Paw-Paw-- Ohio's Official Native Fruit is the "Kentucky Banana"

A majority of my 5200 daily calories are coming from bananas (~20-25/day). They are my "bread and pasta". And as JC said in so many words, Man does not live by "banana" alone.

Thus, as I pursue my goal to get all my food from local organic sources, I have been struggling to figure out how to sustain this insanely amazing and raw diet/lifestyle from my confines in Cincinnati. The ecological footprint of transporting all those bananas is way smaller than say raising cattle for beef (<1/7 the carbon footprint, so says a German study), but it's still non-trivial. Furthermore, what if the supply chains to Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico were to be disrupted by drug lords, the politics of soccer, or the fallout of an oil-based economy? What if the price of gasoline shot to $8/gallon? It's not unrealistic. In fact, it's inevitable.

These issues got me interested in alternatives to the banana, which is, as the commercial says, quite possibly the world's perfect fruit. Nervertheless, I'm discovering the pawpaw is quite possibly the world's perfectER food.

Pawpaw trees are easy to identify by their long tear-shaped leaves.

Spending summers working with Cincinnati parks, we learned about a local fruit called pawpaw, which is sometimes referred to as the "poor man's banana" or the "Kentucky banana". Most of the fruits around the local parks get gobbled up as soon as they are ripe by the local deer/bird/squirrel/dog/hippie population. But I'm going to start researching ways to source deer-proof pawpaw.

We even have a nearby Ohio Pawpaw Festival in September where locals share their knowledge and skillz in paw-paw pudding and pawpaw lore. The pawpaw is a tropical-esque fruit in the same family as the cherimoya/custard apple that has grown in North America for thousands of years. It supposedly tastes like a mixture between banana and mango. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson loved them. Too bad I've never even tasted one. Uh, hello-- Earth to bucket list!

Pawpaw eating contest at the Pawpaw Festival in September.

Here is a table from Kentucky State University that compares a 100 gram serving of pawpaw with some other great fruits.

		Pawpaw	Banana	Apple
Composition	Units				Orange
Food Energy	Calories	80	92	59	47
Protein	grams	1.2	1.03	0.19	0.94
Total Fat	grams	1.2	0.48	0.36	0.12
Carbohydrate	grams	18.8	23.4	15.25	11.75
Dietary Fiber	grams	2.6	2.4	2.7	2.4
Vitamins
Vitamin A	RE b	8.6	8	5	21
Vitamin A	IU c	87	81	53	205
Vitamin C	milligrams	18.3	9.1	5.7	53.2
Thiamin	milligrams	0.01	0.045	0.017	0.087
Riboflavin	milligrams	0.09	0.1	0.014	0.04
Niacin	milligrams	1.1	0.54	0.077	0.282
Minerals
Potassium	milligrams	345	396	115	181
Calcium	milligrams	63	6	7	40
Phosphorus	milligrams	47	20	7	14
Magnesium	milligrams	113	29	5	10
Iron	milligrams	7	0.31	0.18	0.1
Zinc	milligrams	0.9	0.16	0.04	0.07
Copper	milligrams	0.5	0.104	0.041	0.045
Manganese	milligrams	2.6	0.152	0.045	0.025
Essential amino acids
Histidine	milligrams	21	81	3	18
Isoleucine	milligrams	70	33	8	25
Leucine	milligrams	81	71	12	23
Lysine	milligrams	60	48	12	47
Methionine	milligrams	15	11	2	20
Cystine	milligrams	4	17	3	10
Phenylalanine	milligrams	51	38	5	31
Tyrosine	milligrams	25	24	4	16
Threonine	milligrams	46	34	7	15
Tryptophan	milligrams	9	12	2	9
Valine	milligrams	58	47	9	40

Better than the banana? I'm sold on the theory, but I have no first-hand experience. How can I beet the deer to them in 2011? Screw triathlon-- this is exactly why I need to buckle down on my training.