate Ethylene gas, and that is what you is used to ripen it. They respond. They have a sensitivity to ethylene gas.
Melissa:Mhmm. There's They're classified into 2 categories, and the ones that produce and respond to ethylene gas are called climacteric. Climacteric. Non climacteric. I think I'm saying that right, hopefully.
Melissa:And then nonclimacteric fruits don't respond to ethylene gas.
Jam:Interesting. Mhmm.
Melissa:And even that line, I saw a paper that was saying that that is a fuzzier line than we have maybe Previously thought. And that maybe some of those others do respond to some degree to ethylene gas. Maybe they just don't produce it.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:To even that's a little gray and fuzzy, but that's the generally accepted language right now around that. Hey. And I know. It I was shocked by how easy and abundant this information was. It was really fun.
Melissa:I think there are some things I think oh, yeah. There was gonna be a ton of information about cast iron pans, and there was nothing. Mhmm. But then, it was fruit ripen. I thought we're not gonna find very much on this, and there was tons.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:So that was pretty exciting. Yeah. But, again, One of the things that I found is that it's not completely clear why. At some point, the fruit, When it's ready, when the time is right, the fruit knows to start producing ethylene gas, and that causes it to ripen.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And the mechanism by which it ripens is also not clear. I couldn't find any information on that either. So they there was a paper that talked about they they found that a switch flipped, and I think it's in the genetics somewhere.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:There's a a indicator that it's time to turn on the ethylene gas production, but IU is even not clear on reading that paper What the switch that flipped was. So I I was even a little bit confused reading that paper that it didn't seem black
Jam:and white that
Melissa:this is the thing that does it or it's on this part of the genome or I there was not anything really clear.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Of course, I'm not a biologist. So Biologists, if you wanna peruse that paper and get back to me, that would be great. But the big message I got was that it's not incredibly clear. Yeah. But we can talk about the ethylene gas itself.
Melissa:Mhmm. So Does ethyl sound familiar to you?
Jam:Like ethanol?
Melissa:Mhmm. Yeah. So in the alcohol that's so exciting. I'm so glad you remembered. So in the alcohol episode, we Talked about how there's these prefixes that mean the number of carbons.
Melissa:So Mhmm. Methyl is 1. If you have methane or methanol, that meth means 1. Eth means 2 carbons. Prop means 3 carbons.
Melissa:But means 4 carbons. And then after that, it's the same As you're used to, pentane, heptane, hexane. You know? Mhmm. The ones that you probably grew up knowing.
Jam:Got it. Got it.
Melissa:So in this case, eth means there's 2 carbons.
Jam:K.
Melissa:Okay. The ene Means that there's a double bond.
Jam:K.
Melissa:So ethylene gas is 2 carbons that are double bonded each other, and then the rest of the bonds they need are filled in by hydrogen.
Jam:K.
Melissa:So here is a picture of the ethylene gas. Mhmm.
Jam:Oh, okay.
Melissa:2 carbons double bonded with hydrogens around it.
Jam:And the carbons Want. So it's like each carbon has 2 hydrogens on it, and then Mhmm. The 2 carbons are double bonded to each other.
Melissa:Right.
Jam:And Carbon wants to have 4 Bonds to stuff? Like, it wants to have 4 things?
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So that's that's your ethylene gas, and that's an organic Gas Mhmm. Organic chemistry is responsible, again, for making this fruit taste delicious and have a nice texture. Way to go, organic chemistry. So that's what the fruits generate that ripen them, that Something in their genetic sequence tells them what to do. Mhmm.
Melissa:But it's not just ripening. It also is released when the plant is stressed. I thought this was so interesting. So if leaf gets attacked or damaged, The ethylene process will kick off, and it will increase the process of delay. Mhmm.
Melissa:What? It will increase the process of decay, so it causes those damaged parts to wither away and then die. So the maturing of the fruit then progresses onto the decay of the fruit. So ethylene is involved not only in maturing, but also in Stress of plants.
Jam:Oh, weird.
Melissa:It's almost like an aging process.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:So they first observed the side effects of that when there was some trees that were close to street lamps. I think it was in the 1800. Mhmm. And those trees had leaves that were withering and dying much faster. They were Expressing their stress hormone of ethylene gas, and the parts that were closer to the gas would wither up and fall off faster than ones that were further away.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Isn't that interesting?
Jam:Yes. Weird.
Melissa:That was the first time they observed the impacts of ethylene on plants.
Jam:Gosh. That's crazy.
Melissa:Mhmm. So once scientists realize this, of course, industries harness the power of ethylene gas, and they will use ethylene gas in commercial ripening of fruit. So Fruits that are climacteric, they'll pick them before they're fully mature, and then they'll expose them to ethylene gas to mature them at the exact moment they want them to mature.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:So think of how you've seen green bananas.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:They can expose them to the ethylene gas and start that process right as they're headed out to the store, and they'll start the maturing process from there. But ethylene gas is kind of expensive. Think it's created as a byproduct of using natural gas.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So it's can be expensive to make. It's flammable, so you don't really wanna Have a lot of it on hand. People have died in ethylene gas explosions in fruit factories before.
Jam:Yikes. Dang, dude.
Melissa:Mhmm. Fruit storage warehouses maybe. That's a thing that has happened.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So scientists doing amazing work and have engineered bacteria to produce Ethylene as a byproduct of a food that they're getting. Ah. They engineered e coli to produce ethylene gas. It's a new technology. It's a paper that came out just recently in the past few years.
Melissa:Incredible to me that they're able to do that. God. Instead of having to go find sources of natural gas and use that to get our ethylene through a big manufacturing process that's not great for the environment, They can just feed some bacteria, a a byproduct of it's actually a byproduct of another reaction. It's a Intermediate for creating vitamin c. Mhmm.
Melissa:Feed that to bacteria, and then the bacteria can make ethylene gas for us in a much Safer, more controlled environment.
Jam:That's crazy. So they just have ways of, like is it is it lighter than typical air so they can just catch it as it's Been created, or how's that part work?
Melissa:Well, this was in the lab, so it was in the testing phase. So I don't think it's been scaled up for commercial use yet, but they had the bacteria in an Erlenmeyer flask, so that's the one that's like a cone shape.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And then they had tubing to a container that was holding the fruit, and they saw ripening of the fruit After a period of days exposed to the bacteria.
Jam:Nice thing. That's crazy. I thought at first, I thought you meant that it was already being used, but that's, like, New. Relatively new info. That's awesome.
Melissa:Yeah. Isn't that so cool?
Jam:Yeah. Cash.
Melissa:So not only is making it expensive, but measuring is expensive. And measuring the amount of ethylene gas that Fruits are producing is the best way to know what stage of maturity they're in from as they ripen. And scientists also figured out a way to do that more easily in a more cost effective and time Sensitive way. So right now, they would have to send it off to lab. It could take a long time.
Melissa:It could be really expensive. Uh-huh. So there were some chemist who Figured out they could capture the gas and expose it to a catalyst that made a visual response
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:To the presence of the gas, and they could measure the light Absorbed and readmitted by that catalyst
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And be able to measure the amount of ethylene gas given off by fruit at any given time in real time, and that is pretty cost effective way. It's very similar to it's not exactly the same, but similar to how They do breathalyzers, which that can be an episode all on a film. Seriously. Yikes.
Jam:Wow. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Melissa:So That to me was a very exciting paper to read because I saw that and immediately thought, oh, this would be pretty easy to Take this technology and get it to a handheld version. And for people who are in the commercial industry or agricultural students who are the ripeness of fruit for whatever reason to be able to quickly test that ethylene that's being given off rather than have it be this Insane expensive process. I mean, the actual engineering of the instruments and all that would be expensive. But once you've created that technology
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:I think that could be a handheld, Much more cost effective method of real time measurement that could be repeated over and over.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Isn't that so cool?
Jam:That's way cool. It'll probably just make a huge difference to have Tons of data about how fast different fruits let off ethylene gas and how it increases over time as they get closer to, like, You know, decay, you know, rotting kinda thing or whatever.
Melissa:Right. And
Jam:then you just have all the information where you might not always need to measure it. You'd know that, Yeah. The average, you know, bunch of bananas or the average peach or whatever gets up this much at this rate, and it increases by this amount over this many hours or whatever. That's just like Right. Seems like it'd be so valuable to have that information.
Melissa:And it could, maybe in the long term, Contribute to us controlling our food waste. So we know food waste isn't great. When, we had the episode about sea level rise when Renee was here. She talked about how food waste can contribute to sea level rise because every piece of fruit that's or every piece of food that's transported and not eaten is wasted transport. So if we could, Long term, figure out exactly how much gas is coming off at exactly the right time to transport it, and we could maybe optimize that food transport and storage process Mhmm.
Melissa:To be able to minimize food waste even more than we're minimizing it right now, which is really exciting. There are a lot of implications to this kinda research that I think is really cool.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Dang. Wow.
Melissa:So I have A few pieces of information, a few fun facts about how this impacts you. But do you wanna pause here and give me a little Rendown of what you learned so far?
Jam:Yes. I'd love to. Here's a question I have that kind of affects my understanding. Is the gas Actually maybe I already said this, but is it actually causing things to break down, or is it more like a signal to the fruit to start making Changes. How how does that work?
Melissa:I don't think we know everything. I think it is Probably a combination. So something in the fruit signals for the breakdown to start happening, and it seems that the ethylene gas itself does also hasten that process somehow.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:But I I wasn't real clear on the details. So it seems that it both produces that gas
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:As maybe a signal, but also is sensitive to that gas. So if it comes externally, it will also start breaking things down. So I looked for the chemical reaction of ethylene with fruit. Mhmm. That's so broad, though.
Melissa:You know? It's like Which fruit, what compounds and fruit. You know? And so I couldn't get real clear on the mechanism Mhmm. Of how the ethylene ripen the fruit Just that it did.
Melissa:Right. And I just don't know if we know enough right now. But, also, it could be that I didn't know how to look for the right thing because it's that's almost biochemistry, which is out of my area Yeah. A little bit.
Jam:So either way, we can point to 1 specific gas, ethylene gas, that Plays the lead role in this scenario.
Melissa:A 100%. Leading lady, ethylene gas.
Jam:Lady ethylene.
Melissa:That sounds really like a real name.
Jam:It does. Like, Lady Underline from, mister Rogers.
Melissa:Oh, yeah.
Jam:And
Melissa:Oh, no. It's Averlyn.
Jam:Averlyn. Averlyn.
Melissa:Averlyn something.
Jam:Yeah. So we've got lady ethylene. She's got 2 carbons that are double bonded together. Carbons want Carbons have 4 arms, so they want each arm to hold something if they can. And so 2 of their forearms you know, forearms, obviously.
Jam:It's very relatable. 2 of their forearms are holding each other, And then they've got these other 2 arms that are all holding hydrogens.
Melissa:Yep.
Jam:And so it is a gas that is both Even off of fruit as the fruit naturally ripens, if you just had one thing of fruit just set on a counter, it would ripen on its own. And it would be releasing ethylene gas as it's doing that just naturally. But then, also, if you had a way of on purpose introducing ethylene gas to a peach
Melissa:For example, Putting it in a bag with a banana who's also expressing ethylene gas Mhmm. Like you mentioned.
Jam:Then they would Swap ethylene gas and ripen faster. Mhmm. And so you have the benefit of the fact that they release it can then also help it ripen faster. So, say, having, Like, 12 peaches in a bag like we had last week, and they all ripen very fast. A little too fast, actually.
Melissa:Oh, no. And now you know the chemistry of why.
Jam:And now we know the chemistry of why. Yeah. We did literally have tons of peaches in a bag that rapid fast than we wanted them to, so That was a bummer, but we did get to enjoy a good amount of them that were very ripe and tasty. The, I guess, the other part that you that you talked about that's Not a specific lesson to it or whatever, but that they are working on ways to create, generate, produce Ethylene gas is byproducts of other things that are much more cost effective and potentially Ecologically friendly. Mhmm.
Jam:Like, getting bacteria to sort of create it, as a byproduct of Eating other stuff. Just ways that are not just, like, straight up making ethylene gas.
Melissa:Right. And that's amazing to me as because when I think of making something, I think, okay. You can either harness it from its natural environment or you can react to other things to make it. You know? But in this case, They're not using chemicals to make it.
Melissa:They're feeding something to a bacteria, and that bacteria is doing the synthetic work for you, which is amazing. And we have a Professor at UNT who just joined our faculty who's doing similar research.
Jam:So Oh, nice.
Melissa:Pretty incredible to me.
Jam:UNT's on the cusp on the On the bleeding bleeding edge of this fruity topic. Dude, that's really cool. Is there anything I missed that we talked about?
Melissa:I don't think so. Just that also they use it in industry, not just in your house, but in your commercial Mhmm. Fruit Storage facilities, I think, ensure the exposure of ethylene at the right time.
Jam:Oh, and I guess So
Melissa:I wasn't
Jam:depriving the fruit of it on purpose so that it doesn't ripen. So the kinda opposite would be then to, like, prevent it from having the things that Kind of signal it or cause it to ripen so that it can get all the way to our grocery store.
Melissa:So that was pretty cool, I thought that was pretty cool.
Jam:Yeah. That's crazy. It's just crazy that it's all one thing. It's like, introduce this, and it ripens, keep it away, and it doesn't Just all it's it's it it seems like rarely in nature does it come down to one Main leading lady like that. You know?
Melissa:But there was some studies that said if you or one paper that said if you Expose it to ethylene gas way too soon, it won't do anything. Oh. So it has to be a little bit ready. There's a sweet spot. That's that genetic Switch I was talking about.
Jam:Right. Right. Right. I missed that part. Yeah.
Melissa:So there is some amount of genetics also that goes into it, but ethylene seems to be the leading lady for sure. And there's a lot that we don't know yet, and maybe in 10 years, I'll do a new episode called Everything we've learned about fruit in the last 10 years. But from what I could tell is it's a very complex process that is a lot of mystery around it still, but that it's clear that ethylene plays a major role.
Jam:Dang. Awesome. Love that there's some mystery. It's kinda like some of the other episodes we've had where it's like, Mhmm. There's tragedy.
Jam:There's love. There's mystery. There's violence. There's rotting fruit, So there's doubt.
Melissa:Yeah. I think it's I think it's really fun to to come on these things where there's a lot left to learn, but there is Already a lot Mhmm. That we know. This is fun. Okay.
Melissa:So how does this impact you? One main thing is how you store your fruit matters. Mhmm. So for these, is what they're called, fruits, Putting them in cold places before they have fully matured is going to bland or stunt the flavor. So I found a really nice statement from faculty in extension work.
Melissa:So that's the same kind of work that We had Renee on. She talked about extending the science from the scientists to decision makers. These people Specialized in that same thing but for food science. So they take the food science and extend it to the people who are making decisions, including Human beings that eat their food.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Here's a quote. It was so perfect. If not left to fully mature, That can result in crunchy peaches, nectarines, plums, green starchy bananas, and bland tasting cantaloupe. Many consumers are used to this condition and taste and think that's the way it's supposed to be. However, if left to room temperature for Few days, the fruit can develop more flavor and sweetness.
Melissa:Peaches, nectarines, plums reach optimum flavor when soft juicy. Bananas reach optimum flavor when they're yellow and have brown speckling on the skin, and cantaloupe on the skin is somewhat soft. So I thought that was cool because, essentially, even though they've arrived in your home, they're not fully ripened. They haven't Produce the amount of ethylene gas or been exposed to the amount of ethylene gas that they need to to fully ripen. So if you leave them on your counter for a few days, That's the best.
Melissa:Yeah. And it's that ethylene gas that's doing work as it sits on your counter.
Jam:That's so interesting. We actually have this chart thing you. I'm not sure where it came from maybe from one of my roommates, but this little chart thing on our fridge that says where you should store which fruits, I would Mhmm. Not be surprised if it's based on the climacteric deal because the ones that says to store in the fridge, It must be that that doesn't harm them. In fact, probably just lengthens their life, but doesn't have negative effects on the flavor.
Jam:And the one that says to not store in there Must be in the category you're talking about. Haven't really studied that chart a lot, but I'd be interested to go look after hear what you just said.
Melissa:Well, I do have a link to the Michigan State Extension website, and they have a list of climacteric and non climacteric fruits that you can peruse for your own information Nice. In the links, in our references, so you can check that out. And they'll be happy because that's their job. They want that information to reach people.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:And the other thing is there are some products on the market that claim to keep your fruit fresh longer.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:There's one pretty famous one called Blue Apple. There are some other ones that are, less well known. Mhmm. Those actually can work. Well But you have to use them in the right way.
Melissa:So they absorb ethylene gas, Which would mean they wouldn't over ripen fruit when you put them in with your fruit. Uh-huh. But you wanted to get to the level of maturity first before you'd put it in there is my piece of advice. But the way they work is they have a pretty famous absorbent known as zeolite. I worked with that when I was in undergrad.
Melissa:It absorbs a lot of stuff. And I think their zeolite, they Actually did a further reaction to make it to where it breaks down the ethylene gas. So it's a lot longer. This specific one, the blue apple, they claim it's a lot longer lasting, sting. And I think it probably is because it's not just capturing the gas, but it's also reacting with the gas to make some innocuous byproduct.
Jam:Oh, interesting.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Man, I So I really thought you're gonna say there's this thing people say can keep your fruit fresh longer, And it doesn't work, and it's bad for you and the environment or whatever. Which maybe it could be, but I did not expect you to say that it works, which that's surprising to me.
Melissa:Yeah. It theoretically, it should work. I have not taken this and tested it on my own, obviously, so I don't know, but the theory behind it is that it absorbs ethylene gas, which ethylene gas does ripen fruit. Yeah. It wouldn't have an effect on the fruits that aren't affected by ethylene gas, but if you maybe had that bag of plums was it plums you had or peaches?
Jam:Peaches.
Melissa:You had the bag of peaches and it got to the perfect amount of ripeness and you threw it in with that blue apple, it could have absorbed the excess Ethylene gas and kept them
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:From getting overripe, or you could have separated them out from each other. That probably would have worked
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Well too. So there is some science to back those things. I think probably the different types of absorbent they use would impact it differently, but it It's scientifically backed. There is some theory to say, this probably work. I don't know how well.
Melissa:I haven't tested them myself, but it's logical. And If it works the way it says it does, I could see how it would lengthen the life of your fruit once it reads reaches peak maturity.
Jam:Thing. Wow. That's crazy. Let's check that out.
Melissa:So that's it. That's how fruit gets ripe.
Jam:Thing. It's right under our noses. It's right inside the fruit itself, sort of.
Melissa:I know I kinda wanna smell just plain ethylene gas because they said it has a sweet aroma, and I wonder if it's a smell we associate with Ripe fruit. Right.
Jam:If it's not even really that fruity of a smell, but just sweet, and then it's like, oh
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:That's what I smell.
Melissa:That's a oh, that's the smell of a fresh banana or something. Yeah. Well, that's it. That's the science I have for you. So Now you know about the ripening of fruit and this mysterious thing that that causes our bananas to go brown.
Jam:Nice Dang. That's crazy. I love it. I love fruit. I love when fruit tastes good and not when it tastes bad.
Jam:And so I can directly apply this to my life.
Melissa:Well, do you have, any fun things from your life this week that you'd like to share?
Jam:I do. I have a fun thing That is fun for me and interesting for me and nerdy and boring to probably most of you, and I'm very sorry.
Melissa:There's a subset of listeners who love your interesting to you thing, so I think it's gonna be okay.
Jam:Okay. Good. So I this week, as you guys know, My wife and I have a baby. He is a little over 2 months. One of the things that's hard about having a baby that probably anyone could have told me, is finances and budgeting and having to just adjust to like, oh, there's another thing that costs money that I haven't had to, like, really think about what this gonna look like before or whatever.
Jam:And I'm not here to tell you how to do that and and how to actually successfully do that because I don't know yet. But I will say that I switched I was like, I just need to look at some different options of budgeting apps, And so I switched apps. This is not a paid sponsorship, although I wish it was. And I I started looking at different apps and trying different ones, and I tried This one called you need a budget. I finally tried it because I was like, this seems like a good time to try different things.
Jam:Seems like it wouldn't hurt. Was just doing different trials of apps and stuff, and I will say that it is so cool and great, And I love it so much that I truly it is the exciting thing for me to share This week, it's not me picking a random thing. This is was clearly the thing going into recording this episode that I was excited to share about it. As lame as that sounds.
Melissa:Well, that convinced me. I'm gonna go check it out. I need a budget. I have a budget, but I'm not great at sticking to it. And, You know, times are hard right now, so I would love to find a new budget.
Melissa:That'd be great.
Jam:So I'll tell you the 2 things that are, Briefly that are unique about it that I think are worth checking out.
Melissa:Okay.
Jam:One is that their philosophy is that you budget the money you currently have, Not forecasting the month. You do, like, forecast in terms of knowing what things are going to cost. But Mhmm. The you budget the money you have right now So that you're not kind of wishful about, oh, I'm I'm gonna probably have this much money for groceries. It's like, well, Don't plan on money you don't have yet, basically, is the idea.
Melissa:Okay. Okay.
Jam:The other thing is that when you have Transactions come in. You have to put them places. They don't make it easy to to not categorize them. They force you to categorize. And even if it's something that you have every month, say, like, your Netflix subscription or something, it makes you look at it and click a check mark that says you approve it.
Jam:And if it goes over budget in some category, it makes you find money somewhere else to put there. So if it's like Wow. You spent too much on coffee this month, which is definitely likely for me. Where are you gonna pull the money from to fix this? It doesn't let you just let things be off balance all the time.
Melissa:Wow. Okay. That sounds good. I'll check that out.
Jam:The biggest downside is that it does cost money, but I would say that it is To me, I've I'm doing a free trial, but it seems worth it to me. It also seems that the kind of things that every budget app should do. So that's mine. I'll stop it there because that's a lot of budget finance talk for any of those who don't like that stuff or whatever. But if anyone wants to nerd out about YNAB with me.
Jam:Totally DM us. I'll leave it there and ask you, Melissa, what has been happening in your week?
Melissa:Well, I already told you about coming to my sister's house
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Which is a happy thing in and of itself.
Jam:Right. And because of the bylaws of our camp of our podcast, that's the only happy thing you can share.
Melissa:Nope. I'm gonna sneak another one in there, which is Before I left on Monday, a friend of mine sent me a, yay. You passed your qualifying exam gift, and it was Five succulents that came shipped from a succulent company. Mhmm. And 2 of them were succulents that I had seen and wanted in the asked.
Melissa:Ah. And they're pretty hard to find just at callaways. One's called the string of raindrops, And one's called a Lithops, which has really unique growing cycle. And she sent them to me, And I was really excited, and they look so cute on my windowsill and significantly increased my succulent family, and I am really happy about them, and I planted them, waited 3 days, watered them, and then left. Mhmm.
Melissa:So you're supposed to wait a week, but I was either gonna wait much longer than a week before their 1st watering or just 3 days. So I went with that, which I'm a little nervous about, but we'll see what happens when I get back. And I'm really excited to come home and look at them, and I'm really excited to post pictures of them. As soon as I planted them and got them all in their windowsill homes, I took pictures and knew that that was gonna be my happy thing for the week. So Dude,
Jam:that is awesome. Very cool.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:That's perfect. And they couldn't have known, right, that that was The those were ones that you wanted, at least 2 of them?
Melissa:No. She knew that I love succulents, but she did not know how much I coveted, Especially the string of raindrops. I wanted a string of pearls or a string of bananas or a string of raindrops for so long. So she somehow read my heart and found the exact right gift. It was the nicest gift.
Melissa:So That's awesome. I highly recommend sending succulents to people because I think that is a unique but fun present.
Jam:That's awesome. Very cool.
Melissa:Well, thank you, Jam, for coming and learning about Fruit and listening to me talk about my plants and teaching us about budgets. This is a very educational week.
Jam:Yeah. It really is. Tune in next time for our bonus episode. Jam walks you through creating a budget.
Melissa:It's like we just have
Jam:a really hard, weird pivot. It's like We're the chemistry financial podcast you'd never knew that you wanted.
Melissa:We changed our whole mission statement.
Jam:Well, thanks for teaching us and especially on such an interesting and very mysterious topic. Melissa and I have a lot of ideas for topics like this of chemistry in everyday life, but we wanna hear from you. If you have questions or ideas, you can reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook at chem for your life. That's chem, f o r, your life, to share your thoughts and ideas. If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, Go to kodashfi.com/chem for your life, and don't have the cost of a cup of coffee.
Jam:If you're not able to donate, you can help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and rating and writing a review on Apple Podcasts. That helps us to be able to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Collini and Jam Robinson. References for this episode can be found in our show notes or on our website. Jam Robinson is our producer, and we'd like to give a special thanks to A. Colini and Em Quapel who reviewed this episode.
