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Reader question: Please explain “forbidden fruit” in this sentence: We always want what we can’t have because the forbidden fruit is the sweetest. My comments: Forbidden fruit is, in other words, Adam’s apple. Adam as in Adam and Eve, as in the Garden of Eden. If you are familiar with this Bible story, you know exactly what happened. In short, God forbade Adam and Eve to touch the apples on the tree of knowledge – knowledge of good and evil. Unable to resist the temptation, however, Adam ate an apple and, as they say, the rest is history. If you haven’t read the Bible, here are the passages involving the forbidden fruit in Genesis (King James Version), the Christian idea of the beginning of the world and human kind: Genesis 2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. That’s the idea of the forbidden fruit. Metaphorically speaking, the forbidden fruit represents anything that tempts us but perhaps is not entirely good for us. The forbidden fruit is attractive because, the more we suppress a certain desire, the greater that desire grows instead of going away. The more we are denied something, the more we want to have it. It’s human nature. | 
