October 26th is National Pumpkin Day! You may have even celebrated without purposely doing so; it is hard to escape this gourd in October. Maybe a candle, lotion, candy corn, Jack-O-Lantern, or latte? I don't have class on Thursdays, so I enjoy extra time at home and sat out in the sun and leaves for a little me time, followed by Mom and Dad gone to the construction site (aka our new house--it is a house now, not just dirt!), I had dinner with me and watched the movie, too.
I didn't eat pumpkin this meal (but I did with breakfast!), but I roasted a butternut squash, and they're cousins. On that note, I learned all kinds of things about pumpkins over the past few weeks as I prepared for my informative speech in one of my classes! We were told that a good topic should be relevant to our audience, the time of year, society, etc., important to us, and interesting in general, so considering it is October and I am a young person, what more relevant that pumpkins!?
My favorite kind of school work is the kind that is applicable to real life, so I thought it would be interesting to share with others, too! I hope you learn something new about this plant today!
This time of year there is one fruit that is especially
popular. It shows up everywhere from ice cream shops to nursing homes, it’s
eaten, displayed, and even played with. Who has any guesses what this fruit is?
…… Yes! Pumpkin is a fruit!
I may
not have a pumpkin patch in my back yard, but I was the star in my first grade
class play as “the littlest pumpkin,” and now I have done my research to really
know more.
So now
I will tell you about the history, uses, and popularity of pumpkins.
HISTORY:
Like we just learned a
minute ago, pumpkins are technically fruits, not vegetables. They are part of
the gourd family along with cucumbers and squash. The name pumpkin comes from
the Greek word “pepon” which means “large melon.” They are native to Central
America and Mexico, but are now grown on 6 continents. Over 90% of the
processed pumpkins in America come from Illinois, according to the University
of Illinois’s website.
Native
Americans were the first people in our country to make use of pumpkins by
weaving them into mats and slicing strips to roast over a fire to eat.
Colonists
created the first pumpkin pies, though quite different from what we bake today.
They sliced the top off, took the seeds out, and filled it with milk, honey,
and spices, then baked it in hot ashes.
Today’s
Jack-O-Lanterns also have an interesting evolution from long ago in an old
Irish myth. A man named Stingy Jack was drinking and made a wager with the
devil over who would pay for it. Because the devil vowed not to take his soul,
but God wouldn’t let him in heaven either, Stingy Jack was left with only a
light to guide him as he wandered the earth ever since, referred to as “Jack of
the Lantern” which was shortened to today’s Jack-O-Lantern. Traditionally,
these were carved from turnips or potatoes to scare away evil spirits, but when
Irish immigrants came to America, they realized pumpkin are the perfect plant
to use.
America
gets pumpkin fever when fall rolls around, but America can’t take the credit
for this plant.
USES:
Now
that we know how pumpkins got here, let’s talk about what they are used for.
Not
only are they tasty and trendy, they’re healthy, too!
Pumpkins
contain more potassium than bananas, which helps balance electrolytes.
Vitamin
C and zinc help your immune system.
The
fiber in pumpkins helps keep you full and your heart healthy, and the large
dose of vitamin A enhances your vision.
If you
have some pumpkin with your turkey on Thanksgiving, all that tryptophan may put
you right to sleep!
Pumpkins
get their orange color from beta-carotene, that, along with other antioxidants,
help fight certain diseases and cancers.
You can
even eat the seeds, which provide magnesium and copper, and their protein and
healthy fats combined with the carbs in raw pumpkin basically make it a
complete meal by itself.
Over 40
varieties exist, but Autumn Gold is usually considered the best for being the
stereotypical orange gourd. Other types and their best uses are usually labeled
at the store.
Beyond
the plain pumpkin, they are displayed for looks and used as the model for all
kinds of home décor. I mean, have you ever walked in Hobby Lobby?
Carving
Jack-O-Lanterns is one of the seasonal traditions, and more recently, simply
painting them is, too.
Even
bath and body brands utilize pumpkin in seasonal air fresheners, candles, and
lotions.
One of
the first things people think of now with pumpkin season is the plethora of
food. There’s pumpkin doughnuts, muffins, pancakes, oatmeal, cereal, milk, and
coffee for breakfast; yogurt, cream cheese, bread, and peanut butter for lunch;
salsa, chips, popcorn, crackers, granola bars for snacks; soups and casseroles
for dinner; all the way to cake, ice cream, cookies, cheesecake, and milkshakes
for dessert. Shoot, you can even get pumpkin flavored chewing gum, cough drops,
and beer. Basically, if you want pumpkin, you can find it in any food form this
time of year.
People
today also use pumpkins for a source of entertainment, as there are pumpkin
patches, festivals, and competitions across the country.
So if
you ever thought that pumpkin was simply a plant, now you see there is almost
nothing a pumpkin cannot do.
POPULARITY:
Now the
simple pumpkin has basically gained the popularity of a celebrity. It is an
icon of the fall season. But it has not always been that way. The popularity of
the pumpkin as we know it today rose thanks to social media.
The
famous drink, the pumpkin spice latte, has been promoted so heavily by
Starbucks, that it has been personified on Twitter and Instagram with the
handle @TheRealPSL with over 114 and 37 thousand followers, respectively.
And as
of the middle of this month, #PumpkinSpice has well over 1 million posts.
Caramel apples have less than ¾ of that.
According
to BusinessInsider.com, pumpkin spice foods and drinks provide over $500
million in annual sales.
The
grocery store Trader Joe’s takes one of the leading roles in producing and
selling pumpkin products, many that people will go especially to that store to
get, myself am guilty.
Outside
of eating and drinking them, growing and celebrating them is even a huge
activity now, culminating at many fall festivals around the country. Can you
imagine growing a pumpkin that weighed 1810 pounds? History.com announced that
is the weight of the heaviest pumpkin on record right now, grown by a man in
Minnesota.
But the
largest pie beats even that. Recorded by the World Record Academy, it was 3699
pounds!
This
visual from Google Trends can help you see how much we glamorize this gourd
during the few fall months. You can see the sharp peak the week of Halloween,
then a sharp decline afterwards with a smaller peak the week of Thanksgiving.
The top
related searches are squash, pumpkin patch, recipes, pie, and Jack-O-Lantern,
but to my surprise, the famous PSL was #17.
Interest
by region shows that the pumpkin craze is highly westernized, as America,
Australia, and Canada are in the 100th, 99th, and 87th
percentile.
So if
you feel like pumpkins are everywhere you go right now…they are.
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Now we know more about the pumpkin
beyond that it is a trendy fall food; we know where it came from, what it is
used for, and how popular it is.
Sorry
to break it to you, but you can’t get your daily servings of fruit from your
morning latte, but you can from a can.
