People have come up with all sorts of methods they claim will keep tears at bay while chopping onions: cut them under a vent, in front of a lit candle, while running water or wearing swim goggles. Some recommend freezing or refrigerating the onion before taking your knife to it. Others swear that pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, chewing gum or even holding a piece of bread in your mouth while chopping away will keep you from crying. (Not sure what the logic is there.)

Then there are those who say you should just suck it up and embrace the inevitable weeping. That way, as Rachael Ray points out in this video, “People will feel sorry for you and you won’t have to do the dishes later.”

That may work for some, but apparently not for the target audience for Sunions, which are being marketed as “America’s first tearless onion.”

“Sunions are a new type of onion that grows sweeter every day,” the Sunions website boasts. “And unlike regular cooking onions, they cause no tears when cut.”

Recently introduced to consumers after being developed and farmed over three decades, Sunions promise to be a “game changing onion” that is consistently “crunchy and sweet, with a delicious mild flavor” and no tears.

The makers clarify that Sunions are not genetically modified but rather the result of “an all-natural cross-breeding program” that apparently eliminates the  “volatile compounds” present in most onions that “are responsible for tearing and pungent flavor.” Developed by Bayer Crop Science, they have been tested by both the Bayer Sensory Lab and by outside testers at Ohio State University’s Sensory Evaluation Center, according to a news release.

Early reviews of the flavor have not been terribly enthusiastic. The Washington Post found Sunions to be “almost flavorless.” The New York Post griped that, while they definitely didn’t bring on the waterworks, in terms of taste, they “didn’t quite measure up.

If you want to try them yourself, you’ll have to act fast. Sunions, which are grown at farms in Nevada and Washington, are apparently limited in supply and seasonal to boot – available in select supermarkets only from December to, at the latest, April.

But if you miss the season, hey, there’s always next year. No need to cry.

Photo courtesy of @suniononion