Discourse Detox Episode 001

The definitive (and entirely subjective) ranking of Costa Rican fruits for absolutely no reason at all

Welcome to Discourse Detox — a new series where I deliberately write about something completely unimportant but delightful. No lessons, no analysis, no business metaphors, just pure appreciation of something that brings me joy. This is a thinking-free zone. Enjoy the break.

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Look, we need to talk about the state of the internet. Every time I open anything — Instagram, Threads, this very platform — I'm assaulted by people with Thoughts™ and Opinions™ and Hot Takes™ on everything from geopolitics to whether your skincare routine is secretly killing you.

And I'm fully aware I'm part of the problem. Ginormous part, one could argue. I've never met a soapbox I didn't want to climb. I can't help it (says the Leo in me) — it's in my DNA as the daughter of an actress and historical fiction editor. My bloodline basically guarantees I'll have something to say about everything, warranted or not.

So yes, the existential dread, unsolicited pontification, marketing musings and intellectual dissection will continue. I'm not suddenly becoming a lifestyle blogger (though god knows my life would be easier if I could get excited about posting perfectly staged photos of coffee cups).

But Christ on a bicycle, sometimes we all need a break from discourse, don't we? From the constant pressure to extract meaning and metaphor from every mundane experience? From turning lunch into a lesson about hustle culture?

This, then, is Discourse Detox. A series where I will deliberately write about shit that doesn't matter, has no business implications, teaches you absolutely nothing and exists purely because it delights me. It's the digital equivalent of having a glass of wine with friends and talking shit about absolutely nothing important for once.

You're welcome to join, or you can wait for the regularly scheduled programming where I'll return to picking apart the human condition. Either way, I'll be here, temporarily unburdened by the need to be profound.

Let's begin.

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Before I moved to Costa Rica, I thought I knew fruit. Lol. I was a person who might occasionally say things like “this apple is jolly good” or “these grapes are particularly sweet today” (those poor, winter-born bastards).

What a sweet, sweet, naive little child I was.

Living in the jungle has completely ruined me for normal fruit. I now understand that what passes for “fruit” in most British supermarkets is essentially the equivalent of a Twilight novel being passed off as Shakespeare — technically in the same category, but fundamentally missing the depth, complexity, sweetness and philosophical, soul-altering experience of the real thing.

So, today, dear reader, I offer you my entirely subjective ranking of tropical fruits that have forever changed my relationship with fruit as a genre. There will be no nutritional information. No recipe suggestions. No profound reflections on nature's bounty. Just one woman's deeply emotional and possibly undeniably unhinged opinions about fruit.

God tier — the life-ruiners

1. Costa Rican pineapple

I need to start with a confession: I literally have a pineapple tattooed on my body. Not because I'm a cute, quirky hipster with the personality of a vintage typewriter, but because eating fresh Costa Rican pineapple was my first genuine religious experience. It was like discovering that what I'd been calling “pineapple” my entire Northern English life was actually a cruel practical joke perpetrated on the British Isles.

I still remember the moment, standing in a market, some bloke I’d literally just met (who happened to be the love of my life, but that’s definitely not a pineapple story) handed me a slice, and I nearly dropped to my knees. It was so sweet it almost savaged my mouth, but in a way that felt consensual and pleasant. The pineapple here doesn't hate you the way other pineapples do — it has no personal vendetta for being ripped far too soon from the bosom of its mother plant and shipped to the freezing cold, grey north, it doesn't want to dissolve your tongue out of vengeance, it wants to be your best mate. And listen, I respect that in a fruit.

So profound was this experience that my internal monologue went from “Ooh, that's bloody rather quite nice” to “OH MY GOD I'VE BEEN LIVING A LIE” in approximately 2.73 seconds. Thus, the tattoo. Which is perhaps the most dramatic overreaction to fruit in human history, but I stand by it. Would I die for Costa Rican pineapple? Probably not. Would I sustain a moderate injury for it? Absolutely.

2. Tree-Ripened Mango

Not supermarket mango. Not flown halfway around the world and ripened in the darkness of a shipping container like a hostage in a badly planned crime drama mango. I'm talking about a mango that ripened on the actual tree, picked five minutes ago, juice running down your arms like you've just committed a delicious crime. It's the kind of experience that makes you question every life choice that led you to eating inferior fruit for decades. I once ate one so good, I actually teared up (I may or may not have been intoxicated), and then immediately texted three people to tell them about it. My best friend still laughs about that to this day.

3. Green Mango with Lime, Salt & Tajin

If you'd told me pre-Costa Rica that one of my favourite fruits would be deliberately unripe, I'd have assumed you'd suffered some sort of head trauma. But here we are. Green mango — crunchy, tart, and still clinging desperately to the concept of being a vegetable — transformed with lime, salt, and Tajin (a chili-lime seasoning invented by angels) into something so addictively good it should probably be regulated by the government.

It's sour. It's spicy. It's salty. It's sweet. It's all the flavours having a literal underground rave in your mouth, and you're not even mad that they didn't invite responsibility. This snack has ruined me for all other snacks. Crisps are dead to me now. DEAD. Chocolate seems quaint and one-dimensional. Bless. Green mango with lime, salt, and Tajin is the snack equivalent of suddenly experiencing colour after living your entire life in black and white. I'll never go back. YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.

4. Mamón Chino (Rambutan)

Looks like something from an alien planet (small, red, covered in what appear to be soft tentacles), if we’re being really honest, looks a bit like a strange, alien testicle. Tastes like perfumed grape-lychee heaven. The effort-to-reward ratio is unmatched – a quick twist and satisfying squeeze, and you're popping what looks disturbingly like an eyeball but tastes like sweet nectar into your mouth.

I eat so many of these it could qualify as concerning behaviour. The fact that my patio is often covered in red hairy ball shells is embarrassing, but worth it. My neighbours definitely think I have a problem. They're not wrong.

Excellent but won't make you question reality tier

1. Guanabana (Soursop)

Looks like a spiky green football that could definitely be used as a weapon in a pinch, tastes like strawberry-pineapple yoghurt somehow made into fruit form by an angel garden fruit witch. The texture is the most confusing part — like a fibrous custard that shouldn't work but absolutely does.

Eating one requires commitment, patience and accepting that you'll be finding small black seeds in your teeth for the next several hours. Worth it, but maybe don't eat one before a date unless you're specifically trying to sabotage yourself. Actually, it might be a good litmus test for potential partners — anyone who's put off by you picking seeds out of your teeth for an hour probably isn't in it for the long haul anyway. This one is really, really fucking good as a juice.

2. Guava

The smell alone should qualify this for the top tier, but the seed situation keeps it from greatness. Biting into a perfectly ripe pink guava is what I imagine it feels like to dive into a pool of perfume, in the best possible way. Unfortunately, the seed-to-flesh ratio feels like a personal attack, as if the fruit is saying, “You can have this transcendent experience, but you'll have to work for it, peasant”. It does have a sort-of superior-feeling quality about it.

I respect the boundary-setting, but it does get tedious. It's like dating someone gorgeous who lives three hours away by multiple forms of public transport. Eventually, you have to ask yourself if the payoff is worth the effort. (For guava, it usually is). The poetry of the fact that I’m quite literally watching them tumble off the tree in front of me as I write this is magnificent.

3. Costa Rican Papaya

I need to be crystal clear here, European papaya and Costa Rican papaya are completely different species as far as I'm concerned. The former tastes like someone tried to make a fruit out of sweaty gym socks, while the latter is a juicy revelation.

Costa Rican papaya is sweet, delicate, and makes you seriously question how the same name can be applied to both fruits. It's like discovering that the thing you've been calling a “dog” in Europe is actually a sentient potato with legs, while Costa Rican “dogs” are, in fact, actual dogs. The papaya here is so good that I've had to reconsider all my previous papaya-based judgements. It's been humbling, really, to admit I was wrong. This doesn't happen often, so please savour this moment.

The complicated relationship tier

1. Jackfruit

I have never worked harder for less consistent results. When jackfruit is good, it's incredible — like a fruity version of pulled pork texture with notes of banana, pineapple, and bubblegum. When it's bad, it's like eating stringy, bland, snotty disappointment with the mouthfeel of wet kitchen roll.

Plus, cutting one open requires the skill set of both a surgeon and a mechanic, and will coat your kitchen in a sticky substance with the adhesive properties of industrial glue (at least if you’re me). The last time I tried to do this alone, I cut my thumb open. We are currently not on speaking terms. I see it at the market and I look away, like an ex I'm not yet emotionally prepared to engage with. “Not today, jackfruit. The wounds are still too fresh”.

2. Granadilla (Sweet Passion Fruit)

Looks like an orange, opens to reveal what can only be described as frog eggs suspended in alien snot. Tastes divine. The cognitive dissonance is almost too much to bear. My brain says “this is obviously alien spawn that will hatch in your stomach,”, but my taste buds say “shut the fuck up and keep eating the alien spawn, it's delicious”.

I've learned to listen to my taste buds, but I still close my eyes when I eat it. When the granadilla overlords come to claim Earth as their own, perhaps they'll spare me for my loyalty.

The betrayers tier
(aka fruits that looked adorable and lied to my face)

1. Manzana de Agua (Water Apple)

A fruit that’s almost worth the betrayal. It’s stupidly pretty. The colour is a lush, sultry pink. The shape is like a cheekily plump little tree cherub. It crunches like an apple but tastes like rosewater diluted through a Pinterest influencer’s dreams. It’s 90% water, 10% perfume, and 100% the kind of fruit that seduces you visually, then ghosts you flavour-wise.

If I had a dollar for every time I picked one off the tree thinking, “this one looks really good”, only to bite into a slightly floral disappointment, I could fund my own regenerative orchard. The thing is, I want to like them. I do. They make you feel like you’re in a Jane Austen novel set in the tropics. But ultimately, they’re the “nice guy” of fruit — looks good on paper, absolutely not the one.

2. Breadfruit

Not a fruit. Not bread. A starchy liar that promises adventure but delivers something with the flavour profile of an underachieving potato. Requires cooking, which automatically disqualifies it from being a proper fruit in my book. Fruit should be ready to eat when picked – that's the social contract.

Breadfruit has broken that contract and should be sued for false advertising. If breadfruit were a person, it would be the one who shows up to a party empty-handed but is first in line at the buffet. The audacity of calling yourself “breadfruit” when you are neither bread nor fruit is the kind of confidence I aspire to but will never achieve.

3. Nance

If deception were a fruit, it would be nance. These teeny, sunshine-yellow little bastards look like something a cartoon woodland creature would nibble on while singing to birds. They look like they should taste like candy, or at the very least, a slightly tart berry. Instead, they taste like what would happen if a cherry tomato gave up on life and started taking drugs halfway through ripening.

My husband, bless him — a born-and-raised Costa Rican with the fruit-scouting instincts of a wild animal and the machete skills of a ninja chef — keeps offering them to me like he's discovered something magical. Every time, I fall for it. Every time, I regret it.

“They’re better cold,” he says.
“You have to try the smaller kind” he says.
“Maybe you haven’t quite had a ripe on yet” he says.

Señor. No amount of chilling, growth-limiting, or spiritual awakening will turn this tragic berry into something pleasurable. I have chewed kinder things in my sleep. And yet, I still try them, again and again, because love-partnership is a lifelong journey of loving someone despite their taste in fermented stone fruit.

In Conclusion

There is no conclusion. This is Discourse Detox. No lessons here, just the ramblings of a woman who has spent far too much time thinking about fruit and not enough time thinking about pension plans or mould-protective paint or whether aliens would consider humans a delicacy if they ever visited Earth (though we definitely do not deserve to be in their God Tier).

Next time you bite into an out-of-season strawberry that tastes like watery disappointment and broken dreams, know that somewhere in Costa Rica, I'm probably standing over my sink, mango juice dripping from my elbows, having a moment so transcendent it borders on inappropriate. And I'm not sorry about it.

This has been Discourse Detox, a brief respite from content that wants something from you. No actionable takeaways. No strategy. Just one woman, some juice-stained fingers, and a complicated relationship with tropical produce. If you're still reading this, you’re my kind of people (seriously did you just read an entire article on my harsh judgement of types of fruit? Ily). I’m going to try and randomly choose a new and entirely uninteresting topic every week. For my own enjoyment, if you like it too — that’s a bonus.