• NPR Morning Edition, Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:01 AM

Will the Indian mango be the next pomegranate, rising from relative obscurity to the top of everyone's must-have functional foods list? Sandip Roy is no Lynda Resnick, and the succulent fruit may have a ways to go before it has "ambassadors" like Resnick's POM brand http://www.pomwonderful.com/pombassadors.html does, but Roy's report sure teases the taste buds on a dreary Northeastern morning.

Indian mangoes -- thought to be some of the best in the world, according to Roy -- weren't allowed in the U.S. for almost 20 years because of FDA import standards and a seed weevil problem. But now they're here, including the evidently to-die-for, $30-a-box Alphonso, the King of the Mangoes that make the Mexican and Guatemalan varieties seem like poor cousins.

But imports to the U.S. come unnaturally wrapped in "little pink Styrofoam net stocking," unlike the free-range pyramids that street vendors build back home. "I still crave that first mango of summer in Calcutta, the juice dripping down my chin, the cool orange flesh the only thing that made the muggy days bearable," says Roy. "My mother can still summon the mangoes of her childhood as if reciting a prayer."

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