Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Volga bomb Here a bread flavored fruit. If you're unfamiliar, it might sound far fetched, but in the world's tropical regions, this starchy crop is a staple bread fruit. Large prickly oval shaped fruit grown from Southeast Asia to Hawaii, where it's also known as Ulu does in fact taste like a mix between freshly baked bread, plantains, and potatoes, But bread fruits superpowers go well beyond flavor.
This relative of the increasingly popular jackfruit is a promising solution to food in security, particularly in tropical places where bread fruit trees easily thrive. One bread fruit alone weighs around seven pounds or three kilos, sometimes up to twelve pounds or over five kilos, and contains enough carbohydrates for one meal for a family of five. The bread fruit is considered one of the highest yielding food plants on the planet. One can produce fifty to fifty fruits per
year and sustain a family of four for decades. We spoke by email with Diane Ragoni, director of the Hawaii based National Tropical Botanic Gardens bread Fruit Institute. She explained that bread fruit is also a highly sustainable crop quote. It has long been an important subsistence crop for many tropical communities. Over the past decade, farmers and families have begun planting more bread fruit trees for local food and
economic security. Another factor is the critical need to adopt and expand sustainable, regenerative agriculture cropping systems for the health and well being of people and the planet. Bread Fruit, which likely stemmed from its ancestor bread nut in New Guinea, has been a main crop among Pacific islanders for millennia.
When early European explorers and colonizers saw bread fruit in the Cific Islands, they took it with them to Jamaica as a staple crop for the people that they had enslaved there, but the existing starch crop, plantains, remained more popular. It took about fifty years for bread fruit to make its way into Caribbean cuisine. Bread fruits roots in Hawaii go back even further. Ancient voyage in Polynesians brought the tree with them across hundreds or thousands of miles and
canoes when they settled the islands. A Crops like this are sometimes called canoe crops. The fruit was integral to ancient Hawaiian culture and spiritual life for hundreds of years before the islands had any contact with the Europeans. Historic Hawaiian bread fruit groves may have been large enough to sustain seventy people. Some of Hawaii's present day trees are
the offspring of groves planted centuries ago. Bread Fruit trees now grow across Earth's tropical belt, including in Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Ghana, and Myanmar. Rigoni says it's easily perishable, only good for a few is after harvest, which means it's tough to find outside the tropics, but online retailers like Miami Fruit do ship it across the mainland United States. Bread fruit is safe for eating and cooking across all development stages. Most people use it when it's mature but still firm,
and either boil steam or bake it. As a starchy crop, bread fruit can replace potatoes or pasta, and it's a great alternative for potato chips or French fries. But when it's green and hard, it tastes similar to artichoke, But after it's ripe, it's also tasty when simply eaten raw. When very ripe bread fruit has a creamy, sweet flavor perfect for desserts or pure aid for baby food. According to Ragoni, these serving methods hardly scratch the surface of
bread fruit's potential. She said. Entrepreneurs are processing fresh fruit, such as steaming and freezing wedges or drying and grinding it into flour and making value added products like fries, to Stana's liquors and more to supply local and export markets. If you don't live in a bread fruit growing area, can you readily order bread fruit on a restaurant menu? Not yet, but if you have the good fortune to do so, then do so. It will support bread fruit
farmers and entrepreneurs. Health benefits abound with bread fruit. It's an energy rich food brimming with complex carbohydrates, fiber, and minerals like potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and sink. It's also gluten free and can be dried or ground into gluten free flour. Bread Fruit boasts some other important advantages. It's a natural insect repellent. The male bread fruit flour
is known to repel mosquitoes. The sap from bread fruit can be used to cold water crafts and homes, while fibers from the trees bark are used to create mosquito nets, clothing, and artwork. The leaves and fallen fruit make nutritious feed for animals. The trees bear fifty to a d and fifty fruits annually, but they're more than a means to
an end. They grow to eighty five feet that's tw six ms tall and produce wood sturdy enough for canoe outriggers and even houses, and they help anchor soil, improving the watershed management in areas where they're planted. They also provide much needed shelter to plant pollinators and seed dispersers like birds, bees, and fats. Today's episode was written by
Stephanie Vermilion and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics that aren't just loafing around because breadfruit of visit house stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.