Monk fruit facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Monk fruit
Siraitia grosvenorii (luohan guo) fruits
Scientific classification
Genus:	Siraitia
Species:	grosvenorii
Synonyms
Momordica grosvenorii Swingle Thladiantha grosvenorii (Swingle) C.Jeffrey

Siraitia grosvenorii, often called monkfruit or luohan guo, is a plant from the gourd family. It grows as a vine and lives for many years. This plant is originally from southern China. People grow it for its fruit, which contains special sweet compounds called mogrosides. These compounds are about 250 times sweeter than regular sugar! Monkfruit extract is used as a low-calorie sweetener in drinks. It is also used in traditional Chinese medicine.

The scientific name of the plant, grosvenorii, honors Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor. He was the president of the National Geographic Society. In the 1930s, he helped pay for a trip to China. The goal was to find this plant, which was already being grown there.

What's in a Name?

The monkfruit was first written about by Chinese monks in the 1200s. They lived in Guangxi, near Guilin. It was hard to grow, so it wasn't a common part of Chinese herbal traditions back then.

The name Luóhàn (羅漢) is a shorter version of āluóhàn. This comes from the ancient Indian word arhat. In early Buddhist beliefs, an arhat is a monk who has reached a high level of enlightenment. So, luóhàn guǒ (羅漢果) literally means "arhat fruit." This is why it's called monkfruit today.

You might also hear it called la han qua in Vietnamese. This also means "arhat fruit." Sometimes, it's called "longevity fruit," but this name is also used for other fruits.

Monkfruit's Journey Through History

The first report about monkfruit in England was in 1938. It was in a paper by G. Weidman Groff and Hoh Hin Cheung. They wrote that the fruit was often used in "cooling drinks." These drinks helped with hot weather, fevers, or other problems linked to heat, like inflammation.

Monkfruit came to the United States in the early 1900s. In 1917, a botanist named Frederick Coville showed Groff a monkfruit he bought in a Chinese shop. Seeds from a San Francisco Chinese shop were used to describe the plant officially in 1941.

Scientists started studying the sweet part of monkfruit in the 1970s. C. H. Lee wrote an English report on it in 1975. Tsunematsu Takemoto also worked on it in Japan in the early 1980s. Since then, China has continued to develop monkfruit products, especially concentrated extracts.

What Monkfruit Looks Like

The monkfruit vine can grow very long, from 3 to 5 meters. It climbs over other plants using special parts called tendrils. These tendrils wrap around anything they touch. The leaves are shaped like a narrow heart and are 10–20 cm long.

The fruit itself is round, about 5–7 cm across. It has a smooth, yellow-brown or green-brown color. You can see lines running from the stem end. The skin is thin but hard and covered with fine hairs. Inside, there's an edible pulp. When dried, this pulp forms a thin, light brown, and brittle shell. The seeds inside are long and almost round.

People can eat the fresh fruit inside. The rind (skin) is often used to make tea.

Monkfruit is famous for its sweetness. This sweetness comes from its juice. The fruit has 25% to 38% carbohydrates, mostly fructose and glucose. But the super sweetness comes from mogrosides. These are special compounds that make the fruit taste much sweeter. There are five main types of mogrosides, from I to V. Mogroside V is the most important one.

Where Monkfruit Grows

Monkfruit seeds grow very slowly, sometimes taking several months to sprout. It is mainly grown in the far southern Chinese province of Guangxi. You'll find many farms in the mountains near Guilin. It also grows in Guangdong, Guizhou, Hunan, and Jiangxi.

These mountains offer shade and often have mists. This protects the plants from too much sun. Even so, the climate in this southern area is warm. Monkfruit is rarely found growing wild. This means people have been growing it for hundreds of years. Records from as early as 1813 mention it being grown in Guangxi. Most monkfruit farms are in Yongfu County and Lingui County.

Longjiang Town in Yongfu County is known as the "home of the Chinese luohanguo fruit." Many companies that make monkfruit extracts and products are located there. The Yongfu Pharmaceutical Factory is one of the oldest.

How Monkfruit is Prepared

Dried Siraitia grosvenorii fruit cut open, with the seeds removed

Monkfruit is picked when it's a round, green fruit. It turns brown when it dries. People rarely use it fresh because it's hard to store that way.

So, the fruits are usually dried before being used. You can buy them dried in Chinese herbal shops. The fruits are dried slowly in ovens. This preserves them and removes most of the unwanted smells. However, this drying can also create some bitter or astringent (sharp) flavors. Because of this, the dried fruits and extracts are often used in diluted tea, soup, or as a sweetener for things that would normally have sugar or honey.

Making Monkfruit Sweetener for Sale

In 1995, a company called Procter & Gamble patented a way to make a useful sweetener from monkfruit. The patent explained that monkfruit has many flavors that can get in the way. It described a process to remove these unwanted flavors. These flavors come from compounds that contain sulfur.

To make the sweetener, the peel and seeds are removed. The fruit pulp is then made into a concentrate or puree. More juice can be taken from the remaining pulp using hot water. This juice is then mixed well (homogenized). It's made slightly acidic to stop it from turning into a gel and to improve the taste. Then, special enzymes are added to break down the pectin.

Most of the unwanted flavors are removed using special resins. Or, they can be absorbed by things like charcoal or clay. These are then filtered out. Any remaining sulfur smells are removed by low-pressure evaporation. Finally, the juice is pasteurized. This stops natural enzymes and kills any tiny living things (micro-organisms). This process helps keep most of the mogrosides. The final sweetener is about 250 times sweeter than regular sugar.

Is Monkfruit Sweetener Safe?

In the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that monkfruit extract is "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). This means it's considered safe to use in food.

In Europe, monkfruit is called an "unapproved Novel Food." This means it wasn't used in food before May 1997. So, it can only be sold as a food or ingredient after a safety check and approval from the European Commission. As of 2020, monkfruit was not yet on the list of approved Novel Foods in the EU.

Traditional Uses of Monkfruit

Monkfruit is most valued for its sweet taste. It's used as a sweetener. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is used to help with coughs and sore throats. The fruits are usually sold dried. People use them to make herbal tea or add them to soup.

See also

In Spanish: Siraitia grosvenorii para niños