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Planning a visit to Costa Rica? Here’s a holiday activity that will take you off the beaten track – sampling the best and most unique fruits this Central American country has to offer.
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Simon Beun, one half of the popular vegan Instagram account @fitshortie, has taste-tested a variety of fascinating fruits from around the world. Alongside his partner, Tina Stoklosa, he has been traveling to different countries, trying the planet’s most incredible fruits and documenting their experiences on Instagram. Here are his top 12 picks from Costa Rica.
1. Soursop
Also known as graviola, soursop smells like pineapple and is both sour and sweet. With a spiky green exterior, the flesh inside is white and creamy in texture. Soursop is also low in calories and rich in fiber and vitamin C.
2. Cupuaçu
This fruit is actually the national fruit of Brazil, which is the world’s biggest producer of Cupuaçu. “Can you imagine a slimy pineapple, sour, a little bit sweet, and very refreshing,” Simon describes it in the Instagram post. It’s often used in desserts or pressed into a juice. Its seeds contain a nutrient-rich fat that is turned into cooking oil and used for beauty treatments.
3. Chocolate Sapote
Chocolate sapote, also called black sapote, is like a low-sugar brownie in fruit form. It has a dark chocolate coloring and a creamy texture. Chocolate sapote is rich in vitmains and potassium, too.
4. Rollinia
This spiky yellow fruit is a native to Brazil but popular throughout Central and South America. Simon describes it as like eating a thick apple sauce, with lemon-infused apple sauce taste. Indeed, it is known for its exceptional taste, often likened to lemon meringue pie, and slimy texture.
Read more: The 9 Healthiest Fruits, According To Nutritionists
5. Cacao
You wouldn’t guess just by looking at it, but this is the fruit that chocolate is made from. Shaped a bit like a rugby ball, the tough skin is red or yellow in color. Inside the flesh is whitish and has a sweet, slightly sour fruity taste. The seeds are what become chocolate, but they can also be eaten raw if you like the intensity and bitterness of very dark chocolate.
6. Banana Passionfruit
This passionfruit gets its name from being long and yellow on the outside. The pulp within is orange in color and, according to Simon, it tastes like tropical punch. The seeds can be eaten but are bitter in flavor.
7. Mocambo
Mocambo is also known as white cacao as its a cousin on the cacao fruit. The hard, craggy shell of the mocambo contains a huge amount of fruit which forms in segments. Inside the segments are seeds surrounded by pulp. These seeds are edible and packed with protein.
8. Pink banana
There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas, but most of us only eat one type, the yellow Cavendish banana. This pink variety has a starchier texture and contains many larger seeds than what you would be used to.
9. Safou
This small fruit looks like an elongated plum and is also known as butter pear. This is because of its fatty, buttery flesh. Native to Africa, it has ben cultivated in other parts of the world with suitably tropical climates. Simon describes it as having the consistency of mashed potatoes with a slightly sour flavor.
10. Cassabanana
This large fruit resembles a marrow, and is in fact a gourd, though its skin is red. The flesh is orange and very juicy and peppered with black seeds. It has the taste of a melon and is very sweet.
11. Sapote Colombia
Sapote Colombia is another kind of sapote fruit. It’s brown skin contains orange flesh with a large core of pulp. Its flavor is like a melon with a hint of orange.
12. Borojo
This round fruit can be pulled apart, revealing a very sticky brown flesh. According to Simon, it is hard to eat because of its gluey texture and inedible hard seeds. He says it has a strong smell similar to tamarind and tastes how burnt plastic smells. So, this may be one to avoid…
Read more: Eating More Fruit And Veg ‘Equivalent To Walking 4,000 Extra Steps A Day’
