Sep. 24, 2008 - Issue #675: Run For Covers
The Fruit Hunters
Fruit Hunters explores exotic fruits and the crazy people who love them
In The Fruit Hunters, Adam Leith Gollner reveals a racy, exotic and sometimes scary side to the world of fruits, far removed from the stocked aisles, artificial lighting and elevator music familiar to western consumers. People known as fruitarians live on pudding-like durians in Thailand, the miracle berry turns sour foods sweet and banana profits fund revolutions and conspiracies. And that’s just the beginning.
Gollner opens the door on a litany of strange-sounding foreign fruits such as rambutans, mangosteens, mohobo-hobos, cloudberries, loquats, jaboticabas and the endangered coco-de-mer (or “lady fruit”). The latter has a coconut-like shell that bears an uncanny resemblance to female genitalia, with a taste that has been likened to breast milk. Because of its endangered status, only a privileged few ever get to taste one.
Though many of these fruits defy imagination, Gollner’s inventive descriptions and careful comparisons pique curiosity and whet the appetite. Tasting the ice cream bean is “like eating cloud,” an abiu is like “a cross between wine gums and … creme caramels,” and he longingly recalls eating “cluster bombs of dukus and langsats, tangy-sweet detonations of citric perfection.” If you’ve ever bitten into a peach and been disappointed by the dry cobweb taste and texture, spat out an overripe, cloying mandarin or despaired at the bruising on your grocer’s selection of mangoes, this book is the antidote.
At times, Gollner’s enthusiasm borders on obsession. He readily admits that while researching he became intoxicated, nearly addicted, by his subject. And he’s not alone. As he investigates further, he discovers a fruit-obsessed subculture that spans the globe. A colourful assortment of scientists, entrepreneurs and fringe enthusiasts populate the narrative, their individual stories ranging from mind-boggling to tragic to mysterious.
Gollner traces the roots of fruit discovery as far back as Marco Polo, who wrote of being awed by the exotic new fruits of Asia. But it was a modern-day Marco Polo named David Fairchild who fostered the contemporary version of fruit hunting after discovering rare species on trips to Algiers, Padang and Mozambique in the early 1900s. He established the Foreign Plants and Seeds Introduction branch of the United States Department of Agriculture and sent agents around the world looking for new species.
These and other characters of the fruit world come off at times as a little fruit crazy. Naturally, the rarity of such delicacies fuels their pursuit by the rich, the fanatic and the ideologues alike. But while we expect it of caviar or truffles, it may come as a bit of a shock that fruits can generate the same fervent reaction.
This, suggests Gollner, is because many people have never tasted a good, high quality fruit. Shipping is particularly difficult with fruits because they’re so sensitive. What we get in supermarkets is often several weeks old, flash-frozen or picked unripe, irradiated, mishandled and lacking in variety. Quite often the only way to really appreciate a fruit is to enjoy it at its source.
As ecstatic as he is about fruit, Gollner isn’t a misty-eyed dreamer. While indulging readers in fruit-infused fantasy trips, he also acknowledges there is a darker side to the fruit trade. Parallel to the idyllic experience of exotic-fruit tasting in foreign locales, there exists the reality of international commerce, geopolitics, corruption and environmental abuse.
International drug cartels have frequently used fruits to smuggle cocaine and heroin. One of the world’s largest banana importers, the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita), supported paramilitary groups in South America as recently as 2007 and helped fund the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. In the US, high political intrigue dashed the potential of a healthy, fruit-derived substance that might otherwise have become North America’s most popular sweetener, ahead of even sugar. Government regulations, pesticide use and modern agricultural practices all come under the critical lens.
Fruit marketing has its own curious history. On July 9, Gollner appeared on Democracy Now, a National Public Radio program from the US that airs locally on CJSR. The segment featured an audio clip from a 1950s propaganda film titled “Journey to Banana Land,” produced by the United Fruit Company, that provides an interesting flashback to the way society used to look at fruit production. Or at least the way a major corporation hoped we would view it.
In his book, Gollner examines the kiwi, Goji berries and the Grapple (pronounced “gray-pull”), among others, to uncover the reality of fruit marketing. Several months ago, I tried the Grapple (an apple tinted with Concord grape flavours) with a restaurateur friend in Vancouver who was considering using it in his establishment. Its overpowering sweetness left me wondering where the boundaries are between artificial and real.
Like the secret of the Caramilk bar, speculation about the Grapple technique has proliferated. What Gollner reveals about the novelty fruit is among the most surprising discoveries of the book. Whether through genetic selection, modification or grafting, tampering with fruit poses important questions about the safety, quality and longevity of our food sources. The reality is that most of us don’t know nearly enough about fruit, one of our staple foods.
With its tales of international adventure, strange characters and shady conspiracies, The Fruit Hunters is a real-life X-Files for food lovers, political junkies and environmentalists. Somewhere out there, real, flavourful fruits abound. The stories of their origins, their mythical status and the impacts of our contemporary global marketplace will leave readers standing in the fruit aisle, wanting more. V
The Fruit Hunters
By Adam Leith Gollner
Doubleday Canada; 288 PP, $29.95
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