Pineapple fritters
This symbolism has been used for many years including on furniture and in religion. The fruit has been discovered and rediscovered around the entire globe, traded as a pineapple fritters, and planted in foreign lands. Throughout its many journeys, it has come to symbolize welcome, luxury, and beauty, as well as fertility, war, and royalty. Although these symbolic meanings seem vastly different from each other, they all have one thing in common: the sweet fruit and beautiful symmetry of the pineapple.
As an Amazon Associate I Earn from Qualifying Purchases. But Europe was no place to grow pineapples, and importing them required a long, perilous, and expensive journey. At this time, the pineapple was often used as a table decoration, and people didn’t eat them until they started to go bad. Interestingly, if people could not afford a pineapple, they would often rent one for an evening to show off to neighbors and friends, and that is a way that they could gain favor and save money. Because pineapples were so expensive, if you were lucky enough to have one, it meant that you had some money to spare!
The trade routes between the early American world and the Caribbean were very dangerous to traverse. Being able to get back from the treacherous journey in one piece, and bringing back pineapples with you, meant a real victory. So if you were welcomed to someone’s house with a coveted pineapple, that is a sign that the host had pulled out all the stops and was offering you all they had to give. The pineapple has been a sign of hospitality ever since. If sailors made the perilous journey intact, they would often put an intact pineapple on the porch to signify their safe return.
Today, people even hang pineapples outside their door as a sign to guests that they are welcomed in the house. Bromelain usually helps us digest food, but if you eat pineapple on an empty stomach, bromelain becomes an anti-inflammatory and blood thinner, which can help a fetus attach to the uterine wall. In many cases of infertility, it is this implantation state that causes trouble for many women. A second reason women use the pineapple as a sign of infertility is simply because of the shape and stature of the pineapple itself.
On the flip side of infertility, a pineapple is also a sign of virility. In the time of the Aztecs, the gods took it as a sign of strength to climb and get a pineapple from a tree and get through the thick skin to enjoy the delicious fruit. There are also physical reasons why a pineapple helps a man to be more virile. Because of the manganese, thiamin, and Vitamin C it contains, if men eat pineapple it is believed they will be more potent. This symbolism has stayed, and strength and virility are definitely qualities that men want to have, so they will be sure to stick close to the pineapple. Proportionality is also seen as beautiful. Augustine looked at beauty as coming forth from balance and form.
