This is a persimmon and as the legend goes you shouldn't drink milk with it
and you shouldn't drink yogurt with it because if you do you might die!
and believe it or not this is not fully lore. Persimmons like this have killed people in the
past. Just look what it did to this persimmon milk mix that we did earlier and of course today
we will be discussing the science and we will be doing a taste test with some of the Fuyu
persimmons in my yard and then i have some of the astringent type which i'm not going to tell them
what the surprise is for that but we'll see how they react -stuck to it to my tongue. I don't
think this is anybody's favorite fruit. So we're going to talk today about a bunch of things you
probably didn't know about the persimmon which is just an incredible fruit one of the fun facts is
that you could die from it and no it's not just because you ate too much of it or it's poisonous
or anything like that but for you to understand the science behind it you have to understand
what makes these persimmons so cool the basics the name persimmon is given to a few different species
the texas persimmon which grows in this area and the american persimmon which grows in the east
there's also one in southwestern asia and one in taiwan but the most common is the oriental
persimmon which i now grow in my yard you're picking the persimmons yeah the varieties of the
oriental persimmons here are the ones we likely know from the store in the u.s that's the fuyu
and the hachiya but to understand the persimmons and in the end why they might be dangerous you
have to understand some chemistry you see there are two main types of persimmons astringent
and non-astringent persimmons down non-astringent varieties like the fuyu that i have here can be
eaten off the branch when they're still fairly crisp this is the fuyu persimmon it is a
non-astringent type so we are going to taste this one and report back how it tastes it's like sugary
but it's kind of like cotton candy sort of tastes like just sugar really like brown sugar kind of
the texture of a musk melon maybe so you've never had a persimmon i've never heard of they existed
really never knew they probably never even had one so i never had you've never had a person
okay it's pretty good and they're fantastic but most persimmons are astringent that means they're
full of tannins and they taste horrible if they're not fully ripe here's a video
of me showing haley her first very astringent american persimmon in florida notice that haley
doesn't taste the tannins right away it takes a few seconds for that astringency to hit you
super expensive my like gums and the whole inside of my mouth are like shrinking
i don't know what's happening
why do we have a persimmon tree in our yard it's a different kind of persimmon tree
i mean oh that's terrible the american persimmons only lose this astringency
after they've gotten soft and fall into the ground
that means you can make great jams out of them but you're not going to find them in the grocery store
i did however for the video order some hachiya persimmons from california try a couple hard
slices first they are an astringent variety i'm going to give everybody a slice and we'll eat
it all at the same time and i don't recommend eating them if they're at all firm big bites
it's like it's like you filled my mouth with baby powder that's so gross i know you have a definite
dry mouth now yeah you do oh my god my it just feels like i can't open my mouth but but it can
now that sensation is caused when the tannins shrink the mucous membranes in the mouth and
throat i can barely talk first you're like not bad you're like this is pretty good and then
you're like somebody took our cotton ball and suck all the moisture out of your mouth
you can wait on these chias until they're soft then you can scoop them out with a spoon or slice
them up to dry them or just make paste for fruit roll-ups they're really good that way drying them
is actually really good because it gets rid of the tannins understanding these astringent tannins is
actually really important for understanding that whole death thing you see inside of an
astringent persimmon is a tannin known as shibuol if you were to eat one that's not yet fully ripe
this tannin when mixed with an acid like in your stomach will form a coagulation a food lump so
to speak and most people aren't going to have a problem with this they'll continue to digest it
but they have a normal functioning stomach in rare cases like when people have had gastric issues in
the past or they've just eaten a lot of persimmons particularly if they're a little bit astringent
not totally ripe it can form this solid plant mass in the stomach that is called a reservoir
now you're familiar with bezoars. hair balls are a type of bezoar they're called a trichobezoar
and a solid plant mass that's a phyto-bezoar now the most common of all of the plant-based ones
are persimmon phytobezoars now i looked all this up in the literature and i found it fascinating
because they reported all different types of phyto-bezoars but something about this size
was not uncommon in fact that was about what people were reporting and that is a hard mass
that's in your stomach that believe it or not before about 20 years ago would either require
surgery or you trying to pass it and could get clogged and that is what could kill you and
that has happened in the past now more recently they found that you can irrigate it with a very
strong acid now you don't want to use like something extremely strong but what they
found is that they can flush it and irrigate it with coca-cola yeah you can put lots of lots
of coca-cola on it and it can over time and this might take a couple weeks we'll dissolve it enough
to pass it through your system now they've they've actually noted in the literature that you could
maybe test this using pepsi but for now coca-cola is your acid of choice cool huh
finally back to that milk and persimmon mix from the very beginning adding the persimmon did
in fact congeal the milk now my guess is that bacteria which were probably on the persimmon
turned the lactose sugars in the milk to lactic acid that thickened the whole thing it essentially
made yogurt but i couldn't find anyone else that did this so i'm not exactly sure what happened i
did however find plenty of reports that the milk and yogurt lore is false it has everything to do
with the creation of those hard bezels but let me know what you think in the comments
below i hope now you know a little bit more about the persimmon than when you started
i need to say a big thank you to my family who continually does these taste tests with me
to my son who's helping me shoot some of the video and of course to my patrons who
are continually supporting this wildlife education because look even though we said at the beginning
you could die from persimmon the whole point is to educate you on how not to die and how
mother nature is not trying to kill you which of course is the new book that haley and i wrote
which you can pick up cheaper on patreon if you want because that supports a local artist
okay thanks everyone for joining in and we will see you in the next episode yep yeah high five