During the recent past, novelty fruits such as cotton candy grapes and sumo oranges have become very popular.

The latest of the series – the one you might not have heard of yet – is donut peaches. This variety of peaches have a rather flat shape and a lighter tone making them look more like honey-crisp apples.

Here’s a detailed account of this new variety of peaches that are selling like hotcakes.

What a donut peach actually is?

Having a number of names (owing to the strange appearance of the fruit, maybe) like UFO, Jupiter, Saturn, flat white or Chinese peach, the donut peaches have their history dating back to ancient China.

Legend says that these strange, oddly flat peaches were introduced to the West thousands of years back via the silk route. But they are still taken as a novelty in the US.

The donut peaches aren’t just similar to donuts in shape, they are also sweet like them.

Their sweetness comes from an extra gene found in all Chinese peaches, code-named the ‘honey’ gene which makes them unusually sweet and candy-like.

On the inside, they are creamy and juicy with a considerably small pit that’s easy to remove.

Are donut peaches healthy or not?

Making fruits an integral part of your daily dietary routine is extremely important. As of this summer, you can add donut peaches to your daily fruit intake.

While there are no accurate stats of what are the constituents of this flat peach, it is certain that they are a good source of fiber, Vitamin C, and potassium – much like the peaches we are used to eating.

However, they are significantly lower in acidity as compared to the usual variety of peaches we all know. This makes donut peaches a very good option for people having a stomach sensitive to acidic foods.

On the other hand, the unusually sweet taste of this peach variety indicates a high amount of sugar in them, making them unsuitable for diabetics and people on a low-carb diet.

How can this fruit be used?

You can substitute donut peaches in any of the peach recipes to make them tastier. However, it can’t be said with surety if you’d like or dislike the taste of the recipe after this alteration.

Where to buy this new fruit?

Donut peaches are available almost everywhere and you can get your hands on them easier than you think.

The typical season of this fruit starts from May and lasts till August, and they can be found at the farmer’s markets and food retail outlets right now.

You can get donut peaches, as much as you need, at a number of outlets including Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, Publix, Whole Foods, Sprouts, and The Fresh Market.