Adam Leith Gollner

You put forth the idea that most people have never really tasted fruits at their moment of ripeness. Is there any way for us to taste fruits the way nature intended?

Go raspberry picking at the end of July, preferably on an organic farm. Pluck a swollen, blood-red berry from the stalk and pop it into your mouth. Achieve enlightenment.

If someone wanted to experience agritourism through fruit, what would be one or two destinations they would consider?

Hawaii and Miami are great places to start, because their climate is perfect for unusual fruits. And then of course, if people are adventurous, they could go further afield. Borneo and the Amazon are the world's prime fruit-hunting destinations. But no matter where you live, you'll find interesting fruits growing nearby if you look hard enough.

Okay, let's start with the obvious: Why fruit?

A family friend asked me the same question a couple of years ago—and then answered it perfectly. He was skeptical and said he couldn't imagine himself reading a book about something as mundane as fruits. But then all of a sudden, he remembered how his girlfriend had recently surprised him by hiding a guava in their house. He could smell it as soon as he walked through the front door. He hadn't smelled a guava since he was a child, and its fragrance overwhelmed him. When he found it, he triumphantly carried the little guava into his bed and curled up with it. His story reveals just how intense the connection between humans and fruits can be. It's a bond that’s never been explored in a book before.

Let's settle the debate once and for all: What is a fruit?

Ah yes, the eternal dinner argument over whether a tomato or an avocado is a fruit or a vegetable. It has a simple solution: There are two definitions, scientific and popular. Botanically speaking, a fruit is defined as the part of a plant that encloses the seeds, so anything that contains seeds is scientifically a fruit. Colloquially speaking, a fruit is supposed to be sweet. So botanists would consider tomatoes and avocados to be fruits because they contain seeds. But they aren't sweet, so the popular consensus is that they aren't fruits—they're vegetables. The US Superior Court voted on this issue in 1890. They ruled that tomatoes are vegetables because they aren't eaten for dessert. Scientifically, however, they're fruits.

Are you saying that a green pepper is a fruit, that wheat is a fruit?

If it's got seeds, it's technically a fruit, so yes. Green beans, eggplants, whole grains: they're all classified as fruits. Of course, nature doesn't fit neatly into man-made categories, so these divisions become infinitely complex. You know how strawberries have their seeds on the outside? That's a botanist's nightmare. Each of those seeds is actually the fruit. The red fleshy stuff is just there to help the seeds be disseminated by passing birds and animals, including us humans.

What can fruit teach us about our evolution?

Biologists contend that fruits allowed humans to evolve. Without fruits, we might still be nocturnal, forest-dwelling insectivores gnawing cockroaches in moonlit treetops. We need them just as much as they need us. Survival isn't guaranteed, so we're co-dependents. Every fruit, every life, is a miracle of light triumphing over a vast infinity of darkness. There's also something mystical about the fact that fruits die and are then reborn as new plants. Perhaps that's why so many religions have used fruits as symbols of immortality and rebirth.

How long did it take you to write this book, and how many continents did you travel to?

It started on a trip to Brazil in 1999. Then a travel magazine sent me to Hawaii to write about fruit tourism. A few years later, I was awarded a government grant to study exotic fruits in South East Asia, so I spent three months trekking around jungles and markets in Borneo, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. After that, I spent a couple of years researching North American fruits, mainly on the West Coast and Florida. I made field trips to Paris, Rome, Havana and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. To learn about the miracle fruit, I went to Cameroon, following in the footsteps of the great American fruit hunter David Fairchild.

The miracle fruit you sent us was extraordinary—it turned everything sour sweet. It was like a scene out of Willy Wonka.

The past few years have been like a fairy tale, full of magical berries and fruit fanatics. The miracle fruit is so amazing. It makes everything sour taste sweet. Readers should do their own experiments to find out just what sort of things it affects! But there were times when I couldn't believe the stories were real. I mean, there's something totally surreal about a little berry from tropical West Africa that was banned by the FDA in the most extraordinary circumstances. How weird that my name is Adam and I was on a quest for what is literally a forbidden fruit.

What a textbook study in showing what can be altered by one little berry!

As a wine specialist, Michael, you know that grapes can yield infinitely complex flavors depending on where they're grown, when they're picked, how they're treated, what the weather is like. Different palates appreciate different qualities. In the world of fruits, however, shoppers aren't given much of an opportunity to encounter variations. They're only presented with a slim selection of fruits that taste identically bland all year round. They don't even realize that there are tens of thousands of delicious fruits eaten in other countries.

What is one fruit that you'd love to see in the US?

When I started writing this book, you couldn't get mangosteens, dragon fruits, miracle fruits or Indian Alphonso mangos in the US. Now these are all available, even if they remain hard to find. I'd like to see the ice-cream bean become available. It's this long green pod filled with a white, cotton candy-like substance with what tastes like vanilla cream coursing through its translucent veins. It grows in the Amazon rain forest. Then again, maybe the reason I love the ice-cream bean so much is that it's such a rare delicacy.

On the proverbial desert island with one fruit, what would it be?

For me, it would have to be the durian. It's a large, spiky Malaysian fruit that stinks of sulfur and rotten eggs, but it is extremely nutritious. I met some people who eat nothing but durians, so it would be a pretty good desert-island fruit. Plus it's so odiferous that it might attract some help.

In The Fruit Hunters, you talk about communities of fruitarians. Do you think you could get all the nutrients and proteins that you need by living on an all-fruit diet? Have you ever tried it?

No, I've never tried it, but some people certainly live their lives eating only fruits. Extremists always make for interesting characters, so the fruitarians and members of other fruit cults were amazing to meet and profile, but I'm not one myself. Fruitarians seem to spend all day eating. They have around fifteen meals a day.

So we have to go out to a farm?

Precisely. You can't really buy perfect fruits; you have to pick them or find them in the wild. And the only way to do that is to become a fruit hunter. Thoreau spent his final years having transcendental fruit experiences. He loved going a-berrying. He spoke of an ethereal and volatile substance that dissipates shortly after a fruit is plucked. 'It is a grand fact that you cannot make the fairer fruits or parts of fruits matter of commerce,' he wrote. 'You cannot buy the highest use and enjoyment of them. You cannot buy that pleasure which it yields to him who truly plucks it.' It's true. Within 15 minutes, a picked raspberry will have lost some of its magic.

There are a lot of crazy ways we have of choosing fruits, flicking avocado nubs, tapping melons on their left side. What are some tips that actually work?

All that thumping and rubbing we do with fruits actually has a name: 'supermarket hedonics.' And there is something hedonistic about it, although whether any of them really work depends on the fruit itself. First off, some fruits decrease in quality from the minute they are picked; others need to ripen after being picked. Bananas, pears and avocadoes are classic examples of fruits that get better with time.

There's a name for those sorts of fruits: climacteric.

Yes, fruits that continue ripening off the tree are called 'climacteric.' Apricots, peaches, nectarines, blueberries, plums and certain melons can become softer and juicier off the tree, but their flavor and sweetness doesn't improve once they've been picked. Apples, kiwis, mangos, papayas and certain other tropical fruits do get sweeter once they've been picked. They convert their inner starch into sugars and actually start breathing heavily as they ripen, giving off all sorts of gases. 'Non-climacteric' fruits are at their best the minute they're picked, and they go downhill from there. Eat these fruits ASAP: raspberries, grapes, cherries, strawberries, pineapples, and watermelon. As you can see, choosing fruits is complex, and it really depends on whether the fruits were picked at ripeness or not. Many of them are plucked before they're ready, in order to be durable enough to withstand shipping.

You mention that in supermarkets, fruit is put in the front of the store as a way to lure shoppers to buy the pricier processed foods within. Fruits account only for a small profit margin for retailers, so there's no real reason for them to step up to the plate and have a commitment to fruit culture in supermarkets.

It's almost an impossible challenge for supermarkets. Fruits aren't meant to be sold, let alone shipped through a cross-country cold-chain and stored in frigid warehouses for weeks. Fruits are perishable. They're finicky. They aren't always in season. They go off quickly, and there are so many uncontrollable variables, which is part of the reason they're so special. Many supermarkets would prefer to do away with fruits entirely.

Fruits, like other things that come from the earth, are indeed seasonal. I love that phrase you use, "permanent global summertime."

Yes, the produce aisle in supermarkets is a kind of fluorescent purgatory where uniformly tasteless strawberries are available year-round in what marketing experts call 'permanent global summertime.' Shoppers need to reclaim seasonality. We're only going to get really good peaches at the end of summer, and only if they were picked nearby. They can also be flown in, but that's an environmental catastrophe. Good fruits are a luxury commodity. They've always been available to aristocracy and the wealthy, and the same applies today. You have to be rich to have good fruits. You need to travel for them, to farms, or other countries, or be able to pay for the finest specimens.

What can we do to get better fruits in our own lives?

One solution I recommend is to find a greengrocer who can tell you what's in season. It's impossible for shoppers to know which fruits actually taste good because they all look impeccable. You need an insider who'll cut you a segment of plum and explain why it's so good. So get friendly with your produce manager.

Is agribusiness bad? Without it, is there anyway to feed people in an effective way?

It's a dilemma. Corporations are in business to turn products into commodities that will generate profits. They aren't in business to keep people in developing nations alive. Hence the current food crisis. Agribusiness giants are making more profits than ever before, while populations around the world are starving and rioting in the streets. There is no simple solution. The only way agribusiness will change is if there is an entire overhaul of our economic and political systems.

Would you consider yourself green?

To be a true 'environmental steward' requires action, creative solutions, sacrifice and compassion. The true green movement was always on the fringes because it has at its core an anti-capitalist element. Their efforts are being neutralized by green rhetoric that actually prevents action. I mean, BP and Exxon are advertising how green they are. Hummers are green! Green is a requisite PR move for any company today. The worst aspect of the corporate greening of America is the complacency it breeds. Real change will be hard. Our politicians and industries assure us that they're making changes, but there's no accountability because governmental regulatory commissions are overseen by the businesses they're supposed to be monitoring.

Who's your favorite fruit hunter?

The greatest fruit hunter of all time was David Fairchild, and his memoirs are like the best adventure books you've never read. His mantle was assumed by the legendary Bill Whitman, who passed away last year. I was fortunate enough to meet him and interview him several times. His protégé, Richard Campbell, the senior curator of fruits at the Fairchild Botanic Garden in Miami, is the new guard: young, passionate and deeply knowledgeable. He's been around the world in pursuit of the finest mangos known to man. America's greatest fruit connoisseur is David Karp, the Fruit Detective. Shunyam Nirav lives in a Thai beach hut and runs the Internet's durian shrine, www.durianpalace.com. There are so many of these fruit hunters—from Ken Love in Hawaii to Voon Boon Hoe in Borneo—and they're all incredibly inspiring.

I was surprised to learn how many books have been written about fruits throughout the centuries. Is there one book that is your bible?

That's right: There is something like 4,000 books that deal exclusively with fruits, and over 8,000 books that are mainly about fruits. I really like a book called The Duchess of Malfi's Apricots and Other Literary Fruits. It was written by a wonderful scholar named Robert Palter, and it's this mammoth compendium of every time a fruit is used in a book, story, film, poem, artwork or song. Of course, he acknowledges that he could never compile every single fruit episode, and he ends the book without punctuation as a sign of its open-endedness. His book demonstrates that the true power of fruits lies in their ability to seduce us.