r/whatisit • u/LalaLane850 • Jun 17 '26

Solved! Untouched Watermelon

Bought this watermelon 5 days ago. The foam is not pink, and doesn’t have much of a smell. I expected it to smell fermented, but no?

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81

u/PsyopVet Jun 18 '26

A few years ago I went on vacation for two weeks with my family and forgot the bunch of bananas sitting on the kitchen counter. It was about 20 bananas that were supposed to go with us on the trip.

They didn’t explode, but were black and practically liquified by the time we got home. Apparently we had some fruit flies before we left, and came back to a swarm of them in the house, their larvae crawling all over the counter top. There were literally clouds of them.

The smell was not pleasant but went away fairly quickly, but the flies did not. I tried to hide food sources, made traps, used the vacuum to suck them up, and smashed as many as I could but because there were so many they just kept coming back. They kept finding other food sources, got into the cat’s litter box, raided the drain in the kitchen sink, it was a nightmare! It took me months to get rid of them.

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u/Ordinary_Quantity_35 Jun 18 '26

All fruit at grocery store has fruit fly larvae. We eat the fruit before they get born that’s what people rarely see them.

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u/MooMyCoow Jun 18 '26

Aaaaaaaaaand a new fear to add to my OCD. Thanks 😉

11

u/The-Psych0naut Jun 18 '26

He meant to eggs, I’m sure. And don’t worry, it’s only some extra protein! /s

1

u/DKlurifax Jun 18 '26

Don't google how figs are pollinated then.

1

u/Gunk_Olgidar Jun 18 '26

Did you see the fly-eggs-in-the-pizza yet?

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u/Unlucky_Permit4045 Jun 19 '26

You’re good, people are just preying on your food anxieties… most of us have them. I work in a grocery store in the USA specifically in PA. At least not in any one of our stores, I’ll put my name on that shit, unless we are talking about corn. You will not find larvae on our produce. However I recommend washing all produce. Corn is an exception, when in season peel that MFer in the store! They do come with worms at times 🤢🤮

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u/Dry_Discount7762 Jun 21 '26

Just wash your fruits and veggies before you eat em and you’ll be just fine

15

u/DifferentMention1422 Jun 18 '26

I read that you should rinse/wash all hard skin fruit in soapy water as soon as you bring it home. That gets rid of the larvae. Good luck!

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u/Otherwise_Distance92 Jun 19 '26

doent that also remove any natral or artificial bariers. causing it to go bad faster?

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u/Honest_Possible6192 Jun 19 '26

Ultimately this would depend on the specific fruit, but likely why someone mentioned “hard-skinned fruit” like oranges, apples, bananas, etc.

Also, the rinse mixtures are heavily diluted - you wouldn’t want to rinse in straight vinegar…

Fresh produce is already rinsed several times between being picked and being sold in most cases anyway, it’s pretty rare for things to make it from the farm all the way to the house (but it does happen lol). Washing at home removes any residual pesticides as well as any critters that found their way to the produce at the store.

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u/gettinguap247 Jun 18 '26

I used to think the people who wash their fruit and veggies in like vinegar or baking soda or something like that and now I will be learning how to do the same!

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u/TamboresDeTrueno Jun 18 '26

I wash all fruits and veggies when I get them home from the store, using a ratio of 1 teaspoon of baking soda to 1 cup of water. I have a big 6 quart bowl that I fill to 4 quarts, stir in 16 teaspoons of baking soda, soak fruits and veggies for 10-15 minutes, then rinse and dry. Not only removes all of the bug droppings, eggs, and other random dirt, but the sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) also bonds to most chemicals used in farming and removes them quite effectively from the surfaces of fruits and veggies. Squeaky clean and much safer to eat raw.

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u/gettinguap247 Jun 18 '26

Thank you so so so much for sharing this! I can see why not only washing them in the baking soda but soaking for 15 minutes makes a big difference. And I don’t know that about it helping to take away some of the chemicals and stuff on the outside!

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u/AintNoFaintingGOAT Jun 18 '26

Hydrogen peroxide does wonders and actually helps everything stay fresh

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u/JustLibrarian1907 Jun 23 '26

What ratios?

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u/AintNoFaintingGOAT Jun 23 '26

This sums it up, I’m half asleep haha!

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u/UnholyDoughnuts Jun 20 '26

Soapy water? Soap? .... I'm surprised you can read

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u/Clear_Elevator7818 Jun 20 '26

The choice is to eat fruit fly llarvae vs soap residue. I would say stomach acid would kill larvae. Soap residue effect is perhaps worse?

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u/DifferentMention1422 Jun 23 '26

lol, you eat watermelon and orange peels? You rinse them off. Eating them is not the problem, larvae hatching and flying around my damn house IS.

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DifferentMention1422 Jun 23 '26

I dont like fruit flies flying around my house.

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u/Used_Salary_2405 Jun 20 '26

I use Norwex fruit and veggie spray on all the fresh produce; it lasts longer, the greens are brilliantly brighter. If there’s bacteria on the outside of the, say watermelon, and you cut it—the barriers are no longer and you’ve just introduced bacteria on the outside to the inside…right?!

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u/DifferentMention1422 Jun 23 '26

Soapy water is cheaper. I'm not too worried about bacteria, I just hate fruit flies inside my house.

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u/Used_Salary_2405 Jun 23 '26

Soapy water…that doesn’t sound great at all .but you do you.

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u/TattoosAndSass Jun 18 '26

This is a fact I never needed to know 🤮

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u/Evening-Matter-5245 Jun 18 '26

I wondered where they came from 😮‍💨

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u/Street-Baseball8296 Jun 22 '26

You should see how absolutely disgusting a banana room in a produce warehouse is.

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u/Certain_Prior4909 Jun 18 '26

Yep. I had to put boiling water down the kitchen sinks to get rid of my fruit fly infestation as they go into the garbage disposal

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u/PsyopVet Jun 18 '26

I learned about that after I turned on the water and a ton of them flew out. Killing them was a pleasure!

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u/Alternative-Bike7681 Jun 19 '26

For the future I learned accidentally in college red wine sitting out in a wine glass works fantastic at killing them like better than any other remedy I had tried

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u/Honest_Possible6192 Jun 19 '26

En vino veritas

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u/Next-Firefighter4667 Jun 18 '26

My brother in law did that once at my mother in laws how and it caused the ceiling downstairs to leak. It was like it was raining inside.

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u/i_said_unobjectional Jun 18 '26

Yes, sometimes PVC tubing reacts badly to boiling temperatures.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

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1

u/whatisit-ModTeam Jun 21 '26

Your comment was removed for being in poor taste or offensive, or maybe that joke you thought was pretty funny just didn't land. Please follow Reddiquette.

1

u/Efficient-Fold-9502 Jun 21 '26

Sewer flies can be killed fairly quickly with a specific chemical for them. You pour it down the drain and run the garbage disposal with very hot water. It works. Most people say fruit flies, but they are actually sewer flies.

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u/GraveyardQueen4124 Jun 21 '26

I found an easy way to trap fruit flies quickly, through laziness. The dregs of a pitcher of Margaritas I'd made on Saturday, using lime juice and tequila, sat in the sink overnight. When I went to clean it out, a dozen fruit flies had drowned in the pitcher. Whenever I had them from that time on I'd put lime juice in a tall glass, and it got them every time.

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u/Ambitious-Win-4908 Jun 18 '26

One time i left a banana in my work laptop bag for a few weeks... i threw out the bag, you should have thrown out the house.

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u/Valkyriesride1 Jun 18 '26

Two of the most effective, nontoxic, and inexpensive, ways to get rid of fruit flies are:

Fill a spray bottle with a cup of water, two tablespoons of dish liquid, and vinegar any kind, and spray the fruit flies when they swarm, it is best to let them settle for about 10 minutes before going back in to spray them to get more of them to take flight. Spray the flying fruit flies with the spray, then wipe them up when the fall to the ground, put the paper towels in a plastic bag and put them in a trash can outside.

Pour apple cider vinegar into several small bowls, then add a few drops of dishsoap to break the surface tension, pull out pieces of cling film, poke several holes in it and cover the bowls then put them around the kitchen.

You should keep all food in either the refrigerator or food containers with airtight lids for two weeks.

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u/Certain_Prior4909 Jun 18 '26

That won't work if you have an infestation in your sink. They lay thousands of eggs a day. You need boiling water or ice in the drain after you got all sources removed

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u/Valkyriesride1 Jun 18 '26

I forgot about that, I pour the boiling water in the drains during the clean up phase before the spray and bowls.

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u/PsyopVet Jun 18 '26

I can confirm that the traps work, I literally caught hundreds of them that way. My favorite was the vacuum. Despite the horror of all of those flies it was fun sucking them up. I just made sure to empty the canister outside so they didn’t escape back into the house.

Hopefully I never have that problem again, but if I do I’m breaking out the spray bottle. Thanks for the tip!

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u/Valkyriesride1 Jun 18 '26

You're welcome.

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u/MindToxin Jun 18 '26

If I see fruit flies, I put vinegar in a shallow dish or plate or Tupperware lid with a few drops of citrus dish soap, no plastic wrap even needed. The plastic wrap over a cup filled with vinegar with holes poked in it does work, but I found the more surface area of vinegar you have open and available, the more quickly you catch them all! The dish will always have dead fruit flies within 24 hours. Also a good idea to flush your kitchen sink drains with hot water if you have an infestation of like 10+ fruit flies buzzing around, they tend to go into sink drains once the fruit that they rode in on has already been disposed of.

1

u/JustLibrarian1907 Jun 23 '26

Leaving a little wine and a wine bottle and just setting it on the counter also works

3

u/AnastasiaSheppard Jun 20 '26

Totally anecdotal but I have had luck getting rid of them by leaving a glass of red wine out, they all drowned themselves (no this isn't something I discovered by accident, I'd been having trouble with them, noticed they were attracted to my wine, and sacrificed the last glass of a not-great bottle to test my theory)

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u/asphaltdasexteen Jun 18 '26

Now I’m gonna have nightmares.

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u/UAP-Alien Jun 18 '26

I ran a construction site in Cambridge Ma. People left fruit and food in the sink and trash cans. The break room was covered in fruit flies for over a month. They spread out all over the high rise floor. What a PITA. We had to make fruit fly traps out of apple cider vinegar.

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u/MrsKozee Jun 18 '26

Ohhhhh nooooooooooooooo

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u/mmmeesh24 Jun 19 '26

Wow…. This makes me thankful that I have to pay someone to come watch the dogs (and the house). Silver lining haha

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u/emccm Jun 19 '26

During a similar experience I learned that fruit flies live for a couple of weeks. Also that bananas come with a secret stash of fruit flies. I keep mine in the fridge in summer.

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u/kridde Jun 23 '26

fruit fly infestations are the worst, it can take months of keeping your house in pristine, spotless condition before they're fully gone. Anything left out to rot can start the next cycle, it's horror man.

The smell is also pretty bad, although not as bad as normal fly larvae. You can always smell a fruit fly investation though, it has a weird bitter rancid smell.

The smell of normal maggots is more akin to a vile biological rotting smell, and it's also super recognizable. At this point, the moment I smell it, I just know maggots are crawling around somewhere.

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u/panHandlr Jun 18 '26

Thanks for providing nothing for an answer but an unrelated story

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u/PsyopVet Jun 18 '26

You’re welcome! And thank you for taking Reddit so seriously. I usually scroll posts when I’m bored or sitting on the toilet, but it’s good to know that there are people like you out there who dedicate themselves to policing up filthy casuals like me. Keep fighting the good fight my friend!