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Why don't grocery stores stock pawpaw fruit?
- BOOTRACER 3y agoI heard a tale of native Americans extracting a psychedelic from the seed pods. Anyone else heard the same, or have a recipe/technique to share? BTW, ripe pawpaw is like the second best thing you'll have in your mouth atmo
- ggm 3y agoFor fellow Australians this is not papaya. (Which others may not know is colloquially called pawpaw)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- raincole 3y agoAs someone who didn't know what pawpaw fruit is, I thought it's about One Piece.
- nathancahill 3y agoAlso not mamão for Portuguese speakers.
- pvaldes 3y ago> Also not mamão for Portuguese speakers. Mamão are the same as sapotes probably, the family of bubble gum tree. Sapotes or zapotes are also said to be very good fruits. They share the 'icecream' texture with pawpaw.
- zem 3y agoin india too!
- worthless-trash 3y agoAs a fellow Australian, what the hell is it then ?
- ggm 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba
- fsckboy 3y agoi'm glad i clicked on that, thanks! I thought I already knew the answer, thought it was a prickly pear.
- tuukkah 3y ago> So while the fruit already had a long list of nicknames — Quaker Delight, the Hillbilly Mango — now it’s earned another one: the hipster banana. https://wamu.org/story/17/09/12/obscure-local-fruit-pawpaw-new-nickname-hipster-banana/ https://wamu.org/story/17/09/12/obscure-local-fruit-pawpaw-n...
- graemep 3y agoPapaya is also called the same in some other countries. It is usually spelled papaya but pronunciation varies and I believe it is sometimes spelled pawpaw too. I had never heard of the American pawpaw before and my initial reaction was that it was reasonably commonly available.
- Alex3917 3y agoThere are enough people growing pawpaws now that they will increasingly start showing up in farmer's markets over the next five years or so. The fourth generation of pawpaws (i.e. four generations improved from the prize-winning 1916 Ketter tree, which was selected from the wild) didn't start getting released until the mid 90s, and the fifth generation didn't start getting released until the mid 2010s. And it's at least decade between when a new cultivar gets release and when it's widely available to purchase, and then it takes another 5 - 7 years to grow to maturity after that. So it's really only within the last five years or so that it's even been possible to start growing commercial-quality fruit. I started growing them in 2018, and even though that's not that long ago, the best cultivars you could get back then were complete garbage compared with what you can get today.
- SauciestGNU 3y agoAgreed, wife and I planted a hobby orchard, hoping in a few years we'll be able to at least enjoy enough for ourselves, and eventually do some commercial production.
- dakna 3y agoDo you have any recommendations about the newer variants and where to find them? A brief search turned up Peterson Pawpaw, but maybe you have others in mind.
- Alex3917 3y agoYeah these are the cultivars I'd start with: KSU Chappell, KSU Atwood, Wabash, Shenandoah, Susquehanna, Potomac If you're on the east coast and willing to drive to New Jersey, then I'd recommend ordering from Charlie West: https://sites.google.com/view/westfarm https://sites.google.com/view/westfarm If not, then Peaceful Heritage is very reputable, the main problem with them is that their grafted pawpaws only go on sale one day per year and are completely sold out in 20 minutes. If you can't get from them, then your options are OneGreenWorld, StarkBros, and the other usual suspects. Logees also sells Shenandoah and Susquehanna as a set for super cheap and they typically have a lot of inventory in the spring, so I'd recommend picking up those cultivars there and getting them shipped. Also, Cliff England no longer ships trees, but still sells to customers that are willing to drive to KY: http://nuttrees.net/ http://nuttrees.net/
- Klonoar 3y agoIt’s interesting that this fruit is coming up again - I feel like it had a moment already back around 2016. Maybe that was just a bubble I was in though. Definitely recommend trying one if you get the chance.
- goslackware 3y agoThe only place I found them was in Pawpaw, WV, USA, where I was hiking the Pawpaw tunnel trail, many years ago.
- ncarroll 3y agoI find them very occasionally at our farmers market here in Southern Germany.
- gnabgib 3y agoIt's strange there's three different fruits called a pawpaw. The Pawpaw/Carica papaya (called Papaya in North America), the Mountain Pawpaw/Vasconcellea pubescens, and the American Pawpaw/Asimina triloba (which this article is about). It would seem you probably don't see these in Germany.
- nytesky 3y agoDo some varieties have less nerve toxicity? Sloan recommends avoiding “chronic” use — unclear if that means weekly or what? https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/american-pawpaw#:~:text=Pawpaw%20fruit%20contains%20high%20concentrations,chronic%20use%20should%20be%20avoided https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs....
- Alex3917 3y agoSo the Annonaceous acetogenins are what's called mitochondrial complex I inhibitors. Basically the way they work is they cause a buildup of radical oxides within your mitochondria, which decrease how efficient your mitochondria are at producing energy. In small doses, this is probably a good thing -- you give your mitochondria a good workout, and then eventually some antioxidants clear out the radical oxides and your mitochondria end up stronger than before. But in sufficiently large doses, you will start killing off your mitochondria, and if you kill enough (likely over several decades) it will cause something called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which is fatal. The good news is that there is only one recorded case in history of someone who is suspected to have gotten PSP from eating pawpaws, a grower in New Jersey. The acetoenins in pawpaws have a fairly low bioavalability, so it's probably only a significant risk if you are 1) eating large quantities 2) doing something to increase the bioavailability of the acetogenins, e.g. cooking them with fat or maybe mixing them with alcohol. If you eat moderate quantities out of hand, then most likely you are just reducing your cancer and diabetes risk, without taking on any increased risk of PSP. And since cancer and diabetes kill hundreds of times more people than PSP, overall eating them out of hand is almost certainly a net positive for your health -- especially when you compare them with the health effects of ice cream or whatever other dessert you'd have otherwise have been eating in their place. That said, the cultivars that are specifically known to be low in acetogenins are: Sunflower, Wabash, Potomac, Zimmerman, Wells, Mango, Shenandoah. Of these, the ones that are actually good are Wabash, Shenandoah, Sunflower, and Potomac. So if you just want to grow cultivars low in acetogenins, grow at least two of those four.
- cactusplant7374 3y ago> decrease how efficient your mitochondria are at producing energy So basically, a natural DNP?
- mechhacker 3y agoI tried them when I was living in Ohio and they had the Pawpaw festival. Not my thing. The ones I had fresh were too weird tasting for me. I did like some of the secondary products like beer or other things made from them, but the fruit themselves, nah. If they can get them to where other people that like them get to enjoy them though, that's cool.
- nonethewiser 3y agoWhat was it like? I've listened to many accounts but i'm curious about yours because you said it was really weird.
- Dr_Birdbrain 3y agoThe ones I have tried were mild, very creamy, like a light and mildly fruity yogurt.
- shiroiuma 3y agoIt tastes to me like a cross between a banana and a mango.
- mechhacker 3y agoAgreed with what the others said. Kind of like a custard when ripe. But, what I didn't like was it was overwhelmingly like the worst parts of the flavor of banana, amplified. Maybe it was the ones that I tried and there are other varieties, but that overwhelming banana flavor was what I disliked. Stronger than your regular bananas.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThe texture sounds great but that flavor does not sound appealing.
- Roark66 3y agoPawpaw is just a papaya, right? If so and you decide to give it another try, try putting some fresh lime/lemon juice (half by half, not either/or) into the crater left by removing the seeds. I also didn't like them, but now I can't wait for them to show up (there are seasonal in the supermarkets here).
- Freak_NL 3y agoThis lack of availability in supermarkets reminds me of gooseberries. Lovely fruit to bake with or just eat, but apparently not economically viable to have them in stores even during their season. I have a shrub in my backyard, but it doesn't yield much more than a handful.
- chriskanan 3y agoAre you fertilizing? I have one in a pot that yields probably 200 berries per year. The issue is the thorns. I bought a couple thornless varieties last year. Hopefully will get some fruit this year from those.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Freak_NL 3y agoI should give it more love really.
- chriskanan 3y agoRegarding why we don't see them in stores, in part I think that's related to them being perishable but also because gooseberries and currants were both banned in the USA until 1966 because it carried a disease that hurt the white pine tree. Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZAk1a0dqiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZAk1a0dqiM
- eigenket 3y agoMaybe but they've been around in Europe for a long time and (as far as I know) have never been banned anywhere over here. They still aren't commonly seen in supermarkets anywhere in Europe I've been or lived (you sometimes see them in farmers markets and the like) so I think growing them commercially generally just isn't worth it.
- OJFord 3y ago
- s5300 3y agoThey can definitely be readily found in South-Eastern Ohio grocery stores during season, and more sparingly grocery stores around all of Ohio - typically lesser-greater the distance from SEO. Probably not going to find them in many chains outside of SEO, more likely in boutique markets. The PawPaw beer can be pretty good.
- jongjong 3y agoMy favorite tropical fruit which I cannot find in stores is Guava. Though Guava juice seems to be increasingly available.
- ta988 3y agoCannot find where? In the US most large enough asian or hispanic food stores have them.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoaye, never been to a latin market -- in australia, the US, or canada -- that didn't have guava. usually the actual fruit, but failing that like 5+ different versions of juice, paste, etc. DIY guava rum is pretty good btw. literally guava (or paste), vanilla bean, and the cheapest rum you can get.
- drittich 3y agoAnother one I would love to see on more grocery shelves is cardoon. https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-clean-cardoons-2394986 https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-clean-cardoons-2394986
- jna_sh 3y agoTried cardoon for the first time this year, from a nearby food forest. It was great, I’d really recommend, and it’s still surviving in the lot when everything else has succumbed to a very wet Dutch winter.
- nrjames 3y agoAnd mangosteen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangosteen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangosteen
- derbOac 3y agoCardoons are one of the things on my "bucket list of foods I've never tried", and reading you mention this makes me wonder why they aren't grown in the US. Or if they are, why they don't get distributed? Food "prevalence" in general is mysterious to me. It seems to me there are a lot of foods that could be more widespread but aren't for historical or quirky reasons. Pawpaws seem to be one of many similar examples.
- drittich 3y agoThey don't seem that hard to grow, i.e., partial sun seems OK. I might give it a shot...
- linusg789 3y agohttps://ghostarchive.org/archive/bAU1c https://ghostarchive.org/archive/bAU1c
- dgrabla 3y agoIt seems to be an elusive fruit in America. It is however a very common fruit in Spain (Chirimoya) and you will find it in all supermarkets - it is not particularly expensive. Orchards are in southern Spain and canary islands.
- trelane 3y agoChirimoya also originated in the Americas but is a very different fruit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherimoya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherimoya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba Compare, for example, the skin and cross section in photos. Also compare ranges: chirimoya is tropical, pawpaw is temperate.
- mjh2539 3y agoThey are both in the same genus.
- pvaldes 3y agoSame family, different genus (Annona and Asimina). They can't be grafted together. Are compatible at first, but grafts can't survive at long term Cherimoya (and Atemoya, etc) are often placed among the royalty of fruits. If they are ripe, they are really good. Overripe... not so much. Develop an acrid aftertaste that is a clear warning.
- PaulHoule 3y agoLove ‘em.
- OJFord 3y ago> By the time I arrived at Brooklyn’s Park Slope farmers’ market in search of a pawpaw one morning last week, it was already too late: The weird green fruit had sold out within an hour. “You have to get here early,” Jeff Rowe of Orchard Hill Organics, the market’s lone pawpaw vendor, told me. > [...] Rowe, the farmers' market vendor, said he's constantly selling out of pawpaws. He is very clearly selling too cheaply?
- b112 3y agoI know people who won't eat something expensive, because they might get a craving for it/really like it. Some marketing strategies have people underpricing, even if in limited supply, so that demand will accrue. There is more to pricing than min/max theory.
- Carioca 3y agoAnd beyond pricing strategy, there are people who feel that a fair price is intrinsic to the product (e.g. the amount of work that goes into it). For example, it's pretty common in the classical guitar luthier world for there to be a decade-plus waiting list for some masters. They refuse to scale up their prices to “market-level” (i.e. a couple years max, takes months to build a guitar), because they don't want the guitars going to someone for purely economic reasons. Mind you, these are still very expensive, five figure instruments. (edit: you could obviously think of it as a strategy that maximizes some other utility function in which profit is just one parameter)
- phyzome 3y agoOr he doesn't feel like overcharging for what they cost to grow?
- dumbfounder 3y agoA friend recently mentioned to me that there are pawpaws in a park near our house in DC. According to him, someone may have planted them and now they are growing wild. It seems odd that this fruit would grow in the woods since there isn't much sunlight there. I will have to go check it out (when they are in season I guess?).
- red-iron-pine 3y agothey were everywhere in NoVA (where I'm from), and all of the transplanted Gov Contractor types never realized it. Swampy VA, of which NoVA is a part, is their native habitat and it's no surprise they do well there even with mixed sun.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoI spent 20y in the woods in Fairfax and Prince William counties. Never ran across it. Only edibles I recall were persimmon, raspberries, blackberries & a wild strawberry. Also osage orange for whatever they were good for.
- pard68 3y agoThey are natives to all of Virginia and they are shade loving trees. They actually prefer shade as young trees and not until they are fully mature can then tolerate sun. Source, lived in VA for a decade, hunting for wild pawpaws and growing my own trees. Before we moved out of the state we had a pawpaw "collection" of about fifty (ten we owned, approx forty we found in the national forest and harvested yearly).
- gehwartzen 3y agoYep. Here in Richmond they grow everywhere along the Janmes River Trail System. Unfortunately, their popularity in the last few years has caused them to be over harvested by people selling them. Additionally, they taste the very best right after falling to the ground naturally but lots of folks keep trying to knock them or shake or climb the trees way to early in the season causing a lot of damage to the trees.
- ryzvonusef 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba > This article is about the common pawpaw of eastern North America. For the unrelated tropical papaya fruit often called 'papaw' or 'pawpaw', see Carica papaya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaya > This article is about the papaya. Not to be confused with the South American Mountain papaya or the Eastern North American "pawpaw". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_papaya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_papaya .... Huh, TIL! I thought they were the same thing.
- munksbeer 3y agoDo they taste similar to papaya?
- Hnrobert42 3y agoNo. Not at all.
- phyzome 3y agoAnswering the title quickly: They don't store or ship well.
- shiroiuma 3y agoOn top of that, they're kind of a pain to eat. They have a bunch of large seeds inside, so the amount of edible fruit flesh isn't that much. I think commercial fruits tend to be much easier to eat than this. But yeah, they don't store well either. I've kept them in my refrigerator, but they don't store that long there, unlike apples for instance. Bananas don't store well either, but they're really, really easy to eat, unlike pawpaws. I enjoyed picking and eating them when I lived in a place with them: it's fun being able to eat fruit that you picked yourself out in the woods. But if it were sold in stores, I doubt I'd buy it very often.
- phyzome 3y agoPeople deal OK with mangos, rambutan, and pomegranates -- those are all heavily seeded or complicated to eat, but they show up in grocery stores. I think the storage and shipping is the main issue.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoYep, and there's plenty of other produce around the USA that doesn't ship well but is available if you look. Here in upstate NY we get all kinds of apples that nobody ships, and the little rural farmers markets have all sorts of weird gems they can't mass produce but make plenty of for the small towns and restaurants nearby. (Of course Asian and Hispanic grocery stores always carry "exotic" options too, but if they're not in a NYTimes thinkpiece white people won't try them)
- crispyambulance 3y agoI think the perishability and extreme difficulty of handling these like other produce makes them a special treat. They're good. A mild, banana-like flavor with vanilla overtones. I would not say pineapple like the article, that's too acidic.
- kgwxd 3y agoNo.
- swozey 3y agoI'm evidently the only one here who has never even heard of a pawpaw
- Solvency 3y agoThe real question is why are sepote fruit so hard to come by? They're absolutely amazing. One single niche vendor at my farmers market grows and sells them. It's a tragedy.
- neoecos 3y agoDid you mean Sapote? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapote Actually there are lots of fruits called Sapote that are not the same fruit. Which of all Sapotes is your Sapote?
- pvaldes 3y agoMost of them are strictly tropical. Only white sapotes and black sapotes (really a persimmon, but with bland so-so flavor) can grow on temperate areas. There are a lot of awesome tropical fruits that nobody knows out of its distribution area (Some of us would culture it furiously otherwise, LOL)
- archsurface 3y agoWe need scientific names - as a non-American that's not what I know as a pawpaw.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 3y agoShort resume: Annonaceae. Family of the Cherimoya. Comprises also the Ylang-Ylang (fragrance) and also a lot of other tropical fruits. Most of them recognizable easily by having a skin sculpted with "scaly" marks, or thorns like a pineapple: Sugar apple, soursop, sweetsop, Atemoya, also a genus in temperate areas, Asimina. - Asimina genus: Comprises several US natives of fruit trees. Asimina triloba (Paw paw), is the most famous and looks just like a smooth potato. no scales here. Caricaceae. Family of the Papaya. Trees with leaves arranged around a soft trunk like a palm, fruits with soft skin, shaped like a fig or a pumpkin. Comprises: - Carica (Papaya/PawPaw, babaco) tropical, huge fruits - Vasconcellea (Mountain papaya, banano de monte) more hard, small fruits
- mjh2539 3y agoI'd rather avoid an increased risk of parkinsonism!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- top_sigrid 3y agohttps://archive.is/jxG6C https://archive.is/jxG6C
- Digit-Al 3y agohttps://archive.is/jxG6C https://archive.is/jxG6C
- pvaldes 3y agoBecause it has a very short shelf life and is not easy to figure out when is ripe. It just pass from green to gray-green, then it develops ugly black spots and soon after that starts getting bitter, and is too late. Still waiting for my lazy trees to do anything. I culture four varieties and they are notoriously unable to pollinate themselves without a second tree of other variety close. Last time it was... almost, but slugs.
- jakedata 3y agoI have a rapidly spreading pawpaw patch in Massachusetts. I live in a wet area and they are thriving to the point that I need to cull new trees that are invading my other gardens. I have taken to selling the fruit and surplus seedlings on Craigslist. 2022 was a bumper crop but a late frost in 2023 killed many of the flowers and I barely harvested a bushel of fruit. I believe that the shifting climate has made this area nearly ideal for them to spread naturally.
- warrenmiller 3y agoAlways amused at HN posts where the country being referred to is left out the title and it's always America. The USA population is only 4.23% of the world :)
- darkerside 3y ago> Why Is the Most American Fruit So Hard to Buy? Betteridge's law of headlines fails unequivocally here!
- elzbardico 3y agoThis must be one of the most little bourgeoisie/urban nouveau rich/hipster things I've read in a long while. The kind of thing that makes you want to read the Communist Manifesto furiously to cleanse your eyes of all this pretense sophistication and frivolity.
- nemo44x 3y agoMy favorite article like this featuring the Park Slope Co-op was the author opining on if it’s ok that members were sending their house cleaners to work their mandatory 2-hour quarterly shift.
- elzbardico 3y agoBesides the privilege, I wonder how those folks can't see how terribly kitsch all of this sounds.
- nemo44x 3y agoOn the other hand I'm grateful to live in a society during a time when this is attainable and not particularly uncommon. When layer after layer of problem is already solved (you can even have "the help" put in your mandatory 2-hours since it interferes with yoga time or your brunch, it's time for you, girlfriend!) I guess there's worse things than going ape over relatively rare fruit.
- CraigRo 3y agoI bought a significant fraction of NY's crop one year. Also have found them in the wild. Issues are -- perishable -- incredibly easily bruised, so hard to pack and ship -- wildly varying sizes -- hard to prepare -- big seeds -- very short season Definitely worth trying though.