Fruit is a delicious and nutritious snack, but as with many other foods, some fruit can go bad quickly. Sometimes fruit gets soft when it goes bad and sometimes it turns brown, but the taste is another way to determine how fresh fruit is.
If your fruit tastes fizzy, it normally means that the fruit is starting to ferment or go bad. As a general rule, if you take a bite of fruit and find that it tastes fizzy, you’re better off not eating it and instead simply throwing it away.
What Exactly Does “Fizzy” Mean?
When people say that a fruit tastes fizzy, they usually mean it has a carbonated or effervescent feel to it. The texture of the fruit, in other words, is a little different and isn’t as smooth as it normally is. Fizziness in fruits is more common in some fruits than in others. It’s very common in tropical fruits such as mango and pineapple, as well as many berry fruits, such as blueberries and strawberries.
If you actually like your fruits to taste fizzy, you can carbonate fresh fruits. Placing them in carbonated water is the best way to do this. If you’re trying to avoid a fizzy fruit taste, you can freeze the fruit, which works exceptionally well with highly sweet fruits.
Things That Can Cause Fizziness
Fruit that starts to have a fizzy-like taste and texture can get that way due to certain natural conditions, including:
- Microorganisms that are present on the surface of some fruits, such as yeast
- Natural fermentation, which can be alcohol or lactic acid fermentation
- Chemical reactions between the sugar and the yeast/bacteria of the fruit
- Contact with bacteria, which happens with overly ripe fruit and fruit with physical damage
If you want to keep your fruit safe to eat, make sure you eat it before it gets too old. Keep in mind that most fruits have a very short shelf life. Eating fruit within days of buying it is really the best way to be sure it is fresh and safe to eat. Fizziness often means that carbon dioxide has already started accumulating in the fruit. Even if you don’t taste this fizz, but rather it tastes as if it’s ‘burning,’ always discard it immediately.