medium crazy

the best way to eat an orange (by request)

Yesterday a friend suggested that I do a blog post about the best way to eat an orange. At first I laughed, but then it occurred to me that I have actually shown people how I eat an orange, and maybe people don’t always eat them because they think it’s messy and a pain. I have a finely-honed orange eating method, so why not?

I wax poetic about oranges because I think they’re a beautiful, delicious, perfect food, though the same could be said of many fruits. I really think fruit is the most perfect food we have. We all know vegetables are insanely good for us and we should be eating them all day long, but most of us don’t because we generally don’t find them that delicious. We might like some veggies, but we don’t usually bite into them and taste bliss. But fruit is perfect…totally packed with free radical fighting nutrients and so delicious we actually love to eat it. I particularly gush about oranges because I LOVE one in the morning for breakfast every day (and I like them for dessert), they’re tasty pretty much year round (though cheapest and slightly more local in the winter), they’re super healthy, and they’re really easy to eat according to my expert method.

Some people think oranges are only good if the rind is super bright orange, but this isn’t really true. The rind might be more yellowish or even have a couple greenish or brownish spots, but the fruit on the inside is just as awesome as the super orange ones. I actually prefer mine with thinner skin instead of really thick rind because they have more fruit in them. As long as it’s firm and a little heavy, it’s ripe and full of awesome juice.

I never peel an orange and eat it by the slice. It’s too messy and takes too long to bother doing that every day and you get that weirdo white stuff all over your hands. I always quarter my oranges. I think people sometimes end up making a big mess with their orange quarters, but it’s definitely the easiest way to eat an orange if you do it right.

You have to cut it this way: First slice lengthwise–aim for the little stemmy thing.

Next slice your halves the opposite way…what’s the opposite of lengthwise? Widthwise? (If you slice it the wrong way, it will be a pain to eat.)

The orange juice is contained in these tiny little beautiful juice pods…nature’s helpful way of containing the juice so you don’t make a mess.

If you start gnawing randomly at your orange quarter, you’re going to start busting these juice pods open and dripping all over the place. But, helpfully, nature also split the orange into convenient sections.

The trick is to use your front teeth to loosen and eat each of these bite-sized sections. I won’t demonstrate that because it would look stupid, but when you’re done the rind should look nice and clean like this:

If there’s messy orange all over the rind and juice dripping everywhere, you iz doin it wrong. This is the cleanest, quickest way to eat your orange. The only downfall is that it can look a little silly, so I don’t eat oranges this way when I’m at work.

And while I’m on the subject, oranges are awesome because they contain your full daily value of vitamin C (which besides supposedly fighting colds is also a cancer fighter), a good amount of fiber, and folate, potassium, vitamin A, and calcium, and lots of other antioxidant properties that you can’t get from just taking vitamin C. They don’t exactly know why, but they know for sure that eating the whole food is lots better than taking an isolated nutrient. Also, side note: you know all that white stuff you encounter when you peel your orange that you probably peel off because it’s kind of stringy and weird? It’s actually really good for you and you should eat it!

To quote Robert Louis Stevenson:

Every night my prayers I say, And get my dinner every day;

And every day that I’ve been good, I get an orange after food.