Great question. I haven’t seen any information about this. The way the human body processes annonacin and how quickly it is excreted are the type of information that needs to be known before saying anything conclusive about pawpaws being “dangerous”. Otherwise, all those studies where testing is done on cultures or intravenously with rats don’t really mean much.
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Since none of us are undertaking research on this, I’ll just give my opinion, which is pretty much all we have.
The brain hitting the skull kills brain cells, high stress, drugs, alcohol, dehydration, drinking too much water, not exercising, drinking excessive amounts of water…all kill brain cells.
Personally, for me, I have never had recreational drugs or alcohol, so I think I can afford to eat a few pawpaw.
Anecdotally, in places where annona spp are very common year round, and people eat them every day, there have only been problems I’m aware of when people steep the leaves as a “heath tea” and consume them quite a lot. So while overdoing it seems possible, I think it will take quite a lot of work, similar to drinking excessive amounts of water.
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And that’s fine. Different people have different comfort levels with risk.
I use what I call the “bacon test” – scientists know for an absolute fact that bacon increases my risk of heart disease, and that I am most likely to die young of heart disease, cancer, coronavirus or New Jersey traffic. While I don’t go looking for risk, since I’m not willing to give up bacon, anything that has less statistical evidence of harming me at my consumption level than bacon shouldn’t keep me up at night.
So…I don’t smoke, I wear a seat belt…but I don’t worry about things like this unless pawpaw growers in the U.S. start developing Parkinson’s.
I suspect your bar is a lot lower than bacon. That’s fine. Find your bar, be comfortable with it, and enjoy your garden. The folks I worry about are the ones who have wildly inconsistent bars, so every scary study changes their behavior about things unlikely to harm them…and then they replace said things with more bacon.
Edit: …with the caveat that I only planted Sunflower and Wells, because I’m not super concerned, but I figured I might as well pick varieties that had lower levels while the jury was still out…
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Thank you for the info!
I planted over 50 pawpaw seeds last year.
I’ll be planting a bunch again this year.
And, sampling one or two from any new tree in the wild that looks promising.
My attempt to graft pawpaws this year didn’t work…whip and tongue in March.
I’ll probably continue eating one or two pawpaw fruit every year or two. That’s sbout all I care for. If the neurotoxicity is determined to be a substantial threat, I might consider leaving them alone altogether…though I doubt that a few fruits on a yearly basis pose much of a threat…in general, for most ‘poisons and toxins’ the dose is critical…
Saddlebrooke… AMERICAN persimmon (3 races of D.virginiana, + D.texana) AMERICAN plum (and a myriad of other plum species), at least 4 species of crabapples are all native to North America.
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I think I’ll do about the same, probably eat just a few while they’re in season and perhaps sample a few wild ones. I love the trees and how they look, so it’s really not a loss at all to me; they just look so tropical, almost out of place. I had plans to freeze and use a whole lot of pawpaw pulp but I think I’ll probably not do that until there is some evidence on how the acetogenins end up being used and metabolized in humans so I can make a better decision regarding using it in a larger quantity.
If eating pawpaws is dangerous in the way being speculated, is there anything else similar (besides close relatives of pawpaws)? Is there any other fruit (or vegetable or fresh, unprocessed meat…) that people might want to eat and that doesn’t normally cause any short-term problems but that has some sneaky, long-term toxicity? It’s hard to believe that pawpaws (and their close relatives) would be the only such food in the whole world, which makes me think either there are other examples I don’t know about or pawpaws probably aren’t the one exception to the rule.
Shellfish, pork, bear (not that I know anyone regularly eating bears)…are all known to be hazardous to the health. Yet, they are consumed in large quantities by many people.
I already mentioned poisons in drinking water exceeding poisons in pawpaws: Chlorine and fluoride.
Try a few more comparisons to pawpaws:
Potatoes…when exposed to light turn green, it has poisonous solanine. I don’t know anyone who discards those potatoes though.
Poke…I eat poke greens and fry the stalks like okra. Have even sampled the berry juice. So, am I the cat with 9 lives?
Always cook eggs well done they say…because of salmonella.
Don’t drink milk from the cows or goats unless it’s pasturized they say…again, except for school lunches, I never knew what pasturized milk was for 18 years. The other kind came right from the cow we would pet if and when she’d let us.
Governments, the same ones recommending to stay at home to avoidd a virus from a certain large Asian country, recommend cooking vegetables before eating. There goes the salad bar.
Don’t give honey to toddlers…heck my ‘little one’ is 33, and more than once she ‘helped daddy’ bottle honey…(and was glad to sneak a finger into it if she could to sample it). Before school age she would walk out to the beehives and collect herself a male bee from the front of the hive to ‘play with’. (Now, I wasn’t that brave, I tormented JuneBugs and grasshoppers instead).
Do you think the Mexican picking your California strawberries washes every time after going to the port-a-potty before returning to the berry field?
I can think of lots more things that are more dangerous than pawpaws that people eat.
And I hadn’t gotten to bats yet.
Wow,
As i said about 20 universities use pap paw trees in their programs. Theyve been studied extensively because they are the only native Fruit tree to North America. Not only do i see more false statements concerning Paw Paws & Toxins. Concentration levels
& Toxins are in no way harmful to humans . Its a impossibility.
Id compare this to the people that believe Cow farts are whats destroying the ozone. Pseudo science & quoting fake internet information is not science or cause for Alarm…
I suggest if you want to learn about Paw Paws reachout to Ag Extention office of many universities that study paw paws.
Heck, you could even read the article I wrote for the Richmond Register, the Mt.Vernon Signal and the Jackson County Times, among other papers, on the topic of pawpaws a week or two ago.
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But how exactly are they false statements, can you be more specific? Are you sitting on some good information and not sharing it or something? I’d love to debunk the concern around pawpaws, but comparing it to pseudo science is not furthering our understanding at all, it’s throwing it away. I’m not asking to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt but to make some of the claims you’re making, it might need something to back it to be believable other than how sure you are. Not all poisons act the same way, take the same pathway. Some things will have to accumulate to have an effect, some things will have an immediate effect. I’m just asking for the information that’s made you so sure in this specific instance, when multiple research papers are citing the need for a lot more research into it to understand it. You seem infallibly sure, with statements like “Concentration levels
& Toxins are in no way harmful to humans”. How do you know that?
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I understand what you’re saying and also agree with a lot of what you’ve said. BUT, some of those things can and do make people sick, especially if they’ve not had exposure to them before, it’s a risk and many people are right to wonder if the risk vs reward is worth it. Ironically this happened in my great state of WV Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk To Celebrate Its Legality, Become Immediately Sick - Modern Farmer . Could’ve been stomach ailment, but the timing is hilarious
I bet with healthy gut microbes, immune system, and especially past exposure, most people are unlikely to have any issue with many of the things you’ve mentioned
Yep, I concede a few get sick. So do a few who step out in spring sunshine and come down with “hay fever”. Even the coronavirus is no major menace to anyone otherwise in good health.
Peanuts, Goeorge Washington Carver’s brainstorm for 100+ ways to consume it, make some sick.
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This is bugging everyone. PawPaw are not the US only native fruit its the US largest native fruit. Blueberries are native fruits, Cranberries are native fruit. The common blackberry Rubus Alleghenienisis is native to the US. There are native to the US Apple and Plum.
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Tree*… and no Plum & Apple trees are not native. Im unsure about what some call crab apples but theyre not really Edible either outside cooking. The oldest varieties of Plum/ Apple were brought to this Continent by Spanish monks. Speaking of Paw Paws mine seems to be IN BLOOM…curious how the pruning job I did will effect yield this year. I pruned in late fall.
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Yes there is an edible native plum. There are also native cherries.
Fruit wise blue,Elder,Cranberry & Paw Paw are it. Paw paw is only Tree*. If someone is calling a fruit Native check the description some varieties that have 7 established generations are referred too as native but still an originally imported species. Technically a variety can be created & labled native using this method…
Prunus americana? Prunus serotina?
These are wild native fruits.
Don’t forget American persimmons and Chickasaw plums. Those can certainly attain tree forms.
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