Not Only Is Pineapple Not an Apple, It’s Actually a Type of Berry

Fellow trivia heads who love nothing more than to inject a fun fact into a dying conversation, thereby fully killing it, rejoice. I have a new foodstuff fact for you to trot out that defies common sense, and is so technical as to be borderline off-putting. The days when “actually, a tomato is a fruit” was capable of kicking off an argument are long gone. As a replacement, may I put forward the following: A pineapple is a berry.

Your brain is probably stirring with a mixture of confusion and earned rage. A pineapple isn’t a berry, you’d think. Berries are small and cute and easily sprinkled atop things. A pineapple is a fat beast of flesh that’s actively painful to hold.

Clear the red from your eyes, though, and consider the picture of a pineapple I’ve so helpfully embedded above. Take a look at those divisions along its main mass. Now, you’re starting to see it. You’re starting to wake up. Yes, that structure should start to make it mentally palatable that botanically, a pineapple is indeed a berry. 

To be even more specific, each of those small segments you can see is one pineapple berry of many, which have fused together into a “collective fruit.” If you want to go full levels of obnoxious, one “pineapple” is technically a bunch of small fruits, not one large fruit.

Now, take this knowledge, and go corner someone who’s done nothing wrong at a Trader Joe’s.