'Star-shaped grapes' from Japan do not exist, experts say

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 14, 2023 at 09:20
Updated on April 14, 2023 at 09:24
3 min read
By Emo TOURE, AFP South Korea

Doctored pictures that appear to show star-shaped grapes have circulated online for months, misleading some social media users into believing they are a genuine fruit from Japan. However, viticulture experts said there was no such thing as star-shaped grapes and AFP found various videos demonstrating how to create the pictures using editing software.

The doctored photos were shared in a Facebook post saying they showed "a new type of grape" launched in Japan.

The post, shared by a page with more than 170,000 followers on March 27, appears to show pictures of star-shaped grapes, alongside a screenshot of a Japanese tweet that says: "Star-shaped grape. This is cute."

Screenshot of the Facebook post sharing the doctored images, taken on April 10, 2023

The images have circulated online since at least September 2022 in posts in various languages, including English, French and Japanese, and resurfaced in March 2023.

Some social media users appeared to believe they showed real grapes.

"They also "MAKE" their watermelons grow in squares by growing them in boxes and I'm sure they do the same with the grapes," one Facebook user commented.

Another user wrote that they would buy the grapes for a friend they tagged in the comments.

Edited videos

Reverse image searches on Google found various videos posted online demonstrating how to use editing software to give a star-shaped edge to photos of normal grapes.

One video shared on Twitter -- attracting more than one million views -- shows an internet user using Chinese image editing app Meitu to make a similar picture to the one circulating in misleading social media posts.

Screenshot of a video showing how a photo of grapes was edited using Chinese app Meitu

A search for the term 'star-shaped grapes' on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, found a post showing an internet user editing a photo showing the same purple grapes seen in misleading posts.

The Douyin post, shared on September 7, 2022, reads: "#StunnedByAStringOfGrapes This is how they produce the star-shaped grapes that have gone viral #AreYouSurprised #Grapes #GrapesHaveRiped" in simplified Chinese.

Screenshot of a Douyin post showing how the purple grapes were edited

Furthermore, the picture of the green grapes in misleading posts features a telltale sign that it has been edited.

The edges of the cardboard box surrounding the grapes are deformed, likely resulting from the blending together of those of the grapes and the box during the editing process.

Screenshot of edited grapes, with the cardboard box's deformed edges highlighted by AFP

Viticulture experts said that star-shaped grapes like the ones in the pictures did not exist.

"Grapes of this kind do not exist in nature," Luca Brillante, assistant professor of viticulture at California State University, Fresno told AFP.

He added that the grapes in the doctored pictures were missing the black dot found at the bottom of real grapes.

Megan Bartlett, assistant professor of viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis said it was possible to grow grapes to form a certain shape, such as a square, by using a container.

However, she said the effect of such a process was limited, and "they still look mostly like (ordinary) grapes".

"Trying to make them take a shape as complicated as a star is not likely to work."

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