Mangosteen - Superfruit or Supertrend?

 Mangosteen has been very popular in Japan for a few years now, where it is mainly sold as a juice or pulp drink.

Japan is a market leader when it comes to adopting new products that are reportedly beneficial to health. Japan always seems to keep ahead of the crowd as far as trends are concerned. The very fact that Mangosteen has become popular in Japan has alerted the western world to its presense and now they are clambering over one another to import and promote this new superfruit of superfruits.

What is mangosteen?

The Mangosteen plant is a tropical evergreen tree and was first discovered in Burma and Siam (now known as Thailand). The Mangosteen fruit is edible (the inner fruit) and a deep reddish purple when ripe. In Asia, the Mangosteen fruit is known as the "Queen of Fruits".

(Geek Fact: The Mangosteen plant's latin name is "Garcinia mangostana"......now you can impress your friends, or lose them)

Contrary to western marketing, mangosteen is not new, it has been used for medicinal purposes for hundreds of years in South Asian countries. The west may suddenly love mangosteen but it certainly does not like the west and has resisted all attempts at harvesting the plant over here. The Mangosteen tree requires a warm, very humid, equatorial climate all year round, abundant moisture and only grows well in a tropical environment. So don't expect to see groves of mangosteen trees over here anytime soon.

The actual mangosteen fruit itself is about the same size as a tangerine and consists of an outer shell, or rind, which is referred to as the pericarp (or exocarp). This is a reddish-black colour when ripe and is where all the xanthone-rich goodness is found. If you crack open the shell you find the pods of actual fruit called the "aril" which are fleshy, very pale and have a similar taste to peaches or lychees. While this actual fruit tastes delicious it has minimal nutritional benefit when compared to the pericarp.

Mangosteen fruit is very perishable and therefore difficult to export over great distance, hence its scarcity in the west. To overcome this, the xanthone-rich pericarp (shell/rind) is freeze dried and then exported for various medicinal uses.

You are more likely to come across mangosteen in the form of a juice or pulp drink, it is likely to be purple in colour due to blending of rind extracts with the pale fruit (when crushed the outer shell produced a purple juice).
In its natural form the rind would be inedible, but once crushed its extracts can be added to the juice giving it reported nutritional value. It is claimed that the rind has over 100 phytonutrients, phenolic compounds and anti-oxidants called xanthones.

What are the reported health benefits of mangosteen?

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