Are overripe fruits good for us?

[Sorentus]

So if we can make high meat why can't we just make high fruits? I was under the impression that a rotten fruit being eaten by ants wouldn't be any different then a piece of meat filled with maggots. For fruits to be fermented accordingly it needs lactic acid bacteria but I don't see how that would have ever occurred in nature, so how would we have developed to eat them. If we eat a very ripe fruit are we harming ourselves, were fruit meant to be eaten as fresh as possible?

[RogueFarmer]

i like to go by taste. some stuff tastes better with age some worse. fizzy apple or pear cider is the only juice i enjoy in quantity. most fruit is not good until ripe, sometimes still good  after they go bad sometimes not. somewhat heretical opinion

[raw-al]

I used to eat blueberries and raspberries that were rotten/moldy. Didn't notice any problems. I used to consume it with butter and cream to take away the sourness.

Not possible for me to eat them straight as they were too sour.

[TylerDurden]

I have eaten medlars which are a fruit which is always supposed to be eaten in rotten form. They taste delicious.

[RogueFarmer]

Actually I recall that aajonus recomended  mouldy raspberries for something or other. There are many more fruits that need to blet to be tasty but medlars are the prime example.

[Iguana]

Yeah, medlars are tasty once overripe ("rotten" is a bit  exaggerated); I planted 2 tree in my orchard in France and 4 km from home here there’s a tree in an abandoned orchard.

i like to go by taste. some stuff tastes better with age some worse.  ... most fruit is not good until ripe, sometimes still good  after they go bad sometimes not. somewhat heretical opinion

What is heretical? That’s the real raw paleo way! Plus, if we don’t like to get a bad taste in the mouth and have to spit, we’d better take the smell of the stuff before. Our nose being purposely just over our mouth (at least in principle…) smelling what might be eaten is no big deal!

Actually I recall that aajonus recomended  mouldy raspberries for something or other. There are many more fruits that need to blet to be tasty but medlars are the prime example.

What does he know about you and about each strawberry? Each one is different, that’s the way things are in nature. Even 2 bottles of exactly the same wine from the same barrel may evolve very differently. Better follow your personal current needs without referring to the say of a guru!

Lychees, rambutans can be delicious once partly fermented. In Switzerland, I had pineapples from organic small farmers in Cameroon which sometimes fermented and became an absolute delight. Some others got blue inside and were awful. Overripe bananas can be good, and plantains especially. Some people are fond of overripe avocados, apples, pears or whatever. Another fruit which must be decaying to be palatable is the safu (below), a fatty fruit tasting a bit like olives for me. It’s at its best when covered with a layer of white yeast.
   

[Sorentus]

So if one is intolerant to one fruit, say sweet potato, could you just let it overripe and with the bacteria already digesting the vegetable, should it help you digest it? I'm talking letting it overripe, not lacto ferment it.

[Iguana]

Sweet potato? It's not a fruit, it doesn't ripen! You'd very special indeed if you like it rotten!

[Sorentus]

I definitively don't like it ripen, I like sweet potato raw but I don't digest anything well so I'm thinking if it's being eaten by bacterias then it should help me digest it and since I hate the process of lacto fermenting things myself I was wondering if it could help my but flora if I just let it sit there to decompose and eat it just like you would do with meat.

[PaleoPhil]

Climacteric fruits (those that continue to ripen after picking via ethylene production and cellular respiration) that benefit (or at least sweeten) from ripening, bletting or fermenting: cherimoya, medlars, quinces, some pippin apples (apples that grow from seeds instead of grafts, such as wild and ) and cider apples, Bananas/plantains, breadfruit, melons, peaches, apricots, tomatoes, lychees, some species of persimmons and certain other fruits.

Non-climacteric fruits (those that ripen without ethylene and respiration bursts and don't benefit from further ripening after picking): citrus, grape, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, cashew, olive, and cherry.

[Sorentus]

I don't get that, so eating a ripen banana is good bacteria wise but eating a ripen blueberry is not? I doubt our ancestors would have known which ripen fruit is good or not to be eat. If all meat is good after its been decomposed by bacterias wouldn't all fruits(including vegetable) also increase in benefits more the more it rip? Are you talking about the bacteria is Climacteric  Vs non Climacteric  fruits? Btw my question was more about over ripen plants as in fruits and vegetables, I guess.

[eveheart]

I don't get that, so eating a ripen banana is good bacteria wise but eating a ripen blueberry is not? I doubt our ancestors would have known which ripen fruit is good or not to be eat. If all meat is good after its been decomposed by bacterias wouldn't all fruits(including vegetable) also increase in benefits more the more it rip? Are you talking about the bacteria is Climacteric  Vs non Climacteric  fruits? Btw my question was more about over ripen plants as in fruits and vegetables, I guess.

It is necessary to be very precise with definitions, Sorentus, because that is where some of your confusion lies.

Fruits are the parts of plants that carry the seed, as in apple, banana (tiny seeds), strawberry. With fruits, ripe means sexual maturity, which means the seed has all its parts that it will need to grow. The flesh of many fruits tastes best at this stage, presumably so that the fruit is good to eat and then the seed will be scattered by the fruit eaters.

Blet means to let the fruit soften and decay after maturity... rot is close in meaning to blet. [Edit: rot is a very general term and it can mean many things. Blet is very specific to this discussion.]

Vegetable can mean any other part of the plant, such as leaf, stem, root, tuber, flower. As it pertains to this discussion, vegetables do not ripen.

There are all kinds of bacteria. Some have a tasty and beneficial effect when they grow on our food, other bacteria are not tasty and/or not beneficial.

Sometimes I need to find definitions (I use google, wikipedia, etc.) and study them a bit before I understand the posts on this forum. That makes subject like this one become clearer.

[raw-al]

Thanks Eve,
I actually thought blet was a typo. I'd never heard it previously. Even the spell check here picks it up wants to replace it with belt.

[Sorentus]

That's very interesting. My theory was that, we get to digest food depending on the bacteria that we acquires. since digestion is mostly bacteria, we need the proper bacterias to digest the proper foods. So my understanding is that if we eat a rotten meat for instance, we eat the bacteria that comes with the meat and the more high(ripen) it is, the more bacteria it contain and the better we get to digest it. That's why high meat is so much easier to digest and good for us.

So if one acquire the bacteria to properly digest meat by eating meat as high as possible, shouldn't you be able to do the same by eating the bacterias from ripen(high)fruits? How do one acquire the right bacteria from eating a fruit if you don't have it in your gut? If you ferment vegetables with lactic acid bacterias, then it is way easy to digest and I believe that these sample lactic acid bacteria would help you better digest the same vegetables in the long run if you were to not eat it in its fermented form. But wouldn't that work too if you just let it over ripe instead of ferment it? Would letting a fruit ripe as long as possible, allow you to digest it easier and in the long run, It should give you the right bacteria's strain so you can properly digest if it wasn't so ripe?

[PaleoPhil]

I doubt our ancestors would have known which ripen fruit is good or not to be eat.

Yes they would have, just by taste. Ask Iguana and Tyler. The climacteric fruits taste and feel WAAAAAYYYYYY better super-ripened than the non-climacteric fruits. Even chimps and other non-human primates know which is which and when each is best to eat. Notice how Tyler mentioned medlars, which are a climacteric fruit well-suited to bletting (advanced-ripening).

If all meat is good after its been decomposed by bacterias wouldn't all fruits(including vegetable) also increase in benefits more the more it rip?

Nope. This is knowledge that in the past everyone knew, but now hardly anyone knows. Around 10,000 years ago began "the Great Forgetting," in which oodles of important knowledge was mostly forgotten.

[Sorentus]

So if I want to eat fruits which I can simply let it ripe, I should look for the Climacteric fruits? Is that going to make it easier for digestion and will it contain beneficial bacterias and if so, what about vegetables?

[eveheart]

So if I want to eat fruits which I can simply let it ripe, I should look for the Climacteric fruits? Is that going to make it easier for digestion and will it contain beneficial bacterias and if so, what about vegetables?

Ideally, fruits for sale which won't ripen after picking are picked and sold ripe (because they won't ripen after getting picked). If you pick your own fruits, you could pick the ripe ones - or if you have a lot of fruit-eating birds in your area and the fruit will ripen on its own, pick just before ripe.

That's very interesting. My theory was that, we get to digest food depending on the bacteria that we acquires. since digestion is mostly bacteria, we need the proper bacterias to digest the proper foods. So my understanding is that if we eat a rotten meat for instance, we eat the bacteria that comes with the meat and the more high(ripen) it is, the more bacteria it contain and the better we get to digest it. That's why high meat is so much easier to digest and good for us.

A person with a healthy digestive system has the kinds of intestinal bacteria needed for foods to break down. If you want to improve your inner bacteria, eating these bacteria might help these bacteria grow on their own inside you. But it isn't generally true that you would need to eat bacteria on your food to get this benefit. If you haven't destroyed your intestinal bacteria, everything should work okay.

A lot of things kill off the good bacteria in your digestive tract: stress, environmental pollution, overeating, junk food like sugar, chlorine in the water, etc. Things like constipation, diarrhea, cramping, bad flatulence, and many diseases are signs that the good bacteria is lacking and probably too much bad bacteria is there instead.

[Sorentus]

A person with a healthy digestive system has the kinds of intestinal bacteria needed for foods to break down. If you want to improve your inner bacteria, eating these bacteria might help these bacteria grow on their own inside you. But it isn't generally true that you would need to eat bacteria on your food to get this benefit. If you haven't destroyed your intestinal bacteria, everything should work okay.

A lot of things kill off the good bacteria in your digestive tract: stress, environmental pollution, overeating, junk food like sugar, chlorine in the water, etc. Things like constipation, diarrhea, cramping, bad flatulence, and many diseases are signs that the good bacteria is lacking and probably too much bad bacteria is there instead.

Yeah , my gut bacterias are most likely missing so I'm hoping that I can replace them by the bacteria present on the fruits that are being eaten by it.

[eveheart]

Yeah , my gut bacterias are most likely missing so I'm hoping that I can replace them by the bacteria present on the fruits that are being eaten by it.

It would be better to say that you have a deficiency of good bacteria or an excess of bad bacteria. In either case, something is in there giving you discomfort. The benefit of eating resistant starch (see the RS thread) is that it might help your good bacteria thrive... but that's not the only way to intestinal health.

I've never heard of rotten-fruit bacteria being the kind that are beneficial to intestinal flora. Usually, high meat, fermented vegetables, cultured milk products, or probiotic supplements are used for this purpose, a little at a time for a long time. This is not a one-shot cure.

[Iguana]

Thanks Eve,
I actually thought blet was a typo. I'd never heard it previously. Even the spell check here picks it up wants to replace it with belt.

Same here. But I though first that it's identical to the French words "blet" and "blette". If I knew it's used in English too, I would have used it instead of or alternatively to "overripe". 

Something of critical importance is that some molds are highly toxic while some are fine to eat. Unsurprisingly, the toxic ones stink and taste horrible while the good ones smell and taste good! There are certainly variations between individuals as the location of the threshold between good and bad ones depending on the current state and needs of one's body.

[cherimoya_kid]

I eat overripe fruit quite often. It makes it much easier to digest.  I gained a taste for overripe fruit during my fruitarian days on the 80/10/10 diet. Most everyone who does that diet eventually prefers their fruit overripe.

[eveheart]

Same here. But I though first that it's identical to the French words "blet" and "blette". If I knew it's used in English too, I would have used it instead of or alternatively to "overripe".

The English word comes from that French word. I have usually seen the word used as an adjective in its past participle: bletted fruit.

[Sorentus]

So I guess I'll keep eating my vegetable fermented and limit my fruit intake and have them as fresh as possible, except maybe try some over ripe plantains.

[raw-al]

The English word comes from that French word. I have usually seen the word used as an adjective in its past participle: bletted fruit.

Lots of English comes from French. Anglos were the lower class after William came calling.

[Iguana]

So I guess I'll keep eating my vegetable fermented and limit my fruit intake and have them as fresh as possible, except maybe try some over ripe plantains.

Why such a decision? Taking decisions beforehand about which raw paleo foods we're going to eat and which ones we are going to avoid is not very paleo!