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Greetings everyone.
So a while back I made a video on
10 of the strangest fruits that I've come across while traveling around the world.
That video was not a Top Ten.
There are tens of thousands of different fruit species out there in the world
and that makes it pretty difficult to rate one as being stranger than the other.
So today I present to you 10 fruits that are equally as strange
and although this is not a top 10 the final fruit in this video is in my opinion
the weirdest one that I've come across in all of my travels
and these are all things that I've personally had.
So when you're done watching this video if you want more information
I'm going to put links to the full reviews in the description below.
Alright let's get started!
I am happy to say that I have with me the Ackee fruit.
It looks amazing just check that out. It looks like there's like little eyeballs on it.
This fruit tastes a bit like avocado and almonds but with the texture of scrambled eggs.
It is a much-loved fruit in several Caribbean countries however it has a bad rap.
It often shows up on "TOP 10 MOST DANGEROUS FRUITS
IN THE WORLD" lists by people who haven't actually tried the thing.
To find out for myself I actually went to Jamaica,
a country where many people eat this fruit every day,
and I found out that, provided that you eat it properly, the Ackee is completely safe.
Cases of people getting sick from it do happen but it's extremely rare.
So I made a video trying to clear up the misconception that Ackee should be avoided and
much to my horror footage from my video has now been used several times without my permission
in more braindead rehash videos about how dangerous it supposedly is!
"So it's safe to say they'll continue to distance themselves
from this dangerous fruit... NUMBER 11!"
So let me say it once again:
The Ackee is delicious. If you have a chance, definitely give it a try!
If I lived here and would be able to have an Ackee tree,
I would be eating this every day... at least.
This is probably one of the most delicious things that I've had.
Hey I'm in Brunei and these are Asam Paya.
Although lemons have a reputation for being the most sour fruit at the supermarket
there are many many fruits in nature that are far stronger.
Out of all the ones that I've had the asam paya is the most sour fruit that I have come across.
In Borneo where I found this, this palm fruit is pickled and then used in cooking
in order to add sourness to food.
Besides how intense it is it also looks pretty neat.
The fruits remind me of the tip of a giant rattlesnake's tail. It's a cluster of small
fruits that are covered with the scaly skin.
It's pretty cool.
"Oh!
It's a wee bit sour."
"Okay miracle berry party! We've got the miracle berries, we've got the sour elements:
lemon and orange and grapefruit."
Don't like sour fruit? Well the miracle berry has your back.
This little red berry doesn't look or taste weird but what it does
to your taste buds makes it one of the strangest fruits in the world hands down.
The miracle berry contains a compound known as miraculin and no I am not making this up.
When you chew the berry that compound actually coats your tongue
and alters your taste buds ability to taste certain flavors.
Most notably it makes sour foods taste sweet.
There is a lot of controversy around this little fruit including the possibility that
its wide distribution has been thwarted by the sugar industry
but it is thankfully gaining some popularity these days and
tablets made from this fruit can be purchased at some stores and online.
"It's like a little sour but not nearly as sour as it should be"
"It's a tittyfruit!"
Well boys and girls, sometimes mother nature has its mind in the gutter.
Such is the case with the tittyfruit also known as nipple fruit and cow udder fruit
This is in the same genus as tomatoes however it is NOT edible.
The fruit contains solanine,
a toxic compound that when consumed can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and dizziness.
This fruit is however a popular decoration during Chinese New Year.
That's because it has a symbolic golden color and it's um... teets represent longevity.
"This particular one that I have just has
this little teat here and yes I am tweaking a fruit right now."
"I will never get the name of this down..." "I think you might need to write it"
"Voatamenika"
"Yes"
"The shell is very hard you can't open it with your fingers it's got a star shape to it.
It splits at the seams and inside there's a little seed."
As its scientific name Combretum obscurum
suggests, this fruit is extremely rare with almost no mention of it online.
I found it at a large outdoor market in Madagascar where it was being sold
under the name Voatamenika however since I don't know how to pronounce "Voatamenika"
properly I started calling this the "Star Nut" due to its shape.
It was sold to me as something that can be eaten as a snack
but that it's also used as a medicine for killing parasites.
These things were delicious tasting a bit like an almond only sweeter and with a cooler shell.
However after releasing my episode on the star nut, it was brought to my attention that there's
an even more common species that's related to this that is used in Chinese traditional medicine.
The name for that plant is the Rangoon creeper
and interestingly enough it is also used as an anti-parasitic.
So there's probably something to that.
Because of its popularity in Chinese traditional medicine
there is a lot more written about the Rangoon creeper
and studies have shown that if you eat it in small amounts it's okay but
large amounts can actually cause brain damage!
So that one you don't want to eat as a snack
and since there isn't a lot of information about the one that I found in Madagascar.
I'm guessing you probably also don't want to eat too much of that one.
"Yeah it's like an almond but with a little more of a chestnut flavor though
and the sweetness is twice as much as a regular almond"
Believe it or not I went to college.
I was an English Major and then after I graduated I became a
circus sideshow performer and a fruit hunting youtuber...
Yeah looking back now, I probably should have taken some courses that would have been
more useful for my career now
and although I don't have time to go back to college,
I do have time to improve myself and that's why I love
The Great Courses Plus
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There are in-depth courses like what you learn at a college and then there's more useful things for
just about anybody like how to improve your cooking technique or communication skills.
and the best thing of all: no click bait!
I've been taking the course The Botanist's Eye by Catherine Kleier, PH.D
It's about how to identify plant species when you're out in nature,
which for my fruit hunting adventures is so useful.
As an entertainer my schedule varies a lot
Some days I have a lot of free time
other days I have no free time at all.
So what I like about these courses is that they're broken up into little easily digestible chunks.
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I'm about to head out a little fruit adventure because I was
riding a jeepney earlier today and I saw a calabash fruit tree
So I'm gonna go over there and just like knock on their door
to see if they can sell me some or something I don't know.
Calabash fruit, no relation to calabash gourd,
are big heavy fruits that hang from their trees like green bowling balls.
In most countries where these grow the shells of this fruit are used to make
bowls but the flesh is usually considered to be poison
However in the Philippines, this is not the case.
There these are called "Miracle fruit" (no relation to miracle berries)
due to them being used to make a medicinal tonic.
While traveling in the Philippines I saw these growing in somebody's yard and when
I asked them about it they actually invited me into their home and prepared the tonic for me!
Seriously people in the Philippines are so sweet
The fruit is not recommended to be eaten fresh but they told me that a little bit is okay
So I did try a piece of it and...
It wasn't great.
And then when I tried the tonic that they made out of it well....
That also was not very good.
The flavor does leave something to be desired but that's often the case
with most things made into medicine.
What's cool about this is definitely not the flavor and it's not even what it looks like.
It's how that this fruit is used so differently in different countries.
It's amazing to me that in some countries this fruit is seen as a miracle and in other countries
it's just something you make bowls out of.
"Not the most appealing thing in the world but certainly one of the
more uncommon things I've ever had and plus it comes with a wonderful bowl.
I think I'm more excited about the bowl than I am about the juice or the fruit
But this has been a pretty incredible thing to try.
It's called Monstera deliciosa which the name itself is pretty interesting "monstera" is latin
for monstrous or abnormal and "deliciosa" means delicious so it is literally a "delicious monster"
A green corn cob looking fruit with hexagonal scales that
fall off when it's ripe yeah that's uh that's pretty weird.
Monstera deliciosa sometimes shows up at high-end produce shops but when it does
it usually comes with instructions due to it containing high amounts of oxalic acid.
Eating this thing before it's entirely ripe can give you sores in your mouth
Thankfully ripening this fruit is part of the fun.
Just put it in a bag and its natural gases will slowly build up
inside that bag and cause the scales to fall off naturally.
If you eat the exposed areas where the scales fell off it will taste well.. monstrously delicious.
It's kind of like a pina colada in flavor.
Just never force the scales off the fruit because if you do and you eat some...
It will taste like burning.
"I mean it looks weird, it ripens strange, the fruit is
really delicious but also pretty strange, it's dangerous, it's got weird leaves...
It's a weird one.
Mesquite
Barbecue!
No. Not Barbecue!
Mesquite is best known for its wood that is used to smoke meat
however it has a fruit that has historically
been used by Native Americans in order to make a beverage.
When prepared this way it tastes a bit like if you were to cross coconut water with apple juice
I tried it and it does taste pretty good.
These days mesquite is getting a bit more popularity,
not for the drink but because it can be used to make a gluten-free
flour and also a coffee substitute.
Which it does work pretty well as.
There are several different species of mesquite some of them taste really good
and some of them taste really bad.
My favorite species is the screw bean mesquite
this one has a really nice flavor and unlike some of the species that have
large hard seeds the screw bean seeds are small enough NOT to break your teeth!
However the best thing about the screw bean is its appearance.
This thing looks crazy like a bunch of tiny spiral rods that are clumped together into a ball.
"You know when I was younger I had this toy that was like a ball of fingers.
Like this little ball had fingers sticking out of it. I loved that toy, this reminds me of that.
There's a comparison you're not going to see in another video.
"This is very cute.
This is like the banana that a fairy would eat or an elf.
There are so many weird bananas out there that I can make a top 10 weirdest video with only bananas
Actually I should probably do that sometime
But for now I would like to draw your attention to the thousand
finger banana. These are weird for a few different reasons.
First of all the bunch that these bananas come from is so long
that it can reach all the way down to the ground.
These bunches hold hundreds of teeny tiny little baby bananas that are packed tightly together.
You can actually pick one of these out and peel it just like you would peel a regular size banana
and they taste about as good as a regular supermarket banana
"Look at that it's so small!"
I'm at the airport in Addis Ababa Ethiopia about to head over to the Seychelles
We're hoping that maybe we'll find the Coco de Mer.
There's a chance.
The Coco de Mer is, in my opinion, the weirdest fruit in the world.
There may be weirder fruits out there that I haven't found yet,
but this one is going to be pretty hard to beat.
It is both the world's largest nut and the world's heaviest fruit.
So it is far bigger and far heavier than the calabash
and with an appearance that has given this fruit the nickname "lady fruit" and "butt nut"
it is more suggestive looking than an entire bouquet of tittyfruits.
But it is not the appearance that makes this fruit truly strange it's the history.
For centuries the hollowed-out nuts of the coco de mer showed up on the
shores of several different countries but nobody knew where it came from.
To explain the origin of these mysterious fruits, people created a mythology around the coco de mer.
Some suggested that the trees grew at the bottom of the ocean floor and when the fruits ripened
they would fall from the tree and then float up to the surface.
Eventually the trees were finally discovered growing on two small uninhabited islands in
the Seychellois archipelago located in the middle of the Indian ocean.
Some believe that these islands were Eden and that the coco de mer was actually the tree of knowledge
That is only a small sample of what makes this fruit so weird.
I actually made a five-part
documentary about the coco de mayo so if you want to hear more about it check out the link below.
"There's a mythology here that the male trees
late at night will actually bend and mate with the female fruits
and people say that if you come late at night and you walk through the
forest you can see it but if you see that happen you'll be cursed probably die."
So there you have it 10 strange fruits from my travels
and if you want any more information about what I've talked about in this video,
check out the links in the description below.
Also I plan on making more videos like this in
the future so there'll probably be another one in a few months.
If there's anything that I've talked about in the past on this channel that
you would like to see in a video like this, a top 10 sort of video,
put that in the comments below.
Alright I think that's about it.
See you next time, bye!
I would like to give a big shout out to Smarter every day Altpod and the harbor leaf tea company.
They are mega patrons over on patreon.com
I'm sure you've heard about patreon.com but basically it is
how I can afford to go on all the trips that I go on and how I get all the fruit that I review.
That is all from funding from viewers like you
so if you enjoy what you're seeing here and you want to help me out
please check out the link in the description below and there you can find out more.
Thanks so much guys bye