Many people enjoy onions in their meal but don't enjoy the tears that come along with cutting them. A new product is promising to cut down on the burning eyes during meal prep.
Sunions are being marketed as America’s first tearless and sweet onions. According to the company that makes them, Sunions were cultivated through a natural cross-breeding program over the course of more than two decades.
"The breeder only selected the bulbs that lowered in pungency over storage," Lyndon Johnson told us.
Johnson is the Senior Crop Sales Manager for Sunions. He explained how farmers were able to isolate the volatile component in onions that causes people to cry.
"There's a gas that comes off that actually makes a compound of sulfuric acid in your eyes that makes you tear up. So, that's the response you're getting when you freshly cut onions that way ."
It took more than 30 years to create the tearless onion, after certification from two labs including Ohio State University's Sensory Evaluation Center at the College of Agriculture.
Right now, Sunions are available at Meijer stores in Columbus.