I’ve been researching pawpaws for a while, and one topic that keeps coming up is the idea that foods containing cooked or dehydrated pawpaw can cause gastrointestinal illness in a significant number of people.
From what I’ve read, most people seem to tolerate fresh pawpaw without issue, but problems are more frequently reported once the fruit is baked, cooked down, or otherwise processed (for example in breads, pies, or preserves). Since baked goods are one of the more common ways people try to use excess fruit, this caught my attention.
As someone who has never personally tried pawpaw yet, I’m curious to hear directly from others:
Have you personally experienced illness from cooked or baked pawpaw?
Have you eaten it cooked without issues?
Does tolerance seem individual, cultivar-specific, or preparation-specific in your experience?
I’m interested in eventually growing pawpaws, but I’m trying to better understand the real-world prevalence of this issue, especially when it comes to preservation methods or sharing fruit with others.
I’d appreciate hearing any firsthand experiences or long-term observations.
I have eaten it cooked without issue. I went to charlie wests farm and he fed it to 40 people and he does that several times a year. He says hes never heard of anyone having an issue but dont dehydrate it.
Yes be careful with all pawpaw
"
Consumption of annonacin-containing plant products has been linked to increased prevalence of atypical parkinsonism in previous studies of tropical-dwelling populations. We describe a case of possible progressive supranuclear palsy-speech-language variant (PSP-SL) in a patient in the Northeast United States who habitually consumed annonacin-containing pawpaw fruit."
Also be careful of starfruit
Starfruit (Carambola) Risks
Kidney Toxicity: Contains caramboxin, a neurotoxin that healthy kidneys excrete, but builds up in kidney disease, causing severe neurological issues.
Symptoms: Hiccups, vomiting, mental confusion, seizures, coma, and death.
Recommendation: Avoid if you have kidney disease; even healthy people should limit consumption, especially on an empty stomach.
Cherimoya Risks & Benefits
Toxicity: Seeds, leaves, and stems are poisonous and should not be eaten.
Benefits: The creamy, sweet flesh is rich in flavor and nutrients, excellent for fresh eating or in desserts like ice cream.
Recommendation: Enjoy the ripe flesh, but carefully discard the seeds and other plant parts.
This had some confounding factors. I wouldnt make tea with the leaves but the actual fruit have pretty low amounts (fpr paw paw) ksu gave a talk on it not too long ago
Yes, the article from Pubmed didn’t seem to accentuate that the symptoms were not the result of eating pulp, which is all most of us ever consume with paw paws. Even my wildlife hates the skins and never seem to take paw paws unless they split open when they fall off the tree. .
Low enough to not get Parkinson’s. That seems clear.
Is there still a lesser degree of damage resulting from toxicity at lower doses than it takes to give someone Parkinson’s?
We don’t have good evidence either way and a dude talking about absorption in the gut if you only ate pawpaw pulp and didn’t have any other foods in your intestines doesn’t count
There is good evidence if it gets absorbed it’s neurotoxic…I don’t want to purposefully eat stuff that kills my brain cells, I live an extremely health conscious life and work way too hard in other aspects for me to kill brain cells eating a fruit
It’s also worth remembering, almost without fail, even the people who love pawpaws reach a point in their life where massively scale back their consumption, it’s almost like your body builds an allergic reaction to them (it might not be anything like that biochemically but that’s how it looks from the outside)
With all that being said, long term. I will probably eat a handful of pawpaws or less annually from specific varieties that are high quality and have been shown (with the very limited and imperfect analysis we have so far) to be low in these compounds:
Shenandoah, Wabash, Mango, Potomac, Sunflower
For the record, I don’t think its the annonacins that cause the gastro-distress when cooking pawpaws. No other annonaceae has been reported to cause such an issue when processed, other than people thinking pond apples (Annona glabra) are green when they are ripe (all pond apples turn golden yellow when fully ripe).
There are quite a few soursop pulp recipes that require baking, and not alot (if any) reported distress caused by them. This could easily be things just not being reported since the internet is not perfect information, but I think its worth considering that annonacin is not the cause of this particular issue. Also note that soursop has a higher concentration of annonacin compounds in its pulp.
I kind of think its an online hysteria thing. I cant be sure but i literally only see it on reddit and people who go on reddit. Ive talked to people irl at paw paw events and they look at me like i have a third head in confusion.
Also i dont know that ive seen people stop eating so much paw paw. I have sen people say they cut back to like 3 paw paws a day during the season. But thats still like. A ton? I dont often eat 3 of the same fruit a day
We eat pawpaw but enjoy sasafrass tea also. I always give everyone full disclosure of what i do and why i believe we should also be cautious. I ate large amounts in my youth of pawpaw but as we age our body changes and we learn to be cautious.
I am infamous among my circle of friends & former co-workers for my ‘Poison Pawpaw cookies’. It’s been 20 years, and I’ve still not lived it down.
I made a batch of pawpaw cookies, using a recipe from the KSU website. My daughter ate several and became ill - but I didn’t know this until after I had taken the rest to work, to share with co-workers at morning break.
Almost every person who ate a cookie was soon beset with nausea, vomiting, and later, diarrhea. One coworker said that he was sick before he even swallowed the first bite. My boss was out for 3 days… claimed that he was close to considering going in to the hospital for IV fluids.
The issue with dehydrated pawpaw is well-documented. There was an outfit, a couple of years back who was free-drying pawpaw pulp, hoping that that might avoid the gastrointestinal distress factor… but enough people got sick that they discontinued their process.
Not every baked/cooked pawpaw product induces this phenomenon. I have, in the past, made ‘pawpaw honey’, a cooked jam-like product (I’ve not been able to find the recipe that used), that was well-accepted in my family, and did not make anyone sick.
When I was first introduced to pawpaws, 30+ yrs ago, during a previous resurgence of popularity - less pronounced than the current one, as the Internet was just becoming a thing - I loved them, and shared them with everyone who would try them… and, invariably, they fell into two camps: they either found them delectable or disgustingly insipid.
Anymore, I can eat ONE pawpaw fruit, and don’t care if I have another one for a year… or five years.
I’m concerned enough about the atypical Parkinson’s Disease theory that, even if I still liked to eat them, I would limit my consumption. Anthropomorphising…There’s probably a reason that the harvest window is so small… Mother Nature probably never intended for man to eat large quantities of pawpaw, or over an extended period.
There’s so much made-up BS in a lot of ‘popular Indian lore’, and any native American influence in my ancestry is at least 5 generations back - perhaps @clarkinks can weigh in - but I’ve seen claims from folks that the Cherokee regarded pawpaw as ‘strong medicine’ not to be consumed willy-nilly.
My pet theory that agrees with the experiences above is that oxidation of some compound is what causes it
People that bake it in loaf form seem to be ok because the pulp is so much less is directly exposed to the oxygen along with high temperatures
Anyone who is interested in gathering more data and reporting back to us (cough @snarfing cough)
Make the exact same recipe in loaf form and as really thin cookies (that maximize surface area to volume ratio and causes more oxidation of these compounds)
And see what happens
If I ever bake with them it would be loaf form and I will remove the crust
Once mine come in i will. Or if anyone wants to ship me some lol. Mine just went in this year so will be a few yeass yet till i have my own. Ive only had it at other peoples house and i dont get them in that much quantity. ksu has a bunch of recipes for paw paw cookies. Somehow I doubt a university would put out something that will make people sick.
I really think this is a case of people who do not eat much fiber suddenly consuming a lotnof fiber and getting typical results. Same reason taco bell causes stomach upset in people.
I’m only going to mention one more thing here about pawpaw. The flesh is very healthy but limit your consumption. One pawpaw a day is plenty. I have eaten 30+ with no ill effects but people are different and fruits are different. Pawpaw fruits will not be attacked by insects. The skin is a natural insecticide and some fruits have more natural insecticide than others. There is insects that eat leaves. Freeze your extra fruit.
I wonder how much it would cost to get a sample of pawpaw pulp tested for annonacin content. Im guessing it would require some kind of lc/mass spec. If the cost is reasonable, it could be possible to crowdfund a study to measure popular varieties and use the results towards breeding varieties that contain lower amounts of the stuff.
On a related note, Id like to put forward a suggestion to add a section to this site for fruit related citizen science.
The problem is the amount is already very low. Theres no evidence that the amount is remotely dangerous. Youd have to eat something like thousands of paw paw to reach dangerous levels. The issue is in making tea of the leaves/skin/seeds
The problem is most pawpaw are still seedlings. They are as different as night and day. Different seedlings have very different levels of nutrients and poisons. I dont feel they are ever dangerous if you eat one or two raw fruits, unless you are allergic, but dont chew the peelings and never swallow them. As @Lucky_P said and elluded to be careful cooking with them, drying them etc. It is really not recommended by anyone who has been around them much. There is a reason insects leave them alone. Maybe we crush the peels and make a organic poison from them.
A box of wild fruits in all shapes and sizes i picked.
@Phlogopite may have the answer, with regard to surface area; IDK. That said, I’m just not inclined to roll the dice on a cooked pawpaw product anymore.
Sorry, no, it’s not a ‘fiber’ issue. There is not enough ‘fiber’ in one cookie - or even just one bite of a cookie - to cause this issue, especially as rapidly as symptoms ensued.
At the time, I even entertained the thought of…Maybe it was a Staphylococcal enterotoxin (food poisoning) event, as the enterotoxin produced by Staph. aureus is heat stable… but this batch of pulp had not set out at room temperature prior to cooking, and myriad subsequent reports of GI distress associated with cooked and dried pawpaw products have convinced me that it is an issue inherent in the fruit itself, from some as-yet-unidentified compound or breakdown product.
But… feel free to experiment and find out for yourself, but don’t say you weren’t warned.
Some people just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Again dangerous means what? Parkinson’s symptoms right?
What does 1% of Parkinson’s look like compared to your brain function without 1% of Parkinson’s?
I’m not interested in losing any percentage of my brain function if I can help it
Modern medicine is SO bad with optimal health. It is ONLY concerned with pathology so we don’t even have the tools to be able to answer this question adequately
