RAW Blog

Ever eaten a pineapple and thought, "Hmmm, this thing hurts my tongue a little bit"?  If so, you're not alone.

Making the transition into raw foods has definitely led me into fruits and exploring new flavors.  Since I live in Miami, Florida, I have access to a load of tropical fruits including papaya, mango, pineapple and guava.  I've tried all of them, but I'm in love with pineapple.

Over the course of a few weeks, having pineapple in small amounts once or twice daily, I noticed that my lips hurt.  My tongue would get raw and the inside of my mouth and cheeks would tingle and hurt.  If I ate more pineapple than normal, I also came up with a sore throat.  I thought for sure that I must be allergic to pineapple...

And then I did a little research.

Apparently, millions of people suffer from the same problem.  It has to do with the chemistry of the pineapple itself and nothing to do with allergies whatsover.  Within a pineapple, there exists an enzyme called Bromelain.  This little enzyme is what is responsible for my (and your) pain.

Bromelain is an enzyme found naturally in the juice (and stems) of pineapple.  It's supposed to help with digestion of protein, so you'd think that us rawbies would eat this up (no pun intended).  Well, we do.  And we pay for it.

Bromelain is concentrated pretty deeply in a pineapple and is slowly drowned out once the pineapple becomes ripe.  With that in mind, you would want to eat a pineapple at it's absolutely ripe point - which, as it also happens, is directly off of the plant.  Since pineapples grow in hard to reach places, it's almost impossible to harvest a pineapple yourself.  In fact, since we love pineapples so much all over the world, they are picked weeks before they are fully ripe in order to ship them to their destinations before they go bad.

When pineapples arrive, they are a good week or more outside of their true ripeness and thus, the bromelain levels are higher.  We eat the pineapple and the bromelain begins it's natural digestive work - right there in our mouths, throats, stomachs, etc.  Because it's such an intesnse little enzyme, it can even cause symptoms such as breathing problems, hives, itchy skin and tightness in your throat.

People who suffer from common allergies to items such as latex, carrot, celery, fennel, rye, wheat, papain, bee venom or grass, may experience more intesified versions of these symptoms and should be cautious.  For those people in this situation, which includes myself (I'm allergic to latex), pineapples should be eaten at maximum ripeness, in small amounts, and with non-acidic foods in order to slow down the enzyme's digestive properties and give your inner body a chance to cope and move it through.

For more information on bromelain, check these links out:

Bromelain (definition, uses and explanation in our all-encompassing wiki)

WorldHeath.net