>There is a quality in the sweetness of wild fruits that is very different
>than the sweetness in  artificially bred fruits. This quality makes the
wild
>fruit difficult to overeat because it change on a repulsive quality when
>body needs are met.


Wild fruits, even in years of heavy rain, have more depth and intensity of
flavor than the larger, faster-growing, and sweeter domesticated versions,
which often means they are noticeably more acidic as well.  I know my
stomach tells me to quit early, these days, if I eat anything very acidic.

Does someone here know if any fruits are alkaline rather than acidic? It
does seem the wild ones are at the extremes of the flavor spectrum.

Wild fruits have much more concentrated flavors, which is probably why it
normally takes less of them to satisfy someone's appetite/ instincts.  But
what's normal?  As a child visiting family in New Hampshire, I literally
could pick and eat wild strawberries all day, and STILL go out the next day
and do it all over again!  (Oh for the days of summer when school was out
and my only jobs were to enjoy life all day, and do the dishes after
supper.)

Picking those wild berries was nothing like going to the vast local
pick-your-own strawberry farm, where I can pick several quarts in an hour or
less.  The volume of berries this eagle-eyed picker could pick didn't keep
me from eating myself silly on clams and lobster those nights!  (Maybe this
nostalgia is a double-edged sword, now I am dying for wild strawberries and
a huge lobster or two all for myself.)

Interestingly, even under identical growing conditions, everbearing
raspberries and strawberries (developed by breeders to meet popular demand
for people who don't want to be a** deep in berries two weeks out of the
year and have none the rest of the year) are consistently less sweet than
the varieties that have a shorter but specific bearing season (or two
seasons, as some varieties have).  Probably the ones with shorter, more
specific seasons are closer to the ancestral fruits.

The growing conditions of wild and domesticated fruits are considerably
different, too, and contribute to the differences in taste.

On a bet, I grew some desperately hot peppers once.  My then-husband
relished foods as hot as humans could handle (he'd probably have put Tabasco
on ice cream, he was so crazy about it) and I could grow pretty much
anything, but couldn't eat hot foods (still can't) because they burn me so
badly.  He always said that God hadn't made a pepper too hot for him to eat.

So I got a few seeds from a Chinese woman who worked in the same nursery
with me, her family had sent her seeds from their own garden in China and
she saved seeds every year.  She told me it was very important to NOT plant
them in worked or amended soil, or to water or fertilize them.  She said
those things made the peppers (fruit of the plant) grow too big and too
fast, diluting the flavor, the spirit of the peppers.

So I deliberately neglected those spindly plants, although it was second
nature back then to water, fertilize, and fuss over anything containing
chlorophyll. It was hard to neglect them as ordered! But I was determined to
show I could grow really hot peppers.  In due time, I proudly (and
carefully) brought a smallish, somewhat lopsided pepper proudly to my
husband.

He laughed at me for thinking a wimp like me could grow a truly hot pepper,
bit into the pepper as he laughed, and almost had a coronary!  The peppers
grown by mother nature were ~beyond~ satisfactory. They were SO intense, the
fire-breather actually could not eat them whole.  He had to give up saying
ther wasn't a pepper in the world too hot for him to eat.  Very satisfying,
to humble him a bit with the fruits of my lack of labor!

The next year, I planted some of the seeds in the regular veggie patch just
to find out if the growing conditions really made a difference, and the
cultivated peppers were still stronger than normal American peppers, but not
nearly as strong as the first year.  According to a qualified but remarkably
humble source <g>.

cheers,

laurie (Mother Mastiff), former horticulturist and lifteime fruit fancier