The Fruit Explorer Encounters Guavas

To All,

At Whole Foods I picked up an apple guava. Since this is the most frequently eaten type of guava, it is often referred to just as a guava.  Later, I found a Thai guava at Market Basket. To me, the only difference was that the Thai guava was smaller.The following table gives the vital statistics of these two guavas.

	Price per Pound	Weight (pounds)	Cost (dollars)
Apple Guava	$4.99	0.78	$3.89
Thai Guava	3.99	0.57	2.27

Though now grown around the world, guavas are native to tropical America and have tremendous diversity represented by many species. The following pictures illustrate some of this diversity. It is seen that on the outside guavas can be green, pink, or yellow; on the inside they can be while or pink.

                     

The following pictures give you a sense of guava trees and flowers. The diversity shows in the flowers of the various guavas. 

                        

Guava has various miscellaneous uses. For example, guava wood is prized by barbecue chefs and by woodcarvers. The evergreen guava can be planted as an ornamental. Also, if you are interested in learning about using guava to feed animals, you can consult Feedipedia at http://www.feedipedia.org/node/111

Rich in high-profile nutrients and low in sugar, calories, and fats, guava is considered to be a super fruit. For details, see http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/guava.html. For example, guava has four times as much vitamin C as an orange and slightly more potassium than a banana.

            

 Guava appears in many products, both commercial and home-made.

                                                

Guavas spread easily since animals eat them and disperse the seeds in their droppings.

      

Artists have not ignored the guava..

                                          

Guavas can be a serious weed; for example, apple guava is an invasive species in Florida. You might consider growing guavas since, according to Wikipedia, they are one of the few tropical fruits than can grow to fruiting size when grown indoors in a pot. Sometimes fruit can be harvested as early as the second year. Guava is hardy and tolerates considerable neglect. 

Apple Guava

The video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSJSSs9CeSQ reveals how to eat an apple guava. For starters, you can eat it in the classic apple manner, i.e., in one hand you lift the entire fruit to your mouth and take a bite. Also, you can cut slices off and eat them. Going beyond apple-eating techniques, once the inside is exposed, you can take a spoon and scoop out mouthfuls. The seeds are scattered through the fruit and are edible. The skin is also edible, so, as with an apple, it is your choice as to whether to eat it. Because the seeds are scattered, there is no core, so you don't have to use any of your apple core avoidance techniques. Finally, you can put it in your blender and make a smoothie. In short, you can take whatever liberties you wish with this fruit and it's all good. That 's the theory of eating a guava.

Now for the reality. Here are annotations to the seven pictures below that illustrate how I ate my apple guava.

1. The ready-to-eat guava relaxing on my cutting board. 
2. I started by taking a big bite as if I were eating an apple. This worked fine. The immediate impressions are that the guava is denser than an apple but is similarly crunchy. It's taste is subtle, perhaps a little stronger than an apple. 
3. Next I cut off a slice and ate it. As advertised, the seeds were somewhat scattered rather than tightly gathered in the center. The picture shows the seeds; you need to apply your geologist's intuition to infer a three-dimensional structure from a two-dimensional cut through the structure. The seeds might be edible in the sense that you can swallow them without harm, but I discovered that you don't want to bite down on them since they are like little BBs. FRUIT HAZARD ALERT: CHOMPING DOWN ON A GUAVA SEED CAN LEAD TO A BROKEN TOOTH. I quickly perceived that avoiding all contact with these seeds was a primary goal. 
4. I got a spoon and removed the center of the guava to get rid of the seeds. I sacrificed some guava, but it was worth it. I was left with somewhat more than half a guava with a cavity in the center. 
5. I used a spoon to scoop out one mouthful at a time. Since there were a few stray seeds, I had to chew very carefully. This was such a tedious process that there was no pleasure in the eating. I was left with most of the hollow shell of the guava. 
6. I thought that I was about done, but I cut the remaining peel into wedges and found that there was a surprising amount of guava left. These wedges were seed free, so I could eat them in a light-hearted way. This is guava at its best. 
7. I was able to eat everything except a little piece at each end. I can confirm that the peel is edible.

         

         

While the experts say that a guava can be eaten like an apple, i.e., you hold it in your hand and take bites, I think this is a poor strategy. First, the guava is denser than an apple, so it's a lot of work to take a bite out of it. Perhaps this would be a plus if you were looking for jaw exercise. Second, when eating apple-style, while the first bite or two might work, you quickly reach the seed zone, and then this method becomes very slow and laborious since you have to deal with the numerous, highly dispersed seeds.

According to https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/fruit/health-benefits-of-guava.html, the guava is a versatile tool for weight control. On the one hand, for those wanting to lose weight, it is low in sugar and its density makes it very filling, long-lasting snack. On the other hand, for those wanting to gain weight, its wealth of nutrients regulates metabolism, which in turn promotes uptake of nutrients. This site also claims that guava is better for your complexion than expensive skin creams; this is because of its astringent character, which also accounts for its effectiveness against diarrhea. Paradoxically, this site also claims that guava prevents constipation, which it says can cause 72 ailments.

In my twenties one of my party tricks was to pick an apple up by the stem and eat everything but the stem; I would then flick the stem away in triumph. I removed this trick from my repertoire because of a shortfall of applause. The significance of this trick for this e-mail is that it demonstrates that you can without undue difficulty eat an apple core. It is a little distasteful, but there is no bar to eating it all. (Some say that apple seeds contain arsenic. The amount, however, is so small that you don't have to worry about it. I think.) A guava is different since the hardness of the seeds would make eating the entire fruit a very trying experience.

I am not the only one to complain about the seeds. Perhaps you are familiar with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of the classic, The Yearling. Her view is that guava seeds "lie in obtrusive layers ... like rows of buckshot." (Quoted in Elizabeth Schneider, Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables," p. 219.) Some Internet experts, e.g., http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-Guava, are so unreliable that they describe how to eat a guava and don't even mention the seeds. 

Thai Guava

The Fruit Explorer e-mails typically report my first encounter with a fruit. Therefore, what you see is my initial, bumbling, ignorance-ridden attack on the unknown. We will now depart somewhat from this formula as I report on another guava. In this e-mail, therefore, you will be able to see the effect of experience and witness the sophistication that the Fruit Explorer can bring to the second encounter with a fruit.

The Thai guava looks much the same as an apple guava except, at the size of a granny smith apple, the Thai guava is a little smaller.The main lesson learned from the apple guava is the towering importance of seed avoidance, so in eating my Thai guava I vowed to have no truck with the seeds. 

Here are four pictures that show how, armed with my knowledge of the apple guava, I ate my Thai guava.

• The Thai guava on my cutting board.
• The guava cut in half. (I dispensed with eating it like an apple or cutting off slices. Those are misguided strategies.) You can see the spray of seeds spread irregularly though the inner two-thirds of the guava. This is a hellish characteristic designed to bedevil the eater.
• The two cratered halves after I have ruthlessly scooped out the seeds with a spoon; I was more thorough than I had been with the apple guava and made sure that I rooted out all those little tooth-busters. This took some work since the guava is much denser than an apple. 
• The guava cut into wedges, which I ate. 

In short, I reduced the guava to seed-free wedges, and this is the form in which I ate it. While this process was somewhat laborious, this did leave me with seed-free chunks of guava that I could enjoy without restraint. (There is no picture showing the apple guava alongside the Thai guava since I had eaten the former before I discovered the latter.)

      

I am happy to say that, due to my experience with the apple guava, I was able to master the art of seed avoidance. Freed from the tedious task of detecting and spitting out the seeds, I thoroughly enjoyed my Thai guava. I was unable to detect any difference in these two guavas other than size, though perhaps there would have been some small difference in taste had I eaten them side-by-side.

The Joint Verdict

The apple and Thai guava can be evaluated together since they are the same except for size. One naturally compares a guava to an apple since they are of roughly the same size and shape; moreover, they are approached in the same way. On the one hand, the guava provides an interesting and different flavor and texture. On the other hand, the apple's core is not a hazard and is easier to avoid than the diffuse core of the guava. Moreover, unlike apple seeds, guava seeds are of just the right size and hardness to threaten your teeth and, therefore, to force such care in eating that it becomes a chore unless you carefully excise them. Finally, a guava at two or three bucks costs a lot more than an apple and takes more preparation. In short, an apple has telling advantages over a guava, but the guava's flavor and texture justify the occasional purchase and perhaps frequent purchases if a better price can be found.

Party Tip

I give no party tip for guavas since the seeds would embroil you in lawsuits. As a substitute, you can resurrect my trick from the 1970s described above and at your next party pick up an apple (not a guava) by the stem and eat everything but the stem. After the passage of decades, perhaps this feat will no longer be ahead of its time and will now be applause-worthy. Be sure to work on your dramatic gesture of triumph to be delivered when you finish the apple. Perhaps my lack of applause can be traced to on overly subdued gesture of triumph.

The Impossible Dream

Using Google to pursue the fantasy of the seedless guava, I was overwhelmed by the number of hits. There are hundreds of pictures; see the picture above of the Indonesian seedless guava. Seedless guava trees are offered for sale at http://tropicalbonsainursery.net/on%20sale%20item/seedless-guava.html. Seedless guavas are such a huge step forward that there must be some big drawback to them, or they would be offered in stores. Maybe seedless varieties cannot grow in the U.S.'s climate (see next paragraph).

The Tragedy of the Guava

The tragedy of the guava is that it is highly susceptible to fruit fly infestation. This means that imports are strictly controlled, and, consequently, very few guavas are imported. Therefore, for practical purposes we are stuck with the relatively small range of guava diversity that is grown in this country. The sticker on my second guava had "THAI GUAVA" in big capital letters and "Produce of USA" in fine print. (Perhaps my reader in Ecuador can report on the guavas available in Ecuador.)