Jackfruit: Food for Thought to Make the World Hunger-Free

The Fruit of Abundance

Jackfruit has been the food of the poor man for centuries in many regions of Asia, due to its abundance and ability to thrive with zero care. The tropical rainforest ecosystem is home to these benevolent trees that bear giant fruits, most carrying fruits literally from toe to tip, presenting a delicious feast to humans and animals alike. The tree is native to India and Malaysia and is distinct in having the largest known edible fruit. One jackfruit can weigh up to 35 kilograms. Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America have jack trees. Living up to around 100 years or so and producing thousands of fruits in this life span, the jack tree could be one of the most economical choices of a fruit tree for cultivation when viewed from the eyes of a family or a society. It can support family food security for many generations, and still, sufficient fruits are left each year to sell to or share with the immediate society.

A South Indian Jackfruit Tale: Reminder of a Feudal Past

Different parts of South India are drenched in monsoon rains from June to October, every year. The heavy downpour brought farming to a standstill. For the landed and the rich, these months were when they would open up their granaries and start using the stored tubers and pumpkins; they enjoyed the rains sitting idly at home and having wholesome meals.

For the poor, these were the months of poverty. Employment would be sparse, and they never had enough food to store for the famine months. Jackfruit then would become one of the few food sources they can rely on. Growing plentiful in the wild, on common lands, and in private homesteads, they are a food source of abundance. A poor family would have no difficulty accessing them free as they were aplenty. The raw jack fruit and its seeds are cooked into many delicious breakfast and lunch recipes. The ripe ones are eaten as fruit.

The Fruit with a False Stigma

The sweet and musky scent of the jackfruit can be a source of repulsion for some, especially because the smell lingers despite washing your hands. The peculiar and unpleasant smell created a stigma in some cultures against this fruit. Economic progress in the society branded.

Progress meant that a decline in agriculture accompanied the industrialisation and commercialisation that led the society in the 1980s and 1990s. Conventional developmental activities reduced the free availability of land for Jack trees to grow. People's income improved. Food options for them diversified. Life's pace quickened. Cutting open the thick and thorny outer Jack fruit rind, extracting the fruit pods from the inner core where they are strongly stuck, the sticky latex that makes this extraction process extremely messy, and the lingering unpleasant smell - not worth it anymore, given the life and work culture of speed. People began to abandon this vegetable/fruit. The cumulative effect of all these factors is that this healthy super fruit was neglected and wasted.

A Fruit Lost and Rediscovered

Recently things took a better turn. When the covid 19 pandemic created short-term food shortages, people began to look back on their immediate ecosystems for local food and they rediscovered jackfruit. During the days of lockdown, the villagers plucked jackfruits which would have otherwise gone rotting in their homesteads; they consumed this yummy fruit and shared it with their neighbours too. The new interest in jackfruit made it to the newsrooms and this news item turned into a COVID-19-related human interest story for journalists.

Jack Fruit is a Future Food for the World

Jack fruit has captured the imagination of the world's vegans as an alternative to meat as it tastes similar when cooked before ripening. The media has often called it a superfood of the future. Jack fruit cakes, ice creams, fried chips made of unripe jackfruit, jack fruit cookies, jam, desserts, dried unripe jackfruit - the range of food items made from this humble fruit is amazing. While this fruit can be a food of sustenance for Asia, it can become a vegan gourmet food in Europe. This fruit provides a new and inexpensive opportunity for wholesome nutrition in many ways.

The comeback of jackfruit is a curious example of how food habits change during a food crisis, in this case, a pandemic. In many Asian countries, 50% of the naturally growing jack fruit is wasted. Isn’t this time to probe the fruit's nutritional and value-addition potential in a more focused manner?

How to Cut and Cook a Jack Fruit

• Put some oil on your hands and knife so that the latex does not stick to your hands and knife.

• Cut the Fruit in half and then in quarters

• Cut the core which is also the source of the latex from each quarter piece

• Pluck out the fruit pods by detaching them from the base and removing the tendrils that surround the pods

• Remove the seeds and now you can either cook the pods if they are raw or eat them directly if they are ripe

• The rind of the jack fruit (better cut and remove the thorn tips) is edible and can be cooked into different types of curries

• The tendrils are equally sweet when the fruit is ripe and can be eaten

• The core also can be cooked but because of the latex, it might be a little hard to chew

• The seeds are a good source of nutrition and can be used as 1) a vegetable, 2) roasted as a nut, 3) ground to flour

• The medium-sized and unripe fruits are delicious when cooked, sautéed with oil and mustard seeds, and mixed with freshly grated coconut. This is a tasty side dish along with cooked rice and curd

• The ripe fruit pods can be used to make different sweet dishes and sometimes they are pureed by slow boiling for a prolonged time. This puree has a shelf life of many months

• The unripe fruit pod when deep-fried in oil, is a delicious competitor to other fried chips

Post-COVID-19, climate change is the gravest concern for our food security. Jack trees are low-maintenance as a crop and tolerant to drought. The world's food security experts might want to reconsider jackfruit as a superfood for the future sustenance of humanity.