Pawpaw vs Papaya: Are They the Same Thing? In South Africa We Say...

You say pawpaw, I say papaya. In South Africa, we are talking about exactly the same fruit, and it happens to be the one I have built my whole healing journey on. Here is the short answer, the slightly longer answer, and the part most people never think about: what this fruit actually does for your skin.

Half a Pawpaw Every Morning

Every morning for as long as I can remember, my gran sat down to half a pawpaw. Not a quarter, not a few cubes tossed into a fruit salad. Half. Seeds scooped out, a teaspoon in hand, the whole golden boat of it, every last bit. Just an FYI, I do exactly the same thing; there is a whole host of benefits, but that's another story.

So to me it has always been pawpaw. Then, somewhere along the way, papaya became a thing. It showed up on menus, in smoothie bars and on the labels of fancy imported skincare, and suddenly the fruit from my gran's breakfast table had a serious upgrade.

Here is the confession. When we sat down to name the brand, the name came from papaya. Look closely: AYA is sitting right there inside pa-p-AYA. So I am a pawpaw girl who named her company after papaya, and I have always been completely comfortable with this supposed contradiction. Which makes me, without a doubt, exactly the right person to settle this.

The short answer: in South Africa, pawpaw and papaya are the same fruit, Carica papaya. Same tree, same seeds, same sunny flesh. The only place you are talking about a genuinely different fruit is America.

Is Papaya and Pawpaw the Same Thing?

It depends on where you are standing when you ask.

In South Africa, Australia and most of the world

Papaya originally comes from Central America and southern Mexico, but it has been growing here for so long that pawpaw is simply what most of us grew up calling it. Well, those of us who are Gen X and above, anyway. Australians say pawpaw too. Walk into any South African greengrocer, and the sign could say either, and you'd be buying the same thing. It’s one reason I believe in natural skincare in South Africa, made from what grows on our doorstep.

The yellow versus red debate

This is where the arguments start, usually at a braai, because we are in South Africa. Some growers and shops use the two names to tell varieties apart:

• Pawpaw for the bigger, rounder fruit with yellow flesh. Think soccer-ball round, mellow and gently sweet.

• Papaya for the smaller, oval, rugby-ball-shaped fruit with orange-to-red flesh, a little sweeter and more perfumed.

Bottom line: botanically, they are the same species, just different cultivars, a bit like a Granny Smith and a Golden Delicious are both apples. So the next time someone at the braai insists the red one is papaya and the yellow one is pawpaw, let them have it. They're right about the variety, but it's still the same fruit.

Yellow pawpaw (left) and red papaya (right): two varieties, one fruit.

In America, it really is a different fruit

In the United States, a pawpaw is something else entirely: Asimina triloba, a native North American tree with a green-skinned fruit that tastes a little like banana custard. It is not related to papaya at all. This is why the internet gets so confused. Half the articles you will find are American, talking about a fruit most South Africans have never seen.

So: you say pawpaw, I say papaya, and unless one of us is in America, we are talking about the same fruit.

How Pawpaw Shows Up in South African Homes

Most of us know pawpaw as a breakfast fruit. My gran had hers plain. Plenty of people squeeze lemon or lime over the flesh, which beautifully sharpens that soft, musky sweetness. Others turn a halved pawpaw into a bowl and fill it with yoghurt, honey and muesli, or chop it over a warm bowl of oats or mielie-meal porridge with a dash of cinnamon. It goes into smoothies, fruit salads and, in summer, straight from the fridge into your mouth while standing at the kitchen counter. No judgement.

But there is one more traditional use that most people forget, and it is the key to everything I do.

The meat tenderiser clue

Cooks have known for generations that green, unripe pawpaw softens tough meat. Wrap a cut in pawpaw leaves, rub it with the sap or grated green fruit, and the meat becomes noticeably more tender. Many commercial meat tenderiser powders are made from the same thing.

The reason is an enzyme called papain. Scientists, who love a good naming system almost as much as they love confusing the rest of us, call it a proteolytic enzyme. In plain English, it breaks down protein. Think of it as a pair of tiny molecular scissors.

I have to admit, when I first fell in love with pawpaw for skin, I had no idea about any of this. But I caught on quickly. Here is the thing: the outermost layer of our skin is made largely of dead cells packed with keratin, a tough protein. When those dead cells build up, skin looks dull, feels rough and struggles to absorb anything you put on it. Papain gently softens and loosens that build-up, without scrubbing or the sting of harsh acids. And voilà: the Sunday braai, that beautiful tradition that rejuvenates and replenishes us, owes its tender meat to the very same fruit that helps our skin let go of what it no longer needs, so it can feel renewed too.

Why Raw Fermented Paw Paw (Papaya) Is in My Skincare

AYA did not start with a business plan. It started with my baby boy. My son was born with a latex allergy. (Yes, I have heard every joke going, mostly from men, and yes, I wanted to smack every one of them.) As a new mother, I suddenly had to question everything that touched his skin. My mother, wise woman that she is, suggested papaya. She had volunteered at a hospice, where she had seen papaya used on bed sores. Fortunately, she has a long memory.

So pawpaw went into a balm in my kitchen, along with beeswax and a few gentle oils. The early results came quickly and easily, and then the long process of stabilising began. Through all of it, every ingredient had to pass one test: would I put this on my newborn? That test has never changed. You can read the full story in 20 Ways to Use AYA Balm.

We made it, used it and loved it as we travelled on our journey, until we found the dream team who helped us turn it into a proper brand. I remember them asking whether there would ever be more products in the range. I swore, hand on heart, that AYA Balm would be the one and only. All I can say is never say never, and I think of that promise, wryly, every time I walk in with a new product.

Choosing the fruit

We shop around for the cleanest pawpaw we can find, and we research the environment it is grown in. Papaya generally scores well on pesticide residue: it ranks fourth on the Environmental Working Group's 2026 Clean Fifteen. That list is based on American testing, though, so for us it is a starting point, not a free pass. We still want to know where our fruit comes from.

We usually choose the big yellow ones, and we always let them ripen in the sun. Never rushed, never forced.

The smell that tells me it is ready

Working with pawpaw is a full sensory experience. A ripe one smells fruity, juicy and sweet, and it takes me straight to hot, balmy summer nights. As it ferments, that smell shifts and deepens until it hits a particular note, and I just know. Fourteen years of doing this, since 2012, and it is still my favourite moment in the AYA room.

Raw fermented papaya mid-ferment in the AYA room. It smells even better than it looks.

Fermentation is what makes the fruit's goodness stable enough to live in a balm, and it is why we use raw fermented paw paw rather than a dried powder or a synthetic extract. I have written about the science in Holy Moly, It's Alive! and about papain in Papaya Benefits for Skin if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

Can You Just Rub Pawpaw on Your Face?

You can. I did. I don't recommend it.

It was a Friday night in the early days of AYA. The kids were in bed, a friend who is always up for anything skin-related had come over, and I had a brilliant idea: a home peel, using our own raw fermented papaya, applied generously and straight onto our faces. I hadn't yet fully understood how powerful it is.

Within minutes there was a tingle. The tingle became a burn. We ran shrieking to the bathroom to wash it off. My face was fire-engine red, and when my husband came home he suggested, in his understated English way, that perhaps I should see a skin specialist, because I looked rather alarming. It settled, thankfully, but I had to stay out of the sun for a month. My household has never let me forget it.

The lesson is the reason AYA Balm exists in the form it does. Papain is genuinely active, and the dose and what it sits in matter enormously. Concentrated enzyme alone is too much for most skin. Held in beeswax and gentle oils, in the right proportion, it works quietly and kindly. Fresh pawpaw from the kitchen is gentler than our ferment, but it still contains enzymes, so if you try a pawpaw mask at home, patch test on your inner arm first and keep it short.

Is There Real Paw Paw in Your Paw Paw Ointment?

Most South Africans have a tube of paw paw ointment somewhere: in the bathroom cabinet, the cubbyhole, the bottom of a handbag. It is a pharmacy staple for chapped lips and dry patches. So it is worth asking what is actually in it.

If a friend handed me hers and asked whether it was really paw paw, I would turn it over and look at three things.

1. What is the base? Ingredients are listed from most to least, so the first one or two are mostly what you are putting on your skin. Is it a plant oil, a wax from a hive, or petroleum jelly and mineral oil?

2. What is the paw paw carried in? Find Carica papaya, the Latin name for pawpaw, and look at what surrounds it. Paw paw infused into plant oils and beeswax is a very different thing from paw paw stirred into petroleum.

3. Can you recognise the rest? The Latin names look intimidating, but plant ingredients usually carry their common name in brackets, such as Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil. If you can trace each one back to a plant, a fruit or a hive, that tells you a lot.

Many paw paw ointments are built on petrolatum (petroleum jelly), mineral oil or paraffin, often first on the list. That base is what gives them their thick, heavy, sticky feel. Some labels also give the papaya content in milligrams per gram: 40 mg/g works out to about 4%, which means the other 96% is something else.

This is where personal choice comes in. All of this is just information, so that you can decide for yourself. My own position is clear: petroleum and its by-products are ubiquitous in our world today, from our cars to our cosmetics, and I choose to keep them off my skin and my family's. AYA has never contained them. I have written more about petroleum in skincare in Victoria's Secret to Glorious Skin, and about label reading in Decoding the Gibberish.

What people notice when they switch

Over the years, so many customers have told me they switched from traditional paw paw ointment. What they mention most is how the raw fermented paw paw actually works on their skin, and how different it feels: no thick, heavy coat, and a smell that is gentle rather than synthetic. Rene P put it better than I could:

"My absolute skin saviour! I switched over from traditional pawpaw ointment because it was always too heavy and sticky. AYA Balm has the most wonderful, lightweight feel while still providing incredible hydration. Highly recommend to anyone looking for a daily go-to balm!"

In AYA Balm, the raw fermented paw paw (papaya) is infused into olive and almond oil, which form the base along with beeswax sourced directly from beekeepers. Then come a few essential oils. If you spot linalool, limonene and geraniol at the end, don't panic. They are natural compounds found in those essential oils, and the law requires us to list them. No petroleum, no synthetic fragrance, nothing you can't trace back to a plant or a hive. Turn our tin over and you will see that the difference is in the base.

The front and back of AYA Balm, a petroleum-free paw paw balm. The base is plant oils and beeswax.

You Say Pawpaw, I Say Papaya

So, are pawpaw and papaya the same thing? In South Africa, yes. You say pawpaw, I say papaya, and only in America are we talking about a different fruit.

But I hope you leave with a little more than a settled argument. The fruit on your breakfast plate carries an enzyme that cooks have trusted for generations and that I have trusted on my family's skin since 2012. Whatever you call it, it deserves a whole lot of respect and even more love: let it ripen in the sun, give it time, and when you pick up a paw paw product in the shops, check what it is carried in.

If you are curious what raw fermented paw paw feels like on your skin, AYA Balm is R65 for a 15g tin, and a rice-grain amount goes a long way. One tin lasts most people six months to a year.

And my gran? She would have had no time for this debate. She would have told you to stop talking and eat your pawpaw.