The New Complete Book of Food
Buying This Food
Look for: Medium-size, pear-shaped fruit whose skin is turning yellow. The yellower the
skin, the riper the fruit. Papayas ripen from the bottom up, toward the stem. Always look
for fruit that is yellow at least halfway up.Storing This Food
Store papayas at room temperature until they are fully ripe, which means that they have
turned golden all over and are soft enough to give when you press the stem end.
Store ripe papayas in the refrigerator.Preparing This Food
Wash the papaya under cool running water, then cut it in half, spoon out the seeds, and
sprinkle it with lemon or lime juice.
The seeds of the papaya taste like peppercorns. They can be dried and ground as a
seasoning or simply sprinkled, whole, on a salad.What Happens When You Cook This Food
* * *How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Extraction of papain. Commercial meat tenderizers contain papain extracted from fresh
papaya and dried to a powder. The powder is a much more efficient tenderizer than either
fresh papaya or papaya leaves. At the strength usually found in these powders, papain
can “digest” (tenderize) up to 35 times its weight in meat. Like bromelain (the proteolytic
enzyme in fresh pineapple) and ficin (the proteolytic enzyme in fresh figs), papain breaks
down proteins only at a temperature between 140°F and 170°F. It won’t work when the
temperature is higher or lower.Medical Uses and/or Benefits
Lower risk of some birth defects. Up to two or every 1,000 babies born in the United States
each year may have cleft palate or a neural tube (spinal cord) defect due to their mothers’ not
having gotten adequate amounts of folate during pregnancy. The current RDA for folate is
180 mcg for a woman and 200 mcg for a man, but the FDA now recommends 400 mcg for a
woman who is or may become pregnant. Taking a folate supplement before becoming preg-