Agree, Dimitri_7a
The government puts toxic substances in our drinking water all the time.
Chlorine.
Frouride.
They are at least as toxic as anything found in PawPaws!
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I agree Paw Paws dont make the list. Approaching it with that thought some Apple Seeds are Poisonous & 1000’s of other things. I learned young after watching a cow get sick from Cherry tree leaves.
Im familiar with mushrooms. Ive picked Morels,Chantrelles & Hen of the Woods & eaten. I know mushrooms & im not fond of picking them( You could die easily not being careful) Also familiar Other Poisonous ones
Here is a link. https://www.wildernessawareness.org/articles/edible-wild-mushrooms
Nature is not something you just eat. Poke berries, Nightshades even Wilted cherry leaves.
…Again… Its like John Prine said. Stop Wishin for Bad Luck & Knocking on Wood.
I walk my kids in the woods & show them what can be eaten. Its also important to remember even starving mushrooms offer little to no nutrious value so never risk eating them even if starvation is a concern.
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Did I mention making a gallon of poke berry wine one year…
wife talked me into dumping it after just taking a couple sips. Heck, that was over 30 years ago, and more than one wife ago…….
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Probably a life saver, I had thought it had to be boiled & Drained 2-3 times to aVoid poison. At first I thought you were going to say you made your wife Pokeberry wine.
I lost my kids mom so im still not up to Wife jokes yet even though we were divorced . And I got engaged to my Fiancée afterwards but now…yada yada… Ive heard sipping the poke berry wine helped arthritis. Perhaps a small level of poison reduced swelling ??? I’ll put that in the hotpepper mustard & cow dung poltice you can smear on your chest for a cough/ phelm. LOL…
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Forgive me if this has been answered before, but does anyone know if annonacin is heat stable?
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You should bottle it up and sell as disinfectant today!
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Heat Stable? Are you smoking Your Paw Paws? Im not sure we are talking about the same thing. Lol…
Anyways, Dont be deceived by Wikipedia & Vague information. The “Toxins” labeled neuro toxin in any fruit means in an amount it can …Ex… Just as California has a labeling system that says if 50 gallons of maple syrup causes cancer. If your product contains a pin drop of maple syrup it can cause cancer because it contains maple syrup. CA regulations doesnt Count for Concentration or Placement within a product.
As I mentioned earlier apples contain the same "Toxins "in seeds. They are naturally occurring. Necrosis of cells occurs in many things like putting pineapple juice on ham. Wanna guess what causes the Ham to Dissolve? Bingo… Anyways… Wikipedia should note that PAw Paws are the only native fruit to North America. One Draw back is they do not store well
A person would be hardpressed to consume enough paw paws to cause any effects short of the back door trots…
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But…pawpaw is not the only fruit native to North America.
Native tree fruits include Persimmons, plums, crabs like M.coronaria, M.angustifolia, M.ioensis, cherries, serviceberries, mayhaws…and then there’s blueberries/huckleberries, blackberries/raspberries, gooseberries, chokeberries…and probably a whole host of others I’ve left out.
Pawpaw is the sole surviving temperate climate member of the Annonaceae…but not the only fruit native to the continent.
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Heat stable meaning that the chemical does not break down or denature easily or at all when heat is applied… Like when cooking. Not sure what goals anyone would have smoking them!
And I don’t know of anyone that willingly eats apple seeds, maybe by accident? I guess it wouldn’t end up hurting much, if at all, as long as they aren’t chewed up. I’m not sure what you’re implying there? Annonacin from my understanding is present in the fruit pulp of pawpaw and not really able to be avoided if consuming pawpaw, like apple seeds are easy to avoid
Considering the taste and texture of pawpaws I think it would be wonderful to substitute the pulp in place of bananas for a banana bread recipe, for example. I think it’d be doubly awesome if cooking also rendered the annonacin harmless, but I can’t find any data if annonacin breaks down with heat, and if so, what it breaks down into and at what temperatures it would take.
I think elderberries are a great example of something that can be rendered safe and yummy by applying heat
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Again, the California principle of saying if it has trace amounts its dangerous are very flawed. These fruits are very safe given no added contamination. @Lucky_P . I meant Tree . I dont believe plums or persimmons are native( especially to America). Nor are some berries but not really my point either. Im not sure about Crab apples ( What I call crab apples are barely edible & only used for cooking) Apples are not native .
Point is none of these mention possess in any quantity a substance that could be detrimental to longterm health period…
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I was mostly right. Looks like paw paw, elderberry ,blueberry & cranberry are only native to NA. Avocado if you count it, ( yucky lol) & geographically . I remember reading many fruit trees were brought here by spanish monks very early on before citrus took over in FLA.
I knew what you actually meant by heat stable. I just like being too silly sometimes. Cooking PawPaw does make something very close to banana custard. I will try filled donuts someday. I havent eaten sugar outside a few pop tarts as treats in over a year after an uncle was diagnosed with diabetes.
If raw elderries were dangerous many a WV would be ill. Im just not understanding why you think these native fruits are dangerous to any degree.
The california principle I suppose. Again trace amounts of the same fruit proteins are in many things just as I explained Pineapple necrotizes ham. PawPaw does not contain harmful amounts in any quantity. I dont care what some joker puts on Wikipedia.
Btw the surrounding info is wrong about PawPaw as Well so obviously the validity of that information is questionable as well.
Similarly, I’m not sure why relying on science rather than anecdotes, with things that clearly can be poisonous is “The California Principle”. I’m from by-God West Virginia, ironically.
A lot of us are trying to find out the truth and establish a happy medium of ingesting yummy things vs. causing harm by consuming them. Your believing in it or not is kind of irrelevant. Believing that elderberries won’t make you ill and eating a ton of them raw won’t save you from severe diarrhea
Could you show some proof that pawpaws are safe to consume - it’s truly all I’m asking for if you’re going to make those claims of safety when peer reviewed research says otherwise? It’s better to make educated decisions. I would love to be able to eat all the pawpaws I could, guilt free, and have my kids enjoy them with me as well without having to worry about it.
I agree that, generally, moderation is key, and that many things have trace amounts of chemicals that can add up to be harmful at certain thresholds. BUT not all chemicals are the same, are they? What could be wrong with finding out definitively about pawpaws? Not trying to be argumentative, but if you are so sure about this, how did you come to that conclusion?
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Forgive me if i missed something but can you show peer reviewed evidence that “eating” pawpaws at a normal amount has been established as harmful? The studies i have read inject a mouse with the equivalent amount of toxin to a human eating 30-50 pawpaws a day for a month, it will cause atypical parkinson’s. What would happen if you took the solanine from 30-50 potatoes and injected it every day for a month? For all we know it actually may be healthy to eat pawpaws in small quantities just like it has been shown that a little radiation decreases your chance of getting cancer. Or accelerating downward from a drop of 30 ft can be harmful, but splitting that drop up into 15 steps actually makes you healthier. It really does come down to rout of entry, the does, the duration, competing reactants and the species to make a valid statement from most of these studies. I think the studies are great because they establish that it can be toxic at those levels and conditions, but there simply isn’t enough to make the leap and say it is bad at normal amounts.
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You’ll have to research California’s labeling law of potential hazardous chemicals. Its an example. Gregkdc just explained it again concerning concentration.
I agree Buckets of PawPaws or any other fruit are harmless. Your science seems highly suspect. Regardless, on dietary grounds alone their is no argument either…
Again the Wikipedia entry on PawPaw is wrong. Almost all of the information in the excerpt I read was factually untrue.
And asking for proof that something is safe is asking for a negative proof result. That harm doesnt exist. The absence of Something. An age old false logic connection that is a basic of bullshitters & people that generally have an agenda…
My evidence would be Call the Universities that use paw paw trees in research. From NY to KY. And No where is their any negative Empirical data. I assure you.
The only items I have found regularly ingested by oldtimers that were found to be harmful would be sassafras & Wormwood. And some older remedies. Etc.
I never said that pawpaw is bad in normal amounts. But then again, what are “normal amounts” we’re talking about? I’m not the one making outlandish claims like “PawPaw does not contain harmful amounts in any quantity.”, the burden of proof is on that person. It’s easily available information that pawpaws and other fruits in the family have some toxic compounds in them - and we still don’t understand the effects fully. You said it perfectly - “we just don’t know” - therefore we probably shouldn’t be making statements about how surely safe it is. We should be attempting to find that information out…Plenty of medicines are derived from plants’ toxic compounds, too, as I’m sure a large amount of us know, the dose makes the poison.
I think you are speaking of this often cited research, and I have to agree with you that I don’t exactly like or trust the method they used to test the neurotoxicity of the compounds found in pawpaws in that publishing as I think, like you said, the method of ingestion probably matters a whole lot.
What I was asking, is how someone could be so sure it’s safe, when there is quite a bit of research confirming neurotoxic compounds in pawpaw and calling for more research into its effects and “whether consumption is detrimental to neuronal health”. Neurons probably aren’t so easy to replace as other cells in the body, so caution is probably advisable.
I’d LOVE to rule it all out and eat as many as I can as I personally find pawpaw quite enjoyable, particularly when it’s in season I would like to eat a whole lot of the fruit in different preparations and not worry: What I originally asked for, if you go further up, was if anyone had any knowledge of whether or not annonacin in particular degrades from heat, and was kind of ridiculed. I personally think it would be really useful for those of us worried about possible effects, to know if it could be rendered safer by cooking but maybe other people are not as interested in this. I think we’re getting a bit non-constructive here, which has never been my goal.
I just would like more evidence either way to help in making a more educated decision, and I’m sure others would like that too. I find it sort of irresponsible to blanket state things like “there are no toxins in pawpaw” without some kind of backing. The same person was saying some untrue things about which fruits are native to NA based on what they believe and similar anecdotes “I agree Buckets of PawPaws or any other fruit are harmless.” Belief is not an antidote and doesn’t change facts. It would be terrible to find out later the actual ill affects of something that could have easily been replaced with another fruit (pawpaw fruit in general probably isn’t the TOP fruit on most people’s list) or actions that could have been prevented or moderated.
@SaddleBrookeFarm KY has a list of low-annonacin varieties of pawpaw and also has a page dedicated to listing research documents on “Pawpaws and Aceotogenins” , so I would not discount the importance of researching this as they apparently are heavily invested in it. And not once have I mentioned wikipedia, I don’t know what your quarrel is with that site. I really don’t need your assurance, I like facts!
So, I welcome the constructive dialogue from fellow fruit growers, this type of discussion on pawpaws and consumption of them has dotted several of the fruit forums I frequent and it’s apparently quick to rile some people up, we’re a passionate crowd arent’t we 
but I believe we are all here searching for more understanding
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Well, some people get sick from eating nuts, some from eating grapefruit or eggs……………so an anectdote from a couple people who claim they ate something and ‘almost died’ isn’t reason to worry. But, the principal of ‘moderation’ is good in many things.
It wouldn’t surprise me if someone ate 10 or 25 pawpaws that they got sick…at least sick for a day or two.
If they ate a similar quantity of grapefruit or wild cherries, they also would probably get sick.
Some of the studies extract it at high temperature, so I would assume it’s not heat sensitive, at least not at 100°c.
Also, drying it is apparently not a good idea if that was on your mind.
Here’s my $0.02 on the subject: there is not even anecdotal, let alone statistical, evidence that eating normal quantities of pulp causes any harm to people who are not allergic. Here’s a study that found correlation with atypical Parkinson’s…but mostly among patients who regularly consumed more than 10 FRUIT PER DAY, and even they didn’t show symptoms until they were ~70 years old.
So: scientifically, it’s almost impossible to prove a negative (that something causes no harm). But when you have to separate cohorts out to stunning levels of consumption to show correlation – that to me is a very good sign that there isn’t going to be any meaningfully increased risk from those of us who eat a dozen fruit each September.
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I started this thread and it is about the dangers of Paw Paws. I still have not changed my mind. No way am I going to consume something that kills nerve cells. Even if it takes a lifetime. I do enough other things that kill brain cells. They plain are not that good to lose brain cells to enjoy them. No one disputes the fruit contains a neurotoxin.
In my first post I linked to a study published in Sciencedirect. Which is a site dedicated to scientific research publications.
A quote from the studies conclusion
Pawpaw fruit contains a high concentration of annonacin, which is toxic to cortical neurons. Crude fruit extract also induced neurotoxicity, highlighting the need for additional studies to determine the potential risks of neurodegeneration associated with chronic exposure to pawpaw products.
Sorry no way in hell are paw paws ever going to pass my lips again.
I cannot get myself to reduce my brain size. I like my brain, and want to keep it as is. Even the loss of one neuron is too much for me. My wife feels the same way. Both of us are in the medical field and face danger all the time. I’m retired now but my wife is an ER nurse and on the frontlines battling covid 19. She’s willing to do this, not willing to ever eat a paw paw.
Are they safe? One has to decide what risks one is willing to take. The idea of losing nerve cells has always frightened me. I have seen too much dementia around me. It is a fairly bad toxin. You are what you eat. We have found that trace chemicals can affect our health. We limit pesticides, like rotenone which does the same thing annonacin does, a neurotoxin although the former has more than one mode of action to kill cells.
Small amounts matter. A safe amount of annonacin has not been determined.
This one is a very decent study. (same study as my first post, just the complete version)
So this statement from that study is why I will not eat them.
Discussion: Pawpaw fruit contains a high concentration of annonacin, which is toxic to cortical neurons.
Crude fruit extract also induced neurotoxicity, highlighting the need for additional studies to determine
the potential risks of neurodegeneration associated with chronic exposure to pawpaw products.
We have no clue about this toxin, chronic doesn’t mean large amounts. It means eating your harvest every year. We really need a lot more studies, until then I’m out.
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Has anyone ever seen a study showing the bioavailability of annonacin in humans. How much makes in into the blood stream?
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