Fruit fight!

You may find it hard to believe, but these people are having a party! Last September, roughly 1,000 people gathered for a grape battle in the village of Binissalem on the Spanish island of Mallorca (may-YOR-ka). The fight is part of the annual "Fiesta de la Vendimia," or "Harvest Party." This celebration honors the village's more than 2,000-year-old tradition of growing grapevines.

During the battle, participants hurl approximately 9,000 kilograms (20,000 pounds) of unfit-to-eat grapes at one another. Fruit battles like this one are not unusual for Spanish festival-goers. They also celebrate the tomato harvest with a tomato fight (see SW 10/24/05).

Since grapes are filled with a sticky sugar-filled juice, they make for a gummier brawl than a tomato fight. When a grape hits a reveler, the fruit's skin breaks open and the sticky juice bursts from the pulp, or flesh of the fruit.

Where does all of that sugary juice come from? A grapevine's leaves undergo photosynthesis, a process in which the plant uses energy from sunlight to convert water and the gas carbon dioxide into food: sugar. The grapevine stores this sugar in its fruit.

Your body uses the sugar in grapes for fuel. But that's not the only nutritious thing about this fruit. A grape's skin and seeds are also full of heart-healthy compounds called antioxidants. Over many years, some people's veins and arteries--bloodcarrying structures of the circulatory system--can become clogged with a fatty substance called cholesterol When this happens, a person may suffer a heart attack. Scientific research suggests that antioxidants from grapes and some other foods lock onto bad cholesterol in the blood and stop the fatty gunk from clumping inside veins and arteries.

"The darker the [grape's] skin, the more antioxidants [it] will have," says Lisa Sasson, a professor of nutrition at New York University. That means that red grapes are thought to have more heart-healthy properties compared with green ones, says Sasson. But for those who get pelted at the Harvest Party, red grapes also mean nasty red stains on their clothing!