It seems like every month now some new team of marine biologists releases a bunch of freaky pictures of all the newly discovered species of monster they found a mile below the surface of the ocean. They're always quick to remind us of just how little we understand those mostly unexplored regions of the planet and how much we stand to learn if we can manage to avoid destroying our world's many and varied ecosystems. I always enjoy looking at these photos of terrifying fish that glow in the dark and probably feed on deep-seated childhood anxieties, but I'm starting to get concerned about the marketing ramifications of "new" nature. It's only a matter of time before some direct marketing guru or whatever they're calling shameless hucksters these days gets his hands on some product of the deep sea trenches and starts selling it as a trendy curative. People certainly do enough of that with obscure tropical fruits like today's subject, the Mangosteen.

Mangosteen is making a bid to be this year's Acai berry. It's a mostly harmless and equally unremarkable fruit that grows in southeast Asia. The only reason the stuff isn't well known in the United States is because Americans really only like to eat fruit that's pretty. We prefer the smooth, round redness of the apple, the bright, fragrant durability of the citrus family and the convenient self-packaging of the banana. There are plenty of scary-looking or just plain unpleasant fruits in the world that we yanks want nothing to do with. The mangosteen is such a fruit. As you can see in the above picture, the mangosteen is the color of a bruise with a dirty green plume that looks like some kind of fungus has sprouted on top of it. Then you cut into the thing and find what can best be described as the corpse of a tangerine, pale and husk-like in the unforgiving grip of the afterlife.

Of course, Americans can be convinced to eat ugly things if they're sufficiently tasty. The Baby Ruth candy bar looks in no uncertain terms like omnivore excrement but it was the first commercial product to ingeniously combine chocolate, peanuts, caramel and nougat so we've been eating them by the ton for nearly a century. If the mangosteen had a flavor that compensated for its revolting appearance I'm sure they'd be in every grocery store in America. Since it doesn't, the fruit has been relegated to the whorish world of miracle drug marketing.

Since no living human could possibly make the mangosteen sexy, it's being marketed as a supplementary cancer treatment. The people pushing the product say all the same stuff we've been told for years about quack cancer holistics. They say it has the power to overcome chemotherapy nausea, improve the chances of remission and somehow fight depression. True to form, they do all of this while pointing to a class of chemicals most laypeople don't recognize called Xanthones. Though there are medical studies being conducted about xanthones, they're most likely just natural pesticides and anti-fungal compounds. That doesn't stop the "Know Your Mangosteen" website from carrying a small essay in their "Scam?" page that extols the fruit's virtues and the accompanying marketing plan's legitimacy with a veritable minefield of logical fallacies.

Amount of Time Likely to be Wasted: That depends on how thick your skin is. The front page video features the world's saddest cancer man, so if that doesn't scare you away I guess you might get 15-20 minutes out of the site.

Likelihood to Result in Arrest in Real Life: Low to moderate. The site covers its ass with the standard "this thing doesn't actually do anything of value for your health" disclaimer but the site is also just a gateway to other shills. Where there's greed there's usually a dearth of scruples.

MCDR: Eat some pretty fruit and donate some money to a fact-based cancer research program.

Internet Depth by Preposition: In, as with all scams. You all know the drill by now.