(THE BUSINESS TIMES) - Take a chicken. Any chicken. Break it down into parts. No, not your favourite drumstick, wing or breast meat. Deconstruct it into what it really is: water, proteins, lipids, amino acids - many, many kinds from alanine to leucine - and whatever compounds that add up to make a chicken a chicken and not a farm-reared sea bass.

Now, throw that chicken away and take a cherry. It's got pectin, cellulose and water. Fragrance molecules, colour from beta carotene and anthocyanins, sweetness, acidity, freshness - basically a complex kettle of chemical bits and pieces from one little fruit.