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The other night I turned on my TV and brought up the on-screen guide, and I saw a listing for a show from the island of Bali. I couldn’t resist tuning in… It was the travel show with the guy who eats the strange and outrageous foods, Andrew Zimmern. He was at a ceremonial pig roast. The Balinese rarely eat meat, so this was a big celebration. He was chowing down on the pig’s internal organs, which is unusual for Americans because no one eats them anymore. And along with it, he was eating a huge jackfruit. Most people aren’t familiar with jackfruit either, but it’s a real treat. It’s everywhere in Bali and you can get to them pretty easily … but that wasn’t the case when I was in India. In fact, it was pretty amazing to see how much work they have to do to get their food. Jackfruit pulp is how many of the locals in India got their main nutritional antioxidants like vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, and selenium.1 Jackfruit also has vitamin A, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, iron, sodium, zinc, and niacin, among many other nutrients. So it’s a fairly important part of their diet. But to harvest jackfruit, you have to take a whole troop of people and hike up into the hills. We took like a dozen people, and everyone had to climb half the day. We had to cross streams, climb up rocks, and struggle through heavy vegetation. It was grueling. And then we get to the top, and there’s the jackfruit way up in the trees … and somebody’s got to climb up there. We had to use machetes and axes to make poles out of tree branches. We shaved them to get rid of all the limbs. Then someone climbed up the tree to a certain point. We’d pass a pole up with a machete tied to it. Then someone would climb up further above them and cut the jackfruit. It was a lot of effort. It was a group effort for the entire clan. Some people carried the water, and other people carried the tools. And it was just as hard getting them back down the hills. Jackfruit trees have the largest fruit in the world. Each can weigh up to 90 pounds. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, traditional healers use the bark, roots, leaves, fruit, and seeds of the jackfruit. All parts of the tree can treat many different health problems.
If you had lived in India a hundred years ago and had a breathing problem, you wouldn’t have needed an inhaler or the asthma medications you see on TV. All you would have needed was jackfruit tea, made from the root or the dried jackfruit leaves. This simple tea will relieve wheezing or shortness of breath from asthma as well as any drug. In fact, when I was in Bali, my friend Lelir, a fifth-generation herbalist, told me she used jackfruit tea to help people with their breathing, too. To eat ripe jackfruit, here’s what you need to know: 1) You can get jackfruit from the Tropical Fruit Growers South Florida (tropicalfruitgrowers.com). They are an association of farmers who specialize in tropical fruits. Locals can buy it direct or you can have it shipped. 2) Here’s how to open up a jackfruit:
3) You can make quite a few delicious treats with jackfruit. I have a big jackfruit tree in my backyard. I got it in India 18 years ago and it produces more jackfruit each year. On weekends I sometimes make jackfruit juice and jam. And ice cream. You can put ripe chunks of jackfruit in a salad. Cook it in coconut milk with curry for an Indian-style treat. To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD 1. Jagtap U, Panaskar S, Bapat V. “Evaluation of antioxidant capacity and phenol content in jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam.) fruit pulp.” Plant Foods Hum Nutr. 2010 June; 65(2):99-104. 2. Mamun S, Shaheen N, Basak T, Mohiduzzaman M, Banu C, Takano-Ishikawa, Y. “Hydrophilic antioxidant capacities and total phenol content of seasonal fruits of Bangladesh.” Malays J Nutr. 2012 Dec; 18(3):355-62. |
