Kauai Sugarloaf Pineapple

UPDATE: Now you can buy it online.

When not in Kauai the next best thing is fresh Sugarloaf Pineapple from Kauai. And the very best is from my good friends' farm there which occasionally they generously send me.

In a nutshell, this is a variety of pineapple unlike the yellow kind: sweeter, low acid, and the core so tender it's fine eating. Much more detail at the link above.

Incidentally, last week there was a rather comical dispute in The Garden Island (Kauai's local paper) setting the record straight that Sugarloaf Pineapple is not GMO. Recently a very confused gentleman felt obliged to write a letter to the editor saying the by virtue of being a different variety of pineapple it was therefore GMO. The pineapple farmers who actually know something about the subject wrote in response correcting this misinformation. Then on April Fool's day (I'm not making this up) the same fellow writes back admitting he was wrong but somehow concluded that he was right anyway.

According to The Non-GMO Project who we think should know, GMOs (or “genetically modified organisms”) are organisms that have been created through the gene-splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This relatively new science allows DNA from one species to be injected into another species in a laboratory, creating combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and viral genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods." If you prefer Wikipedia it concurs: "A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques."

Several decades ago Sugarloaf pineapple was discovered naturally occurring in the pineapple fields of Lanai. I think we can all agree that nobody was doing any genetic engineering that long ago, and if anyone was, how likely was it that they were working in a pineapple field in Lanai?

Seriously though, the important point about GMO is that it creates organisms by human tinkering that are impossible to achieve by hybridizing or as natural variations. Sugarloaf Pineapple is anything but that, it's perfectly natural, and as we all agree, quite delicious pineapple.