My home island of Santa Cruz was one of the first islands colonized by the settlers that came to the Galapagos at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. They brought a lot of seeds with them and cultivated the rich volcanic soil in the moist highlands of the islands. One of the plants they grew is the papaya pictured here. We sipped fresh papaya juice before our meal of grilled chicken at the highland farm where we had lunch today. Papaya is a delicious tropical fruit that the adventurers who first came to these islands no doubt brought along as a food, but it also has medicinal value.
Papaya contains a substance called papain. Papain is in the whitish juice, or latex, that seeps from the papaya fruit when it is cut. It is an enzyme that breaks down protein. In its pure form, papain can digest up to 35 times its weight in lean meat; hence it is in great demand as a meat tenderizer. In medicine it is prescribed for people who have difficulty digesting protein, and it is used to break up blood clots after surgery. Another sister enzyme also found in papaya, chymopapain, is used to shrink ruptured or slipped spinal disks.
