Intolerance to Pawpaw Fruit

LUV GAIA and she will love you back.
ignore Her and she will still allow your baser senses to give you warnings.

I think this whole "Paw paws are poison" idea is going way too far. I've been on many different forums on the web in the last 30 years in which we talk about fruit and some have addressed this idea and moved on, but this is the only one where it just kept coming back to it.  Maybe it's because, on the other forums, most of the people were quite familiar with paw paws.  The Native American nations brought the paw paws with them to new areas on purpose because it was such a good fruit. The largest native fruit in North America.

There has been a lot of research about excessive breeding of plants. Many types of fruit have been bred so much that they no longer have as much flavor or nutrition.   Some people will eat a Concord Grape, or a pie cherry, or an heirloom apple and be stunned by the flavor! I was.  There weren't any flavors like that in my grocery store!  Well, the paw paw and the American persimmon have hardly been bred at all, so they retain distinctive, natural, wild flavors.  Much of the health benefits ascribed to vitamins in plants are really about the effect of hormesis.  The plant is putting chemicals into itself so you won't eat too much of it.  Your body adjusts to it and evolves to becoming a stronger being afterwards.  That's how you actually become healthy, and it may have to do with the promising anti-cancer research going on in these and other wild foods.

John S
PDX OR

Great points John.  Also I think a lot of people are not waiting for the pawpaw or persimmon fruits to properly ripen before eating or in the case of pawpaw eating some of the bitter skin.  I agree with eating too many at one time.  Did that with green apples and got a serious belly ache.

While I have never tried to make wine, much less anything stronger, I have associates who are very skilled in the art of distilling.

After one productive pawpaw season they tried turning the fruit into something they could store in a jar. It was, to the palate of all tasters, completely unfit for human consumption.

If there's ever another hand sanitizer shortage, they may be able to pawn the rest off on somebody.

That said, I started a couple of small groves about 20 years ago and forgot about them when they appeared to amount to nothing. Then 8 years ago I was kayaking past them on the creek and realized they had made a lot of strong babies.  I don't remember the name of the cultivar but it doesn't have the funny aftertaste of the wild ones and it hasn't given me any digestive upset. I only eat them fresh.

i learned quite a while ago that making wine or mead and starting with pawpaws invariably ends with pretty terrible results (and i imagine distilling wouldn’t help that situation), but adding pawpaw for second fermentation is where the magic happens.

I just spent yesterday in the ER after taking an ambulance from eating paw paws that I spent quite a lot to have shipped to me in Austin. It took an IV of steroids, Benadryl, and Pepcid (which, I learned is also a histamine agonist) to right the ship, but I horrible horrible burning eyes—like FIRE—and a terrible sharp tummy ache, and then I called 911 when my left side started stiffening up—-first my arm, neck and shoulder, then my leg. I’ll be on that cocktail of drugs for the next week.

By the way, the Lewis & Clark expedition was waylaid by paw paw sickness too!

I have no other food allergies & only have average, mild hay fever & cedar fever (a Central TX specialty) in their seasons here.

I’ve never tried cherimoya or soursop, which are in the family, and… now I never will! But I love fruits generally and actually am a bit of a collector of fruit experiences——such as food foraging hike through St. John’s in the Virgin Islands.

Anyhoo—be careful out there! They taste yummy and look harmless, but they can be very very bad news!!

There are many foods that can cause an allergic reaction.  When ever you try something new take a small sample and wait to see if you have any gastric distress.
Foods that cause most allergic reactions are: Eggs, Milk and Dairy, Peanuts, Tree nuts, Fish, Shellfish, Wheat, Soy, Sesame.

Vivian Lansky wrote:I just spent yesterday in the ER after taking an ambulance from eating paw paws that I spent quite a lot to have shipped to me in Austin. It took an IV of steroids, Benadryl, and Pepcid (which, I learned is also a histamine agonist) to right the ship, but I horrible horrible burning eyes—like FIRE—and a terrible sharp tummy ache, and then I called 911 when my left side started stiffening up—-first my arm, neck and shoulder, then my leg. I’ll be on that cocktail of drugs for the next week.

By the way, the Lewis & Clark expedition was waylaid by paw paw sickness too!

I have no other food allergies & only have average, mild hay fever & cedar fever (a Central TX specialty) in their seasons here.

I’ve never tried cherimoya or soursop, which are in the family, and… now I never will! But I love fruits generally and actually am a bit of a collector of fruit experiences——such as food foraging hike through St. John’s in the Virgin Islands.

Anyhoo—be careful out there! They taste yummy and look harmless, but they can be very very bad news!!

Wow this is horrible. I am glad that you are here to tell the tale. it sounds super scary.
Did you only eat them fresh or did you ferment/cook-bake/dehydrate the pawpaw?
How much did you eat?
Did you blend up and ingest some seeds/skin/etc?
Would love to hear some more aabout the specifics.

Pawpaw leaves can be used as an insectcide and at low dosage for short duration is traditionally used for dementa/etc (if used for too long will cause parkinson like sickness)

Did you eat the skin? I normally don't eat the skin.
JOhn S
PDX OR

I planted a couple of seedling paw paws 5 years ago. They were already around 2 feet tall at the time. They have fruited for the first time this year and I was so excited. I tried them 3 days in a row ( not a huge amount) and each day I felt nauseous about an hour after eating them and it would last for about half a day. I asked my 15 yeat old daughter how she felt after eating them and she says she likes the taste but her stomach feels sick too. I was so disappointed after waiting so long to try them. I have a lot of fruit now and am not sure what to do with it. We are in the city with no deer or livestock to eat it. I jumped online to read if the fruit could make you feel sick and came across this discussion. I see that I am not alone in how the fruit makes me feel.

Welcome to permies Nicole, did you by any chance eat the skin of the fruit?

In case anyone comes back to this thread: I also think I may be developing an intolerance to pawpaws, but it's only after around 10 days of eating from one to three a day, with some days off, inbetween. This is the second year I have become nauseous with gastric...er...symptoms, after eating pawpaw. The initial symptoms are like mild food poisoning - stomach cramp, nausea. Nothing dramatic. But last year I had serious diarrhea after eating four in one sitting after previous days of eating one a day.

I love them, and collect them fresh from multiple sources. Some are cultivated hybrids, some are wild. I suck the seeds clean (could that be the culprit, the little seed sac?), and scrape the flesh off down to the skin, but never eat the seeds or skin. My theory is that I can eat just so many, over time, and not more. This is around my tenth year of eating them every fall.

You may be scrapping to close to the skin.  I cut them in half and squeeze the pulp and seeds out and toss the rest.  May use the skins as a insecticide in the future.