If Pawpaws Taste Like Tropical Bananas, Why Don't We Eat Them?

Pawpaws taste like a cross between a banana and a mango. They’re the largest edible fruit native to North America, and they grow wild from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. So why have most people never eaten one, and why can’t you buy them at the grocery store? In this video we follow the pawpaw from the Lewis and Clark expedition, whose starving crew lived on them in 1806, all the way to today’s small farms and festivals. A ripe pawpaw spoils in about two days. Its flowers smell like rotting meat, so growers hang dead fish and roadkill in their orchards to attract the flies that pollinate it. Serious breeding only started in 1981. Scientists are also looking into annonacin, a nerve toxin found in the fruit. And the pawpaw may have evolved for mastodons and giant ground sloths that went extinct at the end of the last ice age. Why doesn’t the pawpaw, America’s forgotten tropical fruit, show up in stores? The answer involves shelf life, pollination, plant breeding, food science and evolution. ⏱️ Timestamps 0:00 The fruit that saved Lewis and Clark 1:04 Do pawpaws taste bad, or are they rare? 2:02 The 2-day shelf life problem 3:09 Rotting-meat flowers and fly pollination 4:15 Why nobody bred the pawpaw 5:37 Annonacin: the neurotoxin question 8:26 The pawpaw comeback 📚 References Clark’s journal entry, September 18, 1806: https://research.lewisandclarktrust.org/jo... Potts et al. (2012), “Annonacin in Asimina triloba fruit: implication for neurotoxicity,” NeuroToxicology 33(1): https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd/1145 “Progressive supranuclear palsy and pawpaw” (2020 case report): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7... Pawpaw pulp processing and shelf life (Kentucky State University): https://journal.americanpomological.org/in... Pawpaw cultivar trial and the history of Peterson’s breeding work (Journal of the NACAA): https://nacaa.com.customers.tigertech.net/... Willson & Schemske, pawpaw fruit set and pollination: https://www.wildflower.org/expert/show.php... NC State Extension, “Spring Blooms in the Pawpaw Orchard”: https://growingsmallfarms.ces.ncsu.edu/201... Kentucky State University pawpaw research (Kentucky Monthly): https://www.kentuckymonthly.com/kentucky-p... Connie Barlow, The Ghosts of Evolution (Basic Books, 2000): https://www.thegreatstory.org/ForestCanopi...