I am a bad daughter. My dad, an aircraft engineer who keeps planes in the air for a living, forwards every piece of email he receives that carries “useful” information: “What to do if you’re being followed down a dark alley; Beware of poisonous spiders lurking in restrooms; Don’t eat red and blue foods together lest your bowels explode.” Being ungrateful, I tend to mock the information, convinced that if an email claims that drinking tomato juice while skipping will prevent disease, Dad will stockpile tomato juice while skipping ropes in earnest.
So when I read Dad’s latest email, entitled: “Starfruit can be deadly,” I was ready to dismiss it. How could such a pretty little thing cause harm? It doesn’t even have thorns! But Dad’s sources were on the money this time.
The Health Risks
Turns out that starfruit’s high levels of oxalic acid—the same substance that gives it its delectably tart flavor—can aggravate a kidney patient’s already weak organ, leading to hiccups, insomnia, confusion, convulsions, and even death.
If you’re of South East Asian descent, you know that being called a “potato eater” is a grave thing. It implies that you’ve rejected your culinary heritage of rice as the basis of, and main source of carbohydrates in, your diet. Instead, you’ve embraced the “white man’s” dietary staple of potatoes. The stereotype-laden metaphor encapsulates everything from the languages you speak (or are unable to speak), choice of pastimes, and even the values you hold.
While my diet is a heart-healthy, wholegrain-heavy one, my fondness for potatoes (and inability to speak multiple Chinese dialects) slaps a great, flashing, potato-eating sign on my head. Strangely enough, one type of potato-eating is “excusable," but unlike normal potatoes, this one grows on trees.
Housemates’ wild partying grating on you? Time to ante up. Get your hands on a bunch of these scaly beauties, peel them, and leave the skins scattered about—the housemates will be convinced there’s a molting snake on the loose! That should put a temporary stop to the parties.
Step 1: Buy a bunch of snakefruit.
Step 2: Peel the fruit, and plant the skins in the housemate’s room.
Step 3: Go up to your housemate, look concerned, and ‘fess up about the snake you brought home and “kinda lost.”
Step 4: Watch your “too cool” housemate freak out when he discovers the molted snake skins in his room. Fun!
Fortunately for my housemates, I’m dotty about them. And while abundant in Southeast Asia, here in the States, snakefruit or salak are only grown in South Florida and that’s a bit too much of a trek—even for a good prank.
At a gelati stand, I remember being thoroughly confused when my friend asked, “So what kind of nut is the lychee?”
“Huh?” I exclaimed.
The friend fairly thumped the counter pane with his finger, indicating the near-empty tub of Lychee Nut Sorbet.
“The lychee isn’t a nut… it’s a fruit!” I said.
“Bet?” challenged the friend. He knew two things: 1) that I would be dying to rush home to consult the google gods; and 2) that I had an afternoon of appointments far away from civilization. This fiend-friend delights in tormenting me.
But he soon owed me dessert. As it turns out, this whole lychee nut business stems from a mistake. Lychees deteriorate quickly once picked and dry out in days if left in a cool, non-humid environment. The warty, ordinarily deep red skin (sometimes tinged with green) browns and turns brittle, while the luscious, creamy white flesh on the inside shrivels like a raisin. Somewhere along the way, a very confused person decided these dried lychees were nuts—a mistake that has enjoyed a curious longevity on Chinese restaurant menus.
Brighten up your living room with a...banana wall? View the fruit-bearing wall and more installations at Stefan Sagmeister's exhibition Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, now showing at Deitch Gallery in New York City.
The Guardian investigates the myths of fruit. While it's a good thing that people are eating more fruits these days due to convenient packaging and greater availability, the article says, fruits in general aren't packed with nutrients, nor do they deserve the title of "superfood." Tom Sanders, director of the Nutritional Sciences Division at King's College London, says, "It's a myth that fruit is packed full of vitamins and minerals. The foods packed full of micronutrients are grains, seeds and nuts, the peas and things."
Steven Reinberg of the Washington Post reports that two new studies in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine say Americans are eating far less fruits and vegetables than they should. According to a John Hopkins study, 62 percent of participants didn't eat any fruit daily. 25 percent didn't eat any vegetables, and "only 11 percent of U.S. adults meet the guidelines for both fruits and vegetables." Perhaps more troubling, a second study from Queens College compared intakes of vegetables, potassium and calcium from 1971 to 1974 and 1999 to 2002, and found that the diets of blacks has not improved compared to those of whites, numbers "not explained by race differentials in income and education." As one of the researchers said, a serious public health concern because "a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of obesity and certain chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some cancers."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 26, 2007 at 2:41 PM
Marketman’s Philippine Fruit Index: "I was recently reviewing a reference guide which had a section on tropical fruits from this part of the world and I was surprised to note that I seemed to have covered many of the fruits in the book. Turns out that Marketmanila has already featured over 50 locally-grown fruits in the past two years!!"
(If you read nothing else, make sure to check out his Mango Slicing 101—it's pretty easy once you know what to do.)
