Wednesday 23 October 2013

Mysterious superfruit #2

More on the peculiar phenomenon of marketing dubious health products with images that have nothing to do with the product.

The mysterious superfruit turned out to be a malformed hen's egg. Now it's this thing, that comes with the promise "Eat THIS, Never Diet Again ... Dr OZ:"The Holy Grail of weight loss".

The site links to an advert for extract of "Garcinia gambogia" - a fruit native to Indonesia that goes under various names such as Malabar tamarind. Its scientific name is Garcinia gummi-gutta, but slimming product vendors have latched on to the former scientific name Garcinia gambogia. There's little or no evidence of its claimed weight loss properties, and one trial had to be abandoned because of liver toxicity.
Garcinia gummi-gutta, however, looks like a small pumpkin (above left).

A Google Images search finds that the fruit in the advert link picture comes from an entirely different plant, the Finger Lime (Citrus australasica - depicted right). A thorny shrub native to Australia, it has lately acquired a reputation as a gourmet "lime caviar".

- Ray

5 comments:

  1. Possibly even weirder are these ads for a "weird food" that "kills blood pressure." It's a Glaucus nudibranch!
    http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fEztTJbEUAg/UWWgEllDLnI/AAAAAAAAN8A/x1jakkuV1F4/s1600/weird+food+kills+blood+pressure+sea+food,++marined3+ad.jpg
    I think they're actually toxic.

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  2. Thanks! Skimming the web, I find ridiculing these things seems to be turning into a bit of a meme. See Mysterious superwhatevers #3.

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  3. Even the whole super fruit name is a scam, try & name one fruit that tastes good enough to eat that is not considered super.

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  4. Thank you. I didn't believe there was a cure-all superfruit, but I kept seeing this gross image in the ads on websites I've visited and was just curious what it was. Kind of funny to see what it really is...

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  5. Anyone knows where it is grown. What is name in that particular country and language. It can help to trace this and resolve mystery.

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