Look Who's Eating Raw Food

The 15,000+ pound fresh fruit salad

As Diane Lederman reports for MassLive.com, for the fourth year in a row, the University of Massachusetts is in The Guiness Book of World Records -- this time for the world's largest fresh fruit salad. Under the guidance of Chef Jet Tila (a Food Network personality), 500 volunteers made the salad -- which was served on Labor Day at U. Mass Amherst from a 15-foot-diameter swimming pool -- from 15,291 pounds of fruit, thus shattering last year's record set by Montreal's McGill University for its 11,192-pound fruit salad. 
 
As MassLive.com writes:

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To qualify, the salad had to be fresh, Empric said, and include at least five [types of] fresh fruits. This salad featured 150 varieties – in keeping with the celebration of the university’s sesquicentennial. UMass, 'blew that out of the water,' he said of the varieties.

The salad was created with 20 varieties of apples, five kinds of banana, 14 varieties of berries, three of currants, four of cherries, three kinds of mint, three of grapefruit, 10 kinds of grapes, three kinds of mangoes, 19 different melon varieties, 10 kinds of oranges, three kinds of papayas, 13 of peaches, 12 of pears, two pineapples, nine different plums, three kinds of kiwi, 15 other fruits, plus 500 pounds of orange juice.

That's a lot of people eating raw vegan cuisine!

Half of the fruit was bought locally, and the idea for the salad was inspired by a desire to "promote sustainability, healthy eating and building community,"  
Ken Toong, UMass executive director of auxiliary enterprises, said. He added that "every bit of fruit would be used, either at the barbecue, for breakfast Tuesday in the dining commons, for smoothies, for jams, baked goods and some will be donated Tuesday morning to the Amherst Survival Center," MassLive.com wrote.