If you have not heard about these sweet amazing grapes of awesomeness you have to beg your local grocer to get some cotton candy grapes when they are in season...which is only once a year around now.  But there is a warning for them.

 Grapes are so healthy.  The skin of grapes contains Resveratrol which is an antioxidant. .  Grapes help you maintain a healthy metabolism, and as they are 60% to 70% water a great summer fruit that is low in calories and high in hydration.

How Do They Make Cotton Candy Grapes?

Cotton candy grapes are the brainchild of horticulturalist David Cain who wants to bring back the natural flavors of our grapes.  Due to decades of shipping and storage the flavors have been stripped away. 

Cain wants to give consumers the same array of flavors for grapes that we currently have for apples.  And he's doing it without genetic engineering or artificial flavors. Just good old-fashioned plant breeding.

Cain and his team at International Fruit Genetics in Bakersfield, Calif., made the Cotton Candy grape by hybridizing two different grape species. So the designer fruit is actually a hybrid.

So just how do these green grapes conjure up the sensation of spun-sugar melting on your tongue?

The fruit has very little tartness, and there are hints of vanilla.   Vanilla, it seems, is a key flavor in the archetypal "pink" cotton candy that makes your dentist cringe.

To get that vanilla flavor into the table grapes naturally, Cain and his team had to widen the plants' gene pool, mixing in genes from less common grape species.

Breeding seedless grapes isn't easy, because they can't reproduce on their own. After fertilizing the plant, Cain and his team have to take out the baby embryos from the plant, then grow them in individual test tubes in the lab before they ever make it to the field.

Cain painstakingly created around 100,000 of these test tube plants before he stumbled upon the cotton-candy flavored grapes.

"The whole process takes at least six years and sometimes up to 15 years," Cain says. But he thinks it's worth it.  Currently they are working on other varieties of grapes including strawberry, pineapple or mango (but even if they just stick to the cotton candy I'll be happy!!)

"A lot of fruit becomes tasteless by the time somebody buys it," Cain says. "We want to change that."  Source

WARNING!  Dangers of Cotton Candy Grape (I agree with this -especially about the kids part!!)

Incredibly Yummy, Shockingly Healthy IQed Cotton Candy Smoothie Recipe

• 2 scoops vanilla IQed
• 1 cup frozen cotton candy grapes
• ½ cup yogurt, vanilla
• 1/2 cup berries (for color)
• 1 cup of water 

Directions:

Gather all ingredients and throw into your blender.  Using frozen grapes will help make the smoothie thicker (try not to eat them all before you blend...it's difficult)

Blend till smooth -top with some frozen cotton candy grapes.  Be amazed and proud of yourself that even though you feel like you just drank a cotton candy smoothie you just drank a healthy IQed cotton candy smoothie which because all natural IQed provides per serving 9 ayurvedic foods including turmeric, and through the food ingredients also provides over 22 key natural vitamins and minerals, soluble fiber, Omega 3's, and all the essential amino acids, your IQed cotton candy smoothie is a complete and yummy healthy breakfast, lunch or dinner if you wanted it to be!

Which reminds me...

FREEZE THEM!

Stock up and freeze your cotton candy grapes.  Not just because they are difficult to find and only around a few weeks a year in August and will last longer this way -but because they literally are (if possible) even better frozen.  Especially in the summer!

Coming To A Store Near You

(like IQed -you'll hope anyway)

LISA GENG

Mom Conceptualist For IQed

Lisa Geng got her start as a designer, patented inventor,and creator in the fashion, toy, and film industries, but after the early diagnosis of her young children she entered the world of nonprofit, pilot studies, and advocacy. As the mother of two “late talkers,” she is the founder and president of the nonprofit CHERAB Foundation,co-author of the acclaimed book, The Late Talker, (St Martin’s Press 2003), and is instrumental in the development of IQed, a whole food nutrition meal replacement. Lisa currently serves as a parent advocate on an AAN board for vaccines, and is a member of CUE through Cochrane US. Lisa is currently working on a second book, The Late Talker Grows Up and serves as a Late Talkers, Silent Voices executive producer. She lives on the Treasure Coast of Florida.