Jean-Louis Tu wrote:

> First of all, here is a table of carb. and two mineral contents of a few fruits:
>
>         Carbohydrate   calcium  magnesium
>
> grapes        17              14       5
> cranberries   13               7       7
> blueberries   14               6       5
> oranges       12              40      10
> passion fruit 14               4      17

Interesting.  Could this table be implying that carbohydrate is the same as Brix?
My blueberries tend to run about 14-15 Brix, but blueberries can range from poor, at
8 Brix, to excellent, at 16+ Brix.  Young or old, white or black, well or sick, no
one can confuse the two extremes.  And very few humans can fail to detect a 2 or 3
Brix difference by taste.

So when you say these words,

>The fact that a fruit doesn't taste sweet doesn't mean it has a low mineral >or
even carbohydrate-content, and thus a fruit can score high in Brix even >though it
is virtually inedible raw...

they go against everything I know of Brix and quality.

I have bought grapes in the store that measured 25 Brix and I seriously doubt that
any vintner of note would do anything but dump out the 17 Brix grapes you've listed
if he wished to make superior wine.

Crank up a search engine, examine the import regulations, and notice that most
fruits are listed along with the minimum Brix allowed.

My ag chart shows oranges ranging from poor, at 6 Brix, to excellent, at 20 Brix.

The table you have typed in does not show a range of mineral values and I would tend
to be wary of its numbers.  I assume you are familiar with the Firman Bear report
that measured higher quality vegetables with over a thousand times more of certain
minerals than poor specimens of the same variety.  Surely the same is true of
fruits.

I also assume you are familiar with the acid/sugar ratio used in citrus work to help
establish maturity.  Is it possible that cranberries, although red, are not ripe, or
even near ripe, at the time they are sold?  I say that because I agree they are not
fit to eat as sold and have to be processed.

Yes, there is much to discuss.

>Second of all, even if some wild fruits contain a fair amont of >carbohydrate
(although probably less than artificially selected fruit), their >glycemic index is
low thanks to their high-fiber content, so eating too >much modern fruit is more
problematic than eating too much wild fruit.

Jean-Louis, have I stepped into the middle of a dogma turf war?  How can eating the
best fruit be problematic?  And surely you are aware wild fruits outside the limits
of cultivation are often of higher quality.  How could it be otherwise: many farmed
fields have been cropped season after season to the point that they are depleted and
the trees are unable to pull minerals from the soil where there are none.

>P.S. To end this "fruitless" discussion, it would be helpful to have a
>comparison of modern cultivated fruit and their wild counterparts, with the
>sugar contents expressed as percentages, but unfortunately I have never >seen such
a table.

But such tables are used for agriculture around the world, are they not?  For
instance, does not the USDA insist the Brix of cantaloupe be a minimal 9 before they
allow shipping?  And the Florida Department of Agriculture insists on 10 Brix before
ordering the orange harvest to begin.  Granted, these are low end numbers, but the
American public has agreed to eat such, so that is that.  A few people, mainly
sophisticated Japanese and Europeans, do insist on better.

Regards,
Rex Harrill