Don't take it too seriously. The title is
just humorous. It refers to imported fruits from exotic countries. We all like
to eat. We all have to eat. We all eat differently. Each one of us has a
tendency to eat particular type of food. The nature, our organism, our biology,
the DNA , defines what we like and what we dislike in our daily diets. These preferences
do not only come from the biological definition. In other words we also choose
what to eat based on some other complex decisions. In the case of selecting the
right foods to eat the culture we are in plays a major role within the social
aspect of our life. Speaking of the culture, it varies in as little as in
different countries, but there also exist the very best practices being
practiced and applied by individuals all over the world - such as eating
healthy and staying fit.
There
are so many tropical foods that I have limited my presentation to just the most commonly known fruits in
Poland. If you are curious about more tropical and exotic foods, there are many
more, covering much more types of foods, meat for example - camel, sheep,
giraffes, snakes, spiders.
Pineapple
From my point of view in some way the
pineapple forms a perfect icon of the “exotic food” term. It reminds me of
tropical places and it also looks a little like a palm tree.
Did
you know what is the life-cycle of a pineapple, starting from harvesting to lying
on a shop shelf?
The
story is that pineapples originate from southern Brazil and Paraguay. The fruit
grows on large plants from which it is harvested. When it is sweet and ripe it is ready to harvest by hand and loaded onto a
conveyor belt and packed into bins. Then the fruit travels to exporters and is
prepared for sailing.
Banana
A fruit so popular and cheap in Poland one
may think it is harvested directly by the country's farmers.
The process of gathering and selling bananas
takes a lot of time, it is a 15-month growth cycle.
Bananas grow on trees looking like palms.
Very fresh and young bananas are green. They are also harvested while still
green, because of the time needed to ship them until they are put on the shop
shelfs.
What else do you know about bananas?
A good and ready to eat avocados are the
ones that feel soft and creamy when you touch them. They are quite fat fruits
and are not recommended for losing weight.
Avocados grow on trees and are native to
Mexico and Central America. They are also known under the name “alligator
pear”
The avocados are widely known to be the main
ingredient of the Guacamole sauce.
Of course, the most important aspect of the
Guacamole sauce is the quality of the avocados used to create the base paste.
From the popular AllRecipes website it is very easy to make the guacamole
sauce. All you need to do is to mix 2 ripe avocados with half of a lemon
(squeezed), 2 tea spoons of hacked onion, half of a teaspoon of salt and 2 spoons
of olive oil. Tastes even better with some nachos. Delicious! Have you ever
tried doing your own Guacamole? Have you ever eaten one?
Orange and tangerine
Those fruits are very similar. They have the
same color, similar taste and shape. After “unpacking” the orange instead of
small and dry fruit pieces there is just a single, big and watery piece. Do you
like these fruits? How often do you eat them?
"Orange” is also a widely known name for one
of the mobile network providers in Poland. Orange not only refers to the fruit
itself but also it is the name of the same fruit's color. They contain a lot of
healthy vitamins – vitamin C, beta carotene, and vitamins from the B group.
Oranges are antioxidants meaning they are good for curing stress, cigarette
negative effects, negative effects of alcohol and small amounts of sleep.
Because of high concentration of the vitamins from the B group they are also
very healthy for skin and nerves, blood pressure and heart rate.
Mango
Personally mango is one of my favourite
fruits. The best mango must have the taste of a banana and an apple mixed
together. The texture should be soft and watery. I like when this fruit is also
very sweet. What about you?
There are many different types of mangos.
They differ in taste, size, shape and color. Each mango has it's own specific
growth conditions and can be harvested in a different time of the year. The
biggest harvest takes place in the warmest months of the year. Because mangos need a tropical climate to flourish, only
Florida, California, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico grow mangos in the are of USA.
Unfortunately they cannot be grown in Poland. Mangoes
have been cultivated in South Asia for thousands of years and reached East Asia between the fifth and fourth centuries BC. This means they are very important, ancient fruits.
Lemon
I almost forgot to put lemons into this
list. This is one of the most basic and popular fruits and is found to have
multiple applications.
Make
a small test: think about biting a juicy lemon. What do you feel? If you have
ever tried raw lemon you should already know the taste. The natural reaction
for even imagining how this fruit tastes makes your mouth produce more saliva.
At least this works in my case :)
A
funny fact about where lemons come from is that originally they were discovered
growing in South-East China, but today it doesn't grow there in the wild and is
also not farmed in China.
Lemons are widely used to create salads and
dressings, they also take big part in making other products taste better, such
as tea, coca cola and soft drinks.
Kiwi
Not many people know kiwi has a bigger
concentration of vitamin C than lemon does, and it definitely tastes better eaten raw. The skin of kiwi is “hairy”. It is
also very, very thin.
Kiwi is one of the most healthy fruits. It
is a vitamin bomb. Everyone who is not allergic to this fruit can eat it. It is
enough to just peel it and it is ready to be eaten raw. It is very tasty. They
are safe for health.
The biggest exporter of kiwi is New Zealand,
where it is produced. Other countries that farm kiwi in Europe are Italy, Spain
and France. The biggest impact on the consumption and the kiwi production has its
richness in vitamins. One kiwi contains
90 calories. This fruit is recommended for people who want to lose weight as,
among others, it eases protein digestion.
Studies show that kiwi contains inositol
(sugar alcohol) which can be helpful in treating depression.
_1_Luc_Viatour.jpg)
sources:
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01584/p_pineapple-rose-p_1584315c.jpg image of a pineapple
http://files.enjin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/265719/modules/forum/attachments/bananaAnimated_1423001776.png image of a banana
http://netra-agro.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/IQF-Mandarin-01.jpg image of a mandarin
http://i.ndtvimg.com/mt/cooks/2014-11/lemon.jpg
image of a lemon
http://www.zdrowylink.pl/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mango-owoc.jpg
image of a mango
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Kiwi_(Actinidia_chinensis)_1_Luc_Viatour.jpg
kiwi image
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/images/articles/270/270406/avocado-cut-in-half.jpg image of an avocado
http://www.kingoffruit.com.au/harvesting-pineapples.html harvesting of an
pineapple
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/the-life-cycle-of-a-banana/249551/ the life cycle of a
banana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avocado about avocado
http://allrecipes.pl/przepis/196/guacamole.aspx guacamole sauce recipe
http://www.poradnikzdrowie.pl/zywienie/co-jesz/pomarancze-wlasciwosci-lecznicze-i-wartosci-odzywcze_37382.html positive aspects of
orange
http://www.mango.org/mango-varieties-and-availability mango varieties and
availability
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytryna_zwyczajna about lemon
Comments
I like very much all mentioned fruits, especially in form of fruit salad. It seems to be very good meal for hot days during summer. Some of them can cause allergy, so people have to be careful.
For women it also seems to be very important when cosmetics like balm or lipsticks smell in particular way. Usually they like also the smell of mentioned fruits.
You said that you like mango - to be honest I only triedit once, when I was in Greece (so I suppose everythig was fine with it?) but I didn't like it.... But I love some mango nectars and stuff like that, but the taste is completely different in my opinion! What is your experience?
I don't usually eat fruit salads because I don't like to mix the tastes of the fruits.
This subject was Ms Świerk idea :) It's true, that the title could mean a very different thing that in my topic.
I totally agree with you that the pineapple is a icon of the “exotic food”. Since I remember fruits like pineapple, oranges and lemon was an icon of exotic food for me. When I do shopping, I see many kinds of exotic fruits and vegetables. It is amazing how many are them. It is interesting that the term “exotic" food is so much relative. Exotic food is pineapple, oranges, banana, avocado, etc. for us, but strawberries are the exotic food for people from other foreign country. For us the rhubarb is normally vegetables, but in the UK is an exotic vegetable/ fruit (?!) :)
I have never thought about fruit in this way: which where come from, how long they must grow, etc. I was hearing that we should eat one banana in the morning for the better frame of mind. I was hearing that the avocado is very very healthy vegetable. I have not heard about its fat.
Of course I like oranges and tangerines, but I eat it most of all when is Winter. For me it is the season for fruits like this.
Kiwi is one of the most healthy fruits. I’m afraid because I totally don't like this fruit.
Thanks for your article. It is very interesting and it contains many valuable informations
In summer I try to eat fruit every day, both local and exotic. Last time I ate rambutan, mangostan and granadilla - I highly recoomend those!
You are right that bananas are transported green - but there's one danger there - there are chemicals used to keep them green during transport and later, another chemicals to make them yellow. I don't know how these substantions are called but I've heard that we should wash banans before eating them ( who's washing it, hey?).
Also I've heard that massive amounts of spiders travel with bananas ("Cupiennius") and they bite like bees - so be warned - it happend last year in Poland that people found one in shop: http://www.tvn24.pl/wroclaw,44/egzotyczny-pajak-znaleziony-w-sklepie-w-miliczu,499022.html
I like every fruit on the list besides avocado which is tasteless to me thus there is no point of eating it.
I have two major observations regarding this subject:
1) The majority of tropical fruits sold in Poland are unripe and tasteless. Some of my friends that have visited exotic countries like Thailand and they agree with me. They say that they will never eat these fruits in Poland because now they know how they should taste and "Polish" tropical fruits are subbish compared to these "real" ones.
2) The other thing is that all these fruits are quite expensive. I'm not talking about these more popular, like bananas or citrus, but if you want to buy a really delicious avocado, you should be prepared to spend around 7 zł, mango is 14 zł per kg (around 8 zł per one) etc. And don't even bother buying something like papaya or mangostans.
It makes me really sad, because importing these fruits is not THAT hard. When I was in Norway, there were hundreds of perfectly ripe avocados in every single supermarket and they were really cheap. In UK you can get whatever you want, even cut and all ready for you to just unpack and eat. I can't wait to see all these products in our supermarkets and I hope they won't be as expensive as they are now.
And speaking of these fruits: have you ever tried a sweet version of avocado? You mix one avocado with 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 2 teaspoons of a sweetener of your choice (agava syrup, honey etc.) and a little bit of milk and then you mash it with a fork to obtain smooth consistency. This is a very healthy and really delicious desert:) I also recommend a smooth mix of mango, mascarpone and youghurt - it is a perfect treat.
Paulina - your recipe for sweet avocado is intriguing. I have used avocados as bases for some vegan desserts but I haven't tried it like that. It's on my to do list now!
And what else I know about bananas is fact that they have poor immunity and can easily extinct.
You can find more information here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1325741/Eating-skin-fruit-vegetables-combat-cancer.html
Fruits are my favourite food category. I love all those from your presentation, except avocado. I know avocados are super healthy, but for me they taste so bland... :( Anyway, the rest of them are really tasty, and I think they're a perfect replacement for sweets or cakes.
The funny thing I've heard about fruits is that some people actually eat kiwi with the peel! I've asked one of my facebook friends about it when she posted a photo of a fruit salad with sliced kiwi with the peel. She says lots of people eat kiwi that way, you only need to wash them. I believe some people do that, but when I imagine eating that hairy-like peel, I get goosebumps :D