How many different fruits have you eaten in your life?
How often do you buy fruit? How many different fruits do you buy? Who in your household eats fruit? Do you ever eat cooked fruit? Why do we send flowers as a gift and not fruit as a gift?
At the beginning of civilization, fruit was the main food in our diet and it still is for many species of animals. It continued to be the main food in our diet until the end of the 20th century. However, it seems that we have put fruit at the bottom of the list of options when we eat now.
Unlike many vegetables, the fruit can be eaten directly from the tree or shrub from which it is picked. Many fruits can be eaten without removing the protective skin. Fruit comes in every shape and size you can imagine, and in every color of the rainbow. The fruit also gives us juice that is used in a whole range of drinks.
Every country in the world produces its own range of fruits and depending on the demand, we may see some of those fruits exported and on supermarket shelves in other countries. There are at least a hundred different fruits even without the variations of those fruits. To try some of these fruits you would have to visit the country where they are produced, as they are only produced in sufficient volume for the local population.
Other fruits are an important export product for the countries that produce them. In the Western world, the main fruits that we see on our supermarket shelves are:
Apples, Apricots, Bananas, Cantaloupe, Dates, Figs, Grapefruit, Grapes, Kiwi, Lemon/Lime, Mango, Oranges, Pears, Peaches, Pineapple, Prunes, Plums, Grapes, Rhubarb, Raspberries, Strawberries, Watermelon.
Uncut fruit has little aroma, but when the fruit is cut or crushed, each fruit has a unique aroma that smells fresh and tropical. We are attracted to food by sight if it is in sight but also by smell, even if it is not in sight. The aroma of fruit is rarely an insult to the senses, but we rarely buy fruit because we can smell it, because it is never sold cut or crushed.
Fruits and vegetables are natural foods that can not only sustain our diet, but also provide us with all the vitamins we need. Although you can pick vegetables and eat them raw, we rarely do so, so we usually cook them first with additional spices and sauces to make them more edible. Also, vegetables must be replanted in the ground before harvesting each season.
The fruit, on the other hand, can be picked from the tree or bush and eaten in its natural state and is the best for nutrition and vitamins. Fruit trees and shrubs will bear new fruit each season without much attention other than pruning.
So why don’t we give fruits as gifts as often as we give flowers? Perhaps it is that fruit, in its natural state, is not always as pretty as the flowers in a bouquet. And if you could buy fruit as an edible bouquet, would you like it as a gift?
Perhaps at the next wedding you attend you will find that they have decorations for the wedding table that are not flower arrangements or decorations, but bouquets of fresh edible fruit. You will not only admire these fruit bouquets, but you can also eat them during or at the end of your meal, especially appetizing when part of the fruit is dipped in chocolate.