harveyc

Mary, this person wants to enjoy papaya and does presently eat them after squeezing lime on them, as Mark suggests. He's aware that many people love papaya and thought, perhaps, there is a variety that is better than others, one without the "vomit" taste. I don't think I've ever had a papaya I didn't care for, though some have been bland (probably picked immature). I first heard of this vomit comment in 2007 when a friend from Puerto Rico (Mitchel, it was Bryan whom you met) told me that most of the locals there in PR don't care for papaya due to smelling like vomit. I was puzzled by the comment then and have since heard of it a few times. I thought maybe it was something to do with living in the tropics, but Mitchel breaks that theory. One guy from Hawaii who replied to the guy who posed the question (from which my original vomit comment above was derived) said that the papaya breeding in Hawaii was done to eliminate the foul taste, but I don't know if that's really the case since Mitchel has probably been exposed to some of them as well.

I'm curious, Mitchel, what you think of the taste of Fuyu persimmon. We like it in our household but I have also encountered people who hate it. It seems somewhat similar in taste profile to papaya to me, now that I think about it.

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