I'm from Jamaica, and grew up eating lots of lychees as well. Never had any problems. Only ate them ripe. I haven't had fresh lychees in years though, mostly now buying the canned ones in syrup from China.

The owners of lychee trees, however, had tons of issues. It's such a loved fruit that if you had such a tree, it was pretty much guaranteed that praedial thieves would strike. It got so bad that I remember one nurse in the community cutting down her tree when the sight of strange men roaming her yard became too much.

>I'm from Jamaica, and grew up eating lots of lychees as well. Never had any problems.

What the parent says is about people eating mostly or just lychees -- out of poverty etc. Not the general "I eat lots of X".

Is it realistic to expect them to only eat fully ripe fruit? Or would all the fruit be eaten by someone else first if they did that?

It's not very common to eat the unripe litchis though. But children do eat these unripe here and there. As in while running around in those orchards mostly playfully or stealing for fun and taste. We usually eat only ripe ones. I am from the same place as the parent commenter. They taste really bad unripe.

No, litchi orchards are usually sold well before they ripe and people protect it. So most of the litchi is consumed after it's ripe and from the market unless someone has their own orchard.