Review: The Mango
Category: Fruits
Author: Various Anacardiaceae
Rating: 44%
The mango is a stone fruit produced by a variety of plants of the genus Mangifera. Its appearance differs widely between species, but the majority are either orange, red or green. The embryonic plant is contained within a seed, protected by the hard membrane of the stone. The stone is not easily divisible from the flesh, which is soft and pulpy. The mango is a particular favourite with tropical humans, who cultivate the plants which bear them- most commonly Mangifera Indica, the Indian mango. These groups of humans have also imbued the plant- as well as its fruit- with various cultural significance. For example, some countries such as Pakistan, the Philippines and India have taken the Indian Mango as their national tree. The mango is the most cultivated fruit in the tropical world.
I like the mango. It’s not an imposing fruit- not as flamboyant as the dragon-fruit, not as attention-seeking as the star fruit- but it gets the job done. It’s pretty chunky, which is always nice to see, so you get plenty of flesh in the package. The seed is a big stone- nature’s way of saying ‘watch out for this’ is usually to make the offending object very large- so if you eat it by accident, then you probably should have been removed from the gene pool anyway. The colour scheme is also spot on- in fact, there are fewer fruits more appealing than a ripe mango.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of slight design flaws I’ve noticed: firstly, the average mango is ripe for precisely five minutes. When are those five minutes? Exactly when you stop paying attention. Mangoes sit in your cupboard and wait for you to lose interest, and then as soon as you turn your back they have their five-minute-ripeness and turn mouldy. Putting them in the fridge makes things worse: the cold just makes them spiteful.
Secondly, I would say that the taste is a bit of an issue for me. It’s nice, you’ve got the sweetness in there, it’s all going well; then, suddenly pine. What? Pine? Yes. Like the wood. Don’t tell me you haven’t tasted it, I know you have. It tastes like pine. If I wanted a fruit that tastes like pine, I’d eat pinecones. Thirdly, and this links in, the common method of eating a mango is to ‘hedgehog’ it, a method which involves bisecting the fruit (a process which will of necessity produces two uneven halves), and then cutting the flesh- but not the skin- with a grid of lacerations. The skin is then inverted, causing the sections of the grid to protrude in a fashion which someone, somewhere, at some point imagined to be somewhat hedgehog-like. Presumably Picasso, or some other cubist. Anyway, the point is: if I wanted to eat a hedgehog, I would. Why can’t the mango just be itself? This is a fruit with confidence issues.
I am severely disappointed by the mango. The hype is too much, in this case, and you’re never going to get as good a mango as you think you will. It’s a simple issue: stop trying to be a fruit you’re not, mango. People like mangoes, and as soon as you stop living in a pretend world where ‘hedgehog’ can be a verb I will start to take you seriously. Until that day, you are not fooling anyone. Man(go) up.
