Cruz-Behag, Baron, and Fajardo sneak in and relive childhood memories.
Majoy Baron and Kim Fajardo relished the chance to have their ate, the comebacking Cha Cruz-Behag, try something she had never tried before.
Eating aratilis.
"Nag-trespassing kami kasi kukuhanan namin ng aratilis si Ate Cha, kasi 'di pa niya nata-try," Baron said in a video posted on TikTok. "Kasi lason daw."
It took a few minutes for the F2 Logistics Cargo Movers teammates to pick the fruits since Fajardo was apparently too short.
"Kinakain nga ba talaga 'to?" asked the 34-year-old Cruz-Behag, eyeing the small red-orangey fruit handed to her.
Baron didn't help matters and joked, "Magpaalam ka na."
"Anak," Cruz-Behag said, facing Baron. "Pakita mo 'to sa anak ko."
"Pinatay ako ng ninang mo," she said before they all burst into laughter.
She ate the fruit and expressed how sweet it was.
Aratilis is also known as aratiles or mansanitas in the Visayas. Some may know it as a Jamaican cherry. It is scientifically called Muntingia calabura, and thrives in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Aratilis is actually used as traditional medicine. Boiling the leaves for tea is used to treat diarrhea and vomiting, according to Anvil's Mga Halamang Gamot sa Pilipinas.
A study shared by PubMed from the United States National Library of Medicine showed how Filipinos also used the flowers to treat headaches and cold. Peruvians also boiled the leaves for gastric ulcer, while the flowers and bark were used to reduce swelling in the lower extremities.
So where did the poison and toxicity claims come from?
There have been reports that alkaloid and oxalate content in the fruit could be toxic—but a paper that looked at all of those toxicity studies concluded that "overall, M. calabura leaves and fruits are safe for oral consumption up to a dose of 2000 mg/kg."
In short, it's sweet, it tastes like cotton candy, and it's safe. Just don't eat too much.