Mango, the world's next superfood

Mango from Saturday Night Live

In our ever-pervasive quest to cure cancer with fruit, the mango has emerged as the latest fruit-script. The National Mango Board, having superfruit envy over the blueberry, acai, and pomegranate, commissioned a number of studies to help find something else super about the mango other than its super-sweet taste. Lo and behold one study from Texas AgriLife Research emerged finding mangos "to prevent or stop certain colon and breast cancer cells in the lab." Way to go mango, we knew you had it in ya!

The mango polyphenol extracts where also found to be promising in fighting lung, leukemia, and prostate cancers in vitro, but were most effective at fighting breast and colon cancers, read the press release (an email request for the full study found no response). Mostly polyphenols, when fruit is involved, are found in the skins, so it's possible that sucking sweet nectar from the inside of this tropical delight isn't good enough.

"It has about four to five times less antioxidant capacity than an average wine grape, and it still holds up fairly well in anticancer activity. If you look at it from the physiological and nutritional standpoint, taking everything together, it would be a high-ranking superfood,"  said Dr. Susanne Talcott in a press release; she, along with her husband, Dr. Steve Talcott, conducted the AgriLife study.

Be prepared for the next superfruit craze to hit your local grocery. I predict mango juice to go up in price, along with whole mangos from the produce section, mango extract to reach the pharmacy herbal supplement aisle, and possibly even a mango-breast-wrap to be offered at the local spa by next Christmas. Viva la fruit!

Click to read the full press release.