Greetings! Greetings! Greetings! It’s New Zealand naturopath Eric Bakker. It’s winter time. It’s wonderful here in New Zealand. We had a very mild winter. I hope you are enjoying your summer in the U.S if you’re watching this right now or in Canada or in Europe or in many countries that we’re getting wonderful feedback from. I really appreciate all the support I’m getting from all my subscribers there on YouTube, and I really enjoy making these videos. I really do. I sincerely mean that. It’s amazing to be in a position to where I can help so many people out, and the feedback I’ve been getting has been absolutely truly wonderful, so I do appreciate it.
Today we’re going to be talking about papaya or pawpaw. It’s one of my favorite fruits, and it’s one of the things I don’t like about New Zealand is we don’t really get papaya here because it’s too bloody cold! It’s freezing down here in-well not freezing but it’s not really the right climate for growing pawpaw. We’re right down the bottom of the planet.
When my wife and I lived in Brisbane, Australia, we grew papayas, we grew bananas, we grew pineapples, we grew passion fruit, we had all the lovely tropical fruits growing in our garden. We had a wonderful garden-a big tropical garden. And here, we’ve got really a more of a temperate garden. I’ve got all my fruit trees, but now I’ve got apples and pears, and I’ve got peaches and plums, and apricots, nectarines, grapes, and all those sorts of things. Wonderful fruits, but I miss the pawpaw. I really miss it. The beautiful, yellow, juicy pawpaw.
Now here’s a tip: I found pawpaw not to be a real big issue with lots of people with Candida. I don’t know what it is about pawpaw, but even though it’s sweet, it’s got certain types of nutrients in it that don’t seem to flare lots of people up. So if you’ve got a yeast infection and you’re watching this from a tropical country where you’ve got availability for pawpaw, do try pawpaw-one good slice of pawpaw per day to see if it affects your gut. I think pawpaw, in my opinion, has got to be one of the healthiest fruits you can eat for your digestive system. And for your heart and brain, and liver in general. It’s an amazing fruit! It tastes great! You can cook with it, you can bake with it, you can do all kinds of things with it.
Now pawpaw contains an enzyme called papain, which is a proteolytic enzyme. I remember a long time ago I had a patient years and years ago-an elderly man who used to live in the Islands-I think it might’ve been Fiji. And he said to me, “Eric, get a hold of a big, tough piece of steak and then get a couple of big pawpaw leaves.” I don’t know if you grow pawpaw, but the big pawpaw leaves. And he said, “What you do is you just get a couple of leaves, and then you wrap the steak in it and then you crush the leaves up a little bit around the steak and then leave that for several hours.” And he said, “Watch what happens when you cook up that piece of meat.” Well I can tell you now, it was tenderized. It was amazing how tender that old tough piece of beef was. So that shows you the enzymes in the leaf got into the meat and they tenderized it, they softened the meat fibers up. So that’s the proteolytic part.
Now the black seeds of the pawpaw that we call a vermifuge actually kill parasites and worms, would you believe it? In places like Vanuatu, Fiji, Cook Islands, what some people have done for many generations is they dry all those black pawpaw seeds. They look like little pepper kernels. And then what they do is they dry them in the sun for quite a while and they put them in a grinder and actually grind them on top of food. So it’s actually like a medicine. It kills worms. So there you go, another use for pawpaw. The leaves can tenderize tough meat. The seeds are great for parasites like particularly worms because remember they contain an enzyme that helps to break the protein coat down of the worm. And the yellow-the flesh of the fruit is very high in beta-carotene, which is an exceptionally good vitamin to have for many different aspects of your health.
There’s lots of phosphorous in it, there’s potassium, there’s magnesium. There are many trace elements. It’s also high in B5, so pantothenic acid is the most important B vitamin for energy production. It does contain sugar, but I don’t find that this fruit, as I mentioned, really flares up people with candida so I think this is a really good fruit for you to try out. But if you do live in a colder place like me like New Zealand, then you might buy a small, crappy imported pawpaw-it’s disappointing. It’s not really nice. It’s awful. So, to me, papaya is best enjoyed when you’re actually in a tropical country where it’s grown.
That’s like we’ve got some of the really nicest apples in the world here. I grow apples on my tree and if you taste one of those, you’ll be blown away how nice and sweet and juicy and crunchy and beautiful that apple is. It’s a far cry from the crap that you’re gonna buy in supermarkets in countries a long way from where apples are produced. So, good tip here again is to eat what’s grown locally, alright? It’s not good to really buy bananas that are imported from South America if you live in New Zealand and eat them. It’s just not the same.
When I grew bananas in Australia in my own backyard-I mean the taste, the smell, it was just heavenly. When you’re eating produce grown, particularly as close to you as possible and it’s harvested and it’s fresh, if you think about it, common sense, it’s going to have the highest nutrient level. Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? It’s much better for you eating food that’s grown right under your nose than it is way away from your nose in another country. And shipped on boats and trucks and all that stuff.
So, if you’ve got pawpaw at your disposal, definitely eat it. Anti-inflammatory effects, antioxidant effects, immune modulating effects, improves digestive function, contains lots of fibers. It’s also a great prebiotic food for encouraging the production of beneficial bacteria in the small and large bowel. I cannot speak highly enough of pawpaw.
Pineapples a different kettle of fish. It contains a lot more sugar in it than the papaya, but it does contain bromelain, which is another enzyme. I might do another video on pineapple. Pineapples are wonderful. It’s really good cooked on the barbecue. I love it. So, I hope that gives you a bit of information on pawpaw. So if you can get it, try it out and let me know the feedback on papaya.