Fruits are most useful for health. They are protective food as they provide us vitamins and minerals. Different fruits have different types of tastes. Each fruit has a separate taste which varies in some way from the taste of any other fruit. Fruits like watermelon, guavas, grapes, apples, mangoes are sweet. On the other hand fruits like lemon, orange, raw mango are sour. Again the fruits of the same family also have various tastes. There are different types of mangoes and most of them taste different.
Hence, the questions arise-Why does every fruit have a different taste? And what causes the difference between the tastes of fruits?
It is a fact that the taste of any fruit depends on the compound it contains. In general a fruit consists of fructose (natural sugar), organic acids, vitamins, starch, proteins, minerals and cellulose. All these materials are there inside the fruits. But these are present in different proportions in different fruits which make the fruits taste different. Fructose tastes sweet. So fruits having more fructose content, taste sweeter. Acid tastes sour. That is why fruits having more acids are sour. Mango is sweet as it contains more fructose where as lemon is sour due to presence of more acids. Again some fruits like orange tastes both sweet and sour due to the presence of equal quantities both fructose and acids.
Raw fruits taste sour and ripen fruits are sweet. Because raw fruits contain more acids but on ripening, the quantity of acid in them decreases and the amount of sugar increases. Therefore, raw mangoes are sour, but ripe mangoes are sweet. Raw bananas consists more of starch, but these get transformed into fructose when the fruit ripens. During the process of ripening, some chemical changes occur inside the fruit. Due to this change, the quantity of sugar increases and the fruit taste sweet. Some sour fruits like lemon, do not taste sweet even after their ripening. This is because of the presence of excess amounts of acids in them.
A difference is found between two fruits of a similar kind. This is so because of the number of varieties of the same fruit and the difference in their soil, climate, growing technique, manure, water etc. The mangoes of Orissa have different tastes from those of Andhra and the oranges of Nagpur, Maharashtra differ from our oranges due to these factors.