You know when you learn about something and then you start seeing it everywhere? Well, since I bought dragon fruit last week in Chinatown, I've seen them for sale at Dean and Deluca and I took a drink out of Nate's fridge at random (shhh... it was his roommate's!) and it happened to be dragon fruit flavored: Glaceau Vitamin Energy. It tasted sweet like the fruit, but carbonated with 2000mg of Taurine which if you don't know, is very good stuff. I don't really know what it is, or does, but it's in all my favorite energy drinks (red bull, tab energy, bawls) that keep me wide awake on days like today when my office desk starts to look soft, fluffy, kind of like a pillow.
I think dragon fruit could catch on as flavoring in drinks and things here in the U.S. It wouldn't even need the extreme PR treatment that the south american acai berries got a few years back because dragon fruit actually tastes good. IMHO acai berries are overrated and over marketed (and I'm a marketing person who likes marketing). See here where acai berries can cure you of ugliness and obesity and here's a CNN article about their hype and the rumor that they can cure cancer.
Maybe dragon fruit prices will come down too. The dragon fruit I saw at Dean and Deluca cost $10 each and they were too ripe. I paid about $2 each in Chinatown. See our video on dragon fruit here.
Does anyone know of any other dragon fruit flavored drinks... candies... food?
-mary kate