The Search for Longevity
Most of us tend to simply pick up a fruit or vegetable in the produce section, or a canned or bagged food item in a grocery store aisle without thinking when or how or why it became a food product. Often when a “new” food appears it has actually been around for years, but not in a quantity or form that allowed it to be broadly available at a reasonable price.
Monk fruit, often referred to as the “longevity fruit”, is one of those foods. The low-carb juice of this small melon is remarkably sweet - twenty times sweeter than sugar! The fruit was originally cultivated by Buddhist monks in low mountains of southern China about 800 years ago and widely used as a household remedy for colds, sore throats, and minor stomach aches, the benefit of naturally occurring antioxidants in the fruit. Monk fruit gained the “longevity” label because of the high concentration of people who live to 100 that reside in the area where the fruit is grown.
Traditionally, monk fruit was dried at harvest and then crushed and added to boiling water to create a tea-like drink. There was so much interest in this mysterious unique fruit that back in the 1930s the president of the National Geographic Society, Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, approved a grant for an expedition to locate and identify the plant in its native habitat in Asia. That support resulted in honoring Grosvenor with the monk fruit scientific name, Siraitia grosvenorii. Despite this scientific interest, it was another 80 years before the fruit became more broadly available than the dried fruit sold in Asian food markets around the world.
Today, the pure natural sweetness of monk fruit is available as a zero-calorie sweetener used to sweeten coffee, tea, and other beverages, and as an ingredient in foods and beverages. It is used in a dried powder extract form or a juice extract form.
Interestingly, most natural alternatives to sugar are single ingredient liquids, such as honey, maple syrup or agave. Monk fruit juice extract is the only natural calorie-free sweetener available in its naturally occurring liquid form. When used as a sweetener at home, monk fruit juice does not require the addition of any ingredients to deliver its pure, natural sweetness. This is unlike most calorie-free sweeteners, including those that use the monk fruit powder extract, which has a very high intensity sweetness (150-200 times sweeter) that requires blending with other ingredients, like erythritol. The addition of other ingredients is required to dispense the high intensity sweetness or, as in the case of stevia extract, mask a natural bitterness.
When looking for a monk fruit juice extract product, make sure to check the ingredient label. Some products add ingredients to the juice or powder extract to either boost the sweetness level to achieve more servings per bottle or to reduce cost. Added ingredients include water, alcohol, other sweeteners. Adding water or other sweeteners to monk fruit and labeling the product a monk fruit “liquid” makes it appear the product is 100% juice extract. It is not.
The brand llinea™ monk fruit is 100% juice extract. It is just the juice with no added ingredients for people seeking pure natural products.
Sources:
Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; v.22 (1941); Pages 197-203