The first time I cracked one open I couldn’t believe the exotic, chocolaty-vanilla smell.
Here I was in one of the most remote parts of the Amazon, looking for healing herbs to bring back for patients at my clinic. And instead I had found the “Food of the Gods.”
That’s the Greek name for the tree that produces one of the sweetest, creamiest fruits I have ever eaten.
It’s called cupuaçu (coo-poo-ah-SOO). Have you heard of it?
Let me tell you the story of how I first experienced cupuaçu…
Andrea is a small town doctor I met in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. He lives in the very tiny, quaint town of Bela Vista deep in the Amazon near the center of South America.
His father was the first white man in the area. He was a Dutch missionary who had to take a helicopter and then a boat to even reach this very, very remote part of Brazil. He came from the Netherlands, and worked with the locals who had never been exposed to white people at all.
I was having a meeting with Andrea, talking about how much things had changed. And how there were only a few isolated pockets, deep in the jungle, that had not been influenced by white people.
He was going to take me to them. And while we were having this meeting Andrea’s mother said, “Oh, those are the people who introduced us to cupuaçu.”