Articles

For countless generations, the people of Southeast Asia have valued the mangosteen above all other fruits. These are people intimately acquainted with all of the plants in the rainforest. There are literally millions of varieties of plants and botanicals in the world, yet only the mangosteen holds the honor of being referred to as the “Queen of Fruits”.

Why does the mangosteen deserve such a title? Maybe its the role the mangosteen played in ancient Southeast Asian medicine. Traditionally, the whole mangosteen fruit was used to control fever and ward off infections of every kind. The indigenous people of the Asian rainforests understood then, as they still know today, the tremendous healing power of the mangosteen plant, especially the outer rind or pericarp.

But the people of early Southeast Asia were not all that different from us. Even though they recognized and valued the medicinal benefits of the mangosteen, what really caught their fancy was the taste! And you thought things that were good for you had to taste bad, right? David Karp, writer for Gourmet Magazine describes the flavor of the mangosteen best in a recent article in the July 2003 issue called Meet the Mangosteens.