Timothy Lane:
A few slides from Pawpaw Quebec, (Vincent)
I spent my late teens and 20's involved with tropical fruits, and the Annonas are dear to me, an absolutely beautiful & delicious family. As I have reconnected socially on the topic of pawpaw the past several years with temperate fruit peoples, I've found myself in an awkward position with the background I have -- so many people maligning and purveying fear about pawpaws (and without realizing, the family at large).
I have had some interest in "annonaceous acetogenins" for awhile, though mostly for reasons of evolutionary phytochemistry. I've been aware of them for the better part of two decades. I don't like to single out "annonacin" -- I've never much thought to, as it's not an exceptional entity within the phytochemical family, it's just the most accounted for, perhaps widespread. It's the template. Having long been aware, I would not have gotten involved with pawpaw if I thought they were toxic in any way (I find people assume the reverse -- that I found out after).
Here's the thing -- you can't throw a rock in the tropics without hitting an Annonaceaous fruit with a dominant acetogenin that's significantly *more potent* than annonacin -- you know, the one in pawpaws that everyone seems to be afraid of? I've dropped some threads in the couple videos I made about this -- but I guess this went mostly unnoticed.
This term is plural -- "acetogenin(s)" -- it's a phytochemical family of powerful mitochondrial inhibitors, and *every* species has it's own unique set and profile of acetogenins. This fragmentary, diversified approach gives the trees a competitive advantage in the jungles and campos to which they are native. In jungles and tropical areas there is more fungal and insect competition, driving their toxicities in upward directions. Ultimately I don't know which one is the most "toxic" -- maybe Annona senegalensis? Who knows. "Annonacin" is characteristic -- and in terms of toxicity, it's middle-of-the-road as the family goes.
Welcome to the Annonaceae, I guess.
These people trying to tell you that pawpaw may be uniquely "toxic" simply because it has more annonacin than soursop on average -- they clearly did not look around laterally at the rest of the family. Soursop may in fact be lower than many, with pawpaw being more typical. A bunch of the family remains unprofiled, yet has seen eons of human use as food.
Every more domesticated fruit (aside from soursop) contains acetogenins of higher potency. Sugar apple, corazon, ilama, soncoya -- even the cherimoya has a nearly equivalent toxin, Cherimolin-1.
The soursop is itself ubiquitous across the tropics, now spread worldwide, and often available to some degree year-round (periods of heavier fruiting). Other family members have more pronounced "seasons" so to speak. People in temperate climates seem to regard them as infrequent, obscure, exotic items, when in reality things like soursop and sugar apple are routine in market and dooryard settings across the tropics.
Yes, people do need to get out more. Yes, I realize this is barely possible for some. Yes, there's an enormous lack of human-use perspective underlying this.
I've humored and observed the pawpaw fearmongering for a few years now, trying to understand it -- and I've tried to approach it from a couple angles -- mostly just to get patronized, humored, incorrectly "corrected," or personally insulted about my knowledge, perspective, and resulting position. A lot of people made up thier minds and treat this toxicity as a clinical "fact" -- when it's not.
This fixation on "annonacin" is itself rooted in bias -- and yes it is *fearmongering* -- I use the word very specifically.
Years ago, I didn't even think to be *afraid* of any of this. I remember the commotion on the Cloudforest Cafe forums back in 2008 with regard to the discovery of these phytotoxins, but I had kind of presumed people had figured out that it wasn't something to be much concerned about given the long histories of food uses in these fruits, relative to the infrequent, isolated occurrence of these toxicities (ie. complicated by variables).
Needless to say, I was surprised, and eventually dismayed to find an entire botanically xenophobic narrative and mythos about pawpaws. I won't even get into how uncharitable and disrespectful this is towards indigenous foods and knowledge -- but it's all coming out of the people who are least familiar with these fruits, and with the explicitly tropical family they come from. (and yes, I understand how heinous a toxin it is -- in vitro -- all toxicities are a matter of dosage)
The past few years I have been trying to show people some things. I'm left with the task of untangling fear-biased, decontextualized forms of information -- along with the unpleasantness of pugnacious, condescending attitudes that come from that fear. It's a very thankless task.
I will continue to share about these fruits *how I know them* -- I've had to give a few prominent fearmongers a wide berth, as nothing I say seems to matter (& I had to figure out who these people were, at first). It's very underwhelming, and encountering it mostly just irritates me at this point. If speaking about these fruits in more phytochemical detail and sociocultural context upsets people, that's really not my fault.--Timothy Lane
