> In the 17th and 18th centuries, which fruit was considered a status symbol inEngland?And the answer: pineapples. Photo credit: AQUARIUS STUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK.Native to South America, pineappleswere expensive to ship to Europe, so only the wealthy could afford them. As theBBC explains, "A single fruit was worth thousands of pounds, and often the samepineapple would be paraded from event to event, until it eventually wentrotten."Converting exactly how much a whole pineapple cost back in the 17th and 18thcenturies is extremely difficult to determine with accuracy, but the ballparkestimates tend to ring in at around (wait for it) $5,000 - $10,000 per pineapple. While the quality of the fruit and the season greatly impacted these numbers,it's safe to say that owning a pineapple had many cultural, societalimplications (we wonder what Apple is taking a queue from...).Just how did a piece of fruit come to be so valuable? After the pineapple wasfirst encountered by European explorers in Guadeloupe during ChristopherColumbus' second trip to the Caribbean in 1483, efforts were quickly set inmotion to find a way of reliably producing the fruit back in Europe. The fruititself, indigenous to South America, had been cultivated for centuries beforeits "discovery," yet it soon became clear that the only way to obtain it wouldbe through direct importation. It wasn't until the Dutch were able to cultivatethe pineapple in the late 1600s that it ever left the tropical region. European tastes were quickly enamored with the fruit due to its naturalsweetness. However, pineapples would often rot in transit due to the sheerlength of the journey from the tropics. Thus, it was only through the fastestships and the most ideal weather conditions that a pineapple could be enjoyed inEurope. Predictably, those able to fund such an endeavor were primarily royalty,or the ridiculously wealthy. Learn more about this curious status symbol below.