Fanning the Fruitaceutical Flames

When it comes to the next big health-food trend, nothing sets fire to product sales quite like a touch of the exotic. One need only consider the state of a notoriously irritating fruit like pomegranate--from a handling perspective--five years ago and today. Through better processing technology and research on the benefits of antioxidants and other healthful compounds in the fruits of nature's bounty, an increasing array of ingredients is currently filtering into our processing pipeline.

Now, hip, tropical fruits with exotic names like noni, goji, açaí ("ah-SIGH-ee") and mangosteen are seeing increasing play in select product-development circles--or at least were talking about them more... Call them superfoods, superfruits, nutrafruits or fruitaceuticals... Whatever the moniker, they're hot, and despite the advances with some fruits--including the aforementioned pomegranate, as well as all things grape, to mention two--ingredient manufacturers are just beginning to scratch the surface of their potential.

Consider this article on the mangosteen from today's issue of The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/dining/09mang.html?ref=dining. Ask your everyday Joe Sixpack or Sally Housecoat what mangosteens are, and you're likely to get a response akin to mangos for teenagers (even though it's pronounced "man-GEH-steen"--or unless you happen to be in Chinatown...).

Although grapes, cranberries, blueberries and some other more-common fruits of our agricultural loins also likely deserve classification as superfruits, they just don't sound as cool on a the label of a nutrition bar or energy drink. Take a trip to the tropics and peruse the following Wikipedia nuggets (gotta love that Wiki...) for more information our expanding cache of reputedly panacean superfruits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noni
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfberry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangosteen

I guarantee that five years from now, these erstwhile oddities will be as common as, well, pomegranates and green tea. And ingredient R&D will undoubtedly have hatched a host of concentrated fruitaceutical ingredients for addition to our growing pantry of healthful--hopefully everyday--foods and beverages.