Enjoy our fruits.

At the morning market today, I saw a crowd of mostly ladies and took a closer look to see all of them looking at and choosing some dukong. A few new-comers and I asked for the price and was told it was only two ringgit a kilo. That was really cheap! This made one or two persons wonder if what was being sold was actually langsat or dukong. The seller quickly explained that the langst has a thinner skin while the dukung has a thicker skin although both may look similar. Still wondering why the price was that cheap, one lady tasted one of the fruits and exclaimed, "Oh, it's not sweet!". As the dukung is reputed to be sweet, everyone looked in her direction and saw the size of the dukung she had taken. It was small. So, another lady told her, "Aiyah, the one you took is too small, lah. It's not ripe enough, mah. Let me try a bigger one." And she split the skin of one rounded fruit to taste the whitish flesh. "Ah! This is sweet," she beamed to the others. Most of them went on choosing while some uncertain ones decided not to buy and went off. As for me, I took home a kilogram of that fruit.

For me, it was not so much the sweetness of the fruit that counts. It was a fruit I like because it is a local fruit which usually meant no preservative needed to lengthen its shelf-life or to keep it fresh. Of course it is definitely more fresh, possibly plucked from the tree just a day ago and certainly not needing any preservative while imported fruits could be at least a few days after plucking before they could reach the consumers. Commercially, those imported fruits have to be preserved one way or the other.

Furthermore, fruits such as the dukung hardly needs any pesticides as they grow. Insects hardly are a problem, probably because the skin of the fruit is so thick.

Of course, there are those who believe the apple, kiwi fruit or grapes are better than local fruits. Certainly, research has placed the apple, the kiwi fruit and the grapes and berries high up the ladder of nutrition. Lately, so much researchers have found grapes with their resveratrol and apple juice so high in fighting sicknesses. Not only that, researchers discovered that the powerful antioxidant, resveratrol, which is found naturally in the red skin of grapes, can activate genes and prolong the life of cells without having to go on a starving diet which was what scientist found was the only way to prolong cell life once upon a time.

But then with the apples and the grapes, we are always troubled with the decision: to remove the skin or not. Is there too much toxic chemicals in the skin? Unfortunately, for these two fruits, the skin contains the more important and most necessary nutrients for better health. Of course, according to some, enzymes can be used to wash and remove most of the toxic chemicals. Still, is it safe to eat the skin? Anyone who have read of any research papers on the use of enzymes, please be kind enough to give the information.

Since local organic fruits and vegetable have their nutrients too, I reach out to local fruits and vegetables more than imported fruits because I think we should eat imported fruits too so as to supply our body with as many of the necessary nutrients as possible.

I hasten to add that not all the skin of local fruits are safe to be consumed. Bananas, for example, unless bought straight from a plant or while it is still green, usually go through the process of heat through the use of a kind of chemical which could be harmful. Some may be wondering what I am talking about, eating banana skin which almost everyone discard. Well, not me if it comes from mu plant or straight from another person's plant. I put flesh and skin in the blender. The powerful blades of my blender soon mashed up everything and all I need to do is to just pour it in to a cup and drink it. You see, I believe, where possible, it is better to make the drink from the whole fruit with non of the nutrients missing.

Papayas are also taken the same way as the bananas as the skin contains lots of nutrients. However, commercial papayas do seem to have some kind of powder on its skin. And most of them are plucked too young and green from the plant.

In a world where fruits and vegetables are still easily available, we can consider ourselves lucky. And even luckier are those who have a little bit of land, a small garden to plant them. Then we can be assured of organic food in a world where more and more chemicals are used in commercial production of fruits and vegetables.