2 September 2014
The Short Answer (TSA)
The late-comedian George Carlin
once noted that there is no “blue food.”
Sensing a potential challenge, he went on to explain that blueberries
were really purple and not blue. I don’t
agree, but will concede the blueberries do have enough purple to take them out
of the pure blue category. Lemons are
yellow. Limes are green. Oranges are orange. But blueberries are a kind of blue-purple
color. So, the world continued to wait
for the discovery of the first true-blue food.
The Japanese Moonmelon
Then, in
2011, the wait ended with the arrival of the Japanese Moonmelon. This melon looked almost exactly like a
watermelon. Only, where the watermelon
was pink, the moonmelon was a deep dark blue.
This beautiful fruit had more than good looks. It also tasted good. But there was even more.
The moonmelon
seemed to be the perfect party fruit because of its miraculous “flavor-switching”
quality. What is flavor-switching? Well, the moonmelon’s sweet taste was always
the same. But one taste of the moonmelon would
change the taste of whatever food you ate next. Sour foods, like lemons or vinegar, would
taste sweet. A salty snack would taste
bitter. Just plain water would taste
orange-flavored.
How had
this stunningly delicious and entertaining fruit stayed hidden for so
long? Well, it was easy to keep the
moonmelon a secret because it didn’t really exist. Someone had doctored a photo to make a plain
old pink watermelon look blue. Then, the
wonderful taste and flavor switching qualities of the mythical fruit were
made-up as well.
Hoax or
not, the moonmelon made quite an impression.
After its first appearance and “unmasking” in 2011, the moonmelon hoax
kept coming back to life. In 2014, the
moonmelon, again, created a stir with the stunning appearance of the “altered”
photos and the description of “flavor switching.”
As Molly
McHugh of The Daily Dot put it, the
moon melon is, by far, “the
most popular fruit that doesn't actually exist.”
See also:
Moon Melon snopes.com
M Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri
(& Belleville, Illinois)
2 September 2014
About the Author
M Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri
(& Belleville, Illinois)
2 September 2014
About the Author
No comments:
Post a Comment