The Queen of Fruits

While eating this strange fruit that I had never seen before in my life, I decided to hop on the internet so that I could do a little research on the fruit and find out some of its health benefits.  The first site that I came upon was a site that had listings and pictures of a bunch of Asian fruits.  My initial goal was just to figure out the name of the fruit that I was eating (lychee), but then I stumbled upon this fruit that my roommate two years ago used to always talk about.  The fruit, which is called a Mangosteen, looked like something that I noticed at the fruit market by our hotel.  So, I hurried outside to make sure that it was in fact Mangosteens that the fruit market had on display, and it was!

The Mangosteen is one of those fruits that falls under the category of “Super-foods”.  The fact that I was able to go buy 5 Mangosteens for only 10 yuan is pretty awesome.  I have never seen these in the U.S., and my roommate that always used to try and sell me on this Xango Juice, which is made from the Mangosteen, charged like 25 dollars a bottle.  The Mangosteen has long lists of health benefits, and the benefits range anywhere from cancer fighting to acne treating.  This fruit is just loaded with health benefits!  A little research online will give you a better idea of how powerful of a fruit it is.  If you’re interested, type in Mangosteen health benefits into a search engine and check it out!

For this blog, I decided to give you a small insight as to how easy it is to get fruit here, and how interesting some of the fruit is.  Here are some pictures of the strange fruit that I have eaten and the place that I pick the fruit up at.



This is one of the fruit stands that I pick up produce from.  There are about 6 or 7 of these stands within a 3 minute walk from my dorm room.  Talk about convenience!



Close up shot of some fruits.  Check out all of the Watermelons in the back left!  The Watermelons in this area are amazing.  One day I bought a half a watermelon and ate the entire thing outside of our apartment.  The looks I got from the Chinese were priceless.

This is the Mangosteen, also known as "Queen of Fruit".

If you turn the Mangosteen over and look at the bottom, you will see these little petals on it.  The number of petals is the amount of fruit slices that will be inside of the fruit.  The more petals, the better. 



This is what the inside looks like.  Notice how there were six petals on the bottom, so there are six pieces of fruit inside.  The two big pieces have seeds on the inside.  The more petals on the bottom, the less likely there is to be a seed. 



The Fruit is sweet, yet tangy.  The texture is a bit strange, but the taste makes up for it.



The rind of the Mangosteen is what contains most of the health benefits.  The rind is highly concentrated with xanthones, which is one of the most powerful antioxidants on Earth.  Inside fo the tea cup is chopped up rind to make some tea!  The tea is still steeping, so I'll probably give it a try tomorrow.  Oh yea, the rind is unbeleivable bitter.  It is normally just put into pill capsules, but there are also other ways to prepare it.  



One of my favorite fruits from possibly my favorite place.  People from New Zealand are called Kiwis, the national animal is a Kiwi, and the country produces some of the best Kiwi fruits around. 

I had never seen one of these until coming to China.  This is the Lychee, and it is what helped me to discover that there are Mangosteens at the fruit market.

This is the fruit inside of the outer shell.  It has a Jelly-like texture to it and tastes very sweet.

I'm not even sure what this fruit is.  I bought a bag of them, tried one, and have not touched them since.  The texture is too different for me and the taste is somewhat bitter.  It tastes mostly like a berry.

These bananas saved my life!  The week that no one could keep any food down, I ate these every day and drank water.  I do not eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner anymore because I am well, but I still go through about 5 bananas a day. 

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