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.)
