Traditional Fermented Green Papaya from the Philippines Introduced in the U.S.

22/06/07 Tropical Traditions announced that it was introducing organic "atchara," a traditional Philippine fermented dish made with unripe raw green papaya in coconut water vinegar. As kimchi is to the Koreans, chutney to the Indians, and sauerkraut is to the Germans, so atchara is a traditional fermented dish valued in Philippine culture. Tropical Traditions is the first company to market this traditional dish in the U.S., and they took over 5 years to develop it.

Unlike most atchara products found in the Philippines today, the product being marketed by Tropical Traditions contains organic ingredients supplied by small-scale family producers. Instead of using white refined sugar, for example, they use the higher quality organic muscabado sugar produced by fair trade and organic methods among a cooperative of small farmers.

Papaya is recognized as having strong digestive properties due to the presence of papain, a popular ingredient found in plant-based digestive enzymes. The variety of papaya that Tropical Traditions uses for their atchara product is the native papaya, which often grows wild in rural areas of the Philippines and produces a smaller, more potent fruit than imported varieties. Japanese researchers have reportedly found that native varieties of papaya in the Philippines contain up to four times more papain in its fruit.

The most difficult ingredient to develop was the organic coconut water vinegar base, according to Tropical Traditions. Whereas most atchara products in the Philippines use a standard distilled white vinegar, Tropical Traditions worked to develop a coconut water vinegar by fermenting the water contained inside their organic coconuts used to make their virgin coconut oil. Coconut water is high in many vitamins and minerals, but since fresh coconut water deteriorates so quickly once it is exposed to air, it must be pasteurized, destroying some of the nutrients. It has been reported that during World War II coconut water was used in emergencies as IV fluids in the Philippines, since the nutrient-packed water is completely sterile inside the coconut until the hard shell is cracked and is exposed to air.

In the Philippines and other tropical places, raw coconut water is often left in the open air to ferment, where it eventually turns into a vinegar. The fermentation process enhances the nutrients, unlike heat pasteurization. The acidic environment prevents the growth of undesirable bacteria naturally. Tropical Traditions worked with professors at the University of the Philippines for several years to develop an incubation system that could produce clean coconut water vinegar from their certified organic coconuts and retain the mother of vinegar (a colony of bacteria cultures) as a truly raw product. The mother of vinegar is used to inoculate future batches of organic coconut water vinegar.