Adventures in Produce: The Mango

 

Back again to my friendly HEB I go. Today, I looked through a giant selection of fruits and vegetables and decided to give the long-awaited mango a try. I purchased the mango in a chunk state, I don’t believe this is its normal state, without a shell or skin of some sort. It surely reminds me and looks like a pineapple slice. It has a sweet and sour smell to it at the same time. I can’t really describe the smell, it’s hard to describe, doesn’t smell like anything else I’ve encountered before. Ironically, I guess that makes sense since I have never had a mango before. My choices were to explore either black berries or mangoes, but there is too much hoorah around mangoes, so I had to figure out what the hype was about.

The mango is told to have originated about over 4000 years ago in India. Then spread gradually throughout Asia, then to the rest of the world. Mangoes weren’t introduced and grown within the United States until the 1800’s. Most of the mangoes that are sold today, are grown in Florida, Mexico, Haiti, and South America. However, India is the main producer of mangoes. Surprisingly, to me at least, mangoes have actually been used in art and fabrics for centuries.

I wasn’t planning to do anything special for my first taste of the mango. I will be eating it plain, but I did want to take a look inside to see if there is anything deep down like a seed or something. I grabbed a knife and sliced two of the chunks in half and dug holes into them to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything. There wasn’t much to the inside, no seeds or anything. It was kind of slippery but not difficult at all to cut. They were pretty slimly as well which made a bit of a mess.

    

First bite was slightly tougher than I thought it would be. I thought it would mush a lot easier with my teeth. The texture was smooth in my mouth like I perceived it to be when I purchased them. The taste is nothing like I thought it would be. I assumed it would be more sour than it was. If I’m not mistaken, I tasted a bit of a cucumber after taste at the end of the bite which caught me off guard. Overall rating for the $4.61 “Mango bowl” from HEB, in my opinion, I would give it a 5/10. Not being the fairest on my part, I was hoping for something a lot more sour and spectacular. So not meeting my expectations knocked it a few points down. If I happen to run into any mangoes, or anything mango flavored, I believe I could tolerate it. But I don’t see myself purchasing them for my own involvement ever again.

 

Works Cited

 

“Mango - Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.” Mango, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/school-nutrition/pdf/fact-sheet-mango.pdf.