How to Pick a Delicious Guava? A Full Breakdown of Ten Things, from Choosing One That Tastes Good to Why It Doesn't Turn Black After Cutting

Winter guavas taste the best! Guava is a fruit with an extremely high cost-performance ratio. According to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, every 100 grams of guava contains more dietary fiber, vitamin B1 and vitamin B2 than apples and kiwis, and its vitamin C content is more than twice that of kiwis. Domestic guavas sold on the market are cheap and affordable: the budget for buying 10 kiwis can buy more than 4 jin of guavas!

As a staple fruit in domestic fruit shops, juice shops and restaurants, guava shows up in the lives of people in Taiwan all year round. But the relationship between people in this country and guava can be described as that of a "familiar stranger" - even people who eat guava regularly may not really know guava. The following 10 questions from "Upstream and Downstream" will show just how well you really know guava.

Guava is also known as "fanshiliu" (foreign pomegranate), so it is an immigrant from abroad! It originated in South America and spread eastward through European maritime routes. By the 17th century it was already widespread in the tropical regions of Asia, and at that time Chinese people named it "fanshiliu" because it had many seeds and was a foreign species.

Guava is mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical countries. For example, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, tropical Africa, Central and South America and other countries all grow and eat guava. People in Taiwan have also taught allied countries how to grow guava, but people in mid- to high-latitude temperate regions are less familiar with guava.

People in Taiwan absolutely love eating guava, and even people from Taiwan living far away in Canada and the United States cannot forget the wonderful taste of Taiwan guava. Taiwan's annual guava production is about 170,000 metric tons. After deducting more than 4,000 metric tons for export, people in this country eat more than 160,000 metric tons of guava every year. With each guava weighing about 400 grams on average, that works out to more than 400 million guavas, and each person eats an average of 17.4 guavas a year.

Guava also ranks in the top three in trading volume at domestic fruit and vegetable wholesale markets, keeping pace with pineapple and watermelon. Taiwan exports nearly 4,000 metric tons of guava a year, mostly to Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, and guavas sold to Canada are also mostly stocked in supermarkets with larger Chinese populations. Most of the guavas on the shelves of Chinese supermarkets are bought by local people from Taiwan, and even abroad they cannot forget them, which shows just how much people in Taiwan love eating guava.

Associate Researcher Xie Hongye of the Fengshan Tropical Horticultural Experiment Branch of the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute said that compared with guavas from other countries, Taiwan guava combines a crisp texture with sweet fragrance and a slight tartness, giving it better flavor than Thai guava.

The key to this difference lies in Taiwan's agricultural technology and variety improvement. Now countries across Southeast Asia and Taiwan's allied countries have also introduced Taiwan guava varieties for cultivation. Consumers in Taiwan are pickier, farmers focus on production quality, while other countries mostly pursue yield, so even with the same variety, because cultivation techniques are not up to standard, quality still lags somewhat behind Taiwan.

There are many guava varieties. According to information from the Guava Theme Pavilion, there are 16 varieties of guava in this country. Common varieties include Pearl Guava, Emperor Guava, Fragrant Guava, Crystal Guava, Century Guava, Zhencui and others.

According to data from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, every 100 grams of guava contains more than twice the vitamin C of kiwi and more than 66 times that of apple, and it also beats them by a wide margin in dietary fiber, vitamin B1 and vitamin B2. It is also a very good low-glycemic-index fruit. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, unlike lychee, which easily causes internal heat, or orange, which is on the cool side, guava is a neutral fruit that neither causes dryness nor makes the body cold when eaten. Xie Hongye said that among common fruits, guava ranks among the top in vitamin C and antioxidant capacity, and its price is affordable, so everyone is encouraged to eat it often!