It's Kiwifruit not Kiwi

March 6, 2009

We love Trader Joe's grocery stores. Tonight I'll be cooking Maui Beef Short Ribs my wife and I bought from their store last night. They're delicious and I'm always excited to eat such wonderful food.

Naturally we were excited when we caught wind of a new neighborhood Joe's opening right around the street in Carlsbad, CA. We even got a neat paper announcing the new store. So far so good, but they seem to have the same lack of understanding of the difference between a "kiwi" and a "kiwifruit" (see the image below) that a large proportion of the population who aren't Kiwis or Aussies themselves suffer from. If you're one of those people that just said Huh? then this next sentence is for you. Kiwi are not fruit - they are a species of flightless bird endemic to New Zealand; kiwifruit are the fruit you know and love to eat.

Colloquially the rest of the world call a kiwifruit a kiwi - but that colloquial usage is just plain wrong and needs to be corrected one person at a time. The correct colloquial usage for a New Zealander, or someone of New Zealand origin (such as myself), is a "Kiwi" while kiwifruit should always be kiwifruit anywhere in the world you go.

It's really quite easy once you get the hang of it. So go out there to your grocery stores across the globe and ask for the kiwifruit, and don't take "You mean kiwi?" for an answer...