{"id":74831,"date":"2014-08-01T14:30:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T18:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74831"},"modified":"2014-08-01T16:45:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T20:45:28","slug":"fruit-mutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/fruit-mutiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Fruit Mutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whither the breadfruit?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Breadfruit_by_Marguerite_Girvin_Gillin,_c._1884,_Bishop_Museum\"<\/a>

Marguerite Girvin Gillin, Breadfruit<\/i>, ca. 1884<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s such a thing as the Breadfruit Institute<\/a>, and there should be. Researchers consider the species a \u201cNUS\u201d\u2014\u201cneglected and underutilized species.\u201d But Ian Cole, the Breadfruit Institute\u2019s collection manager, thinks that\u2019s insane. He told me, \u201cIf you had a breadfruit tree in your yard, you would have food all year round!\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a breadfruit tree in my yard, though, and neither do you, if you live in the lower forty-eight. Cole wants that to change. He wants the world to eat breadfruit.<\/p>\n

He may well get his wish. Breadfruit, a starchy fruit that looks like a green pimpled softball, is enjoying a bout of sudden popularity. It\u2019s gluten free, dense with protein, and rich in vitamin B and fiber. It has the mild, earthy flavor of a tuber. And it looks pretty neat: what appears to be a singular globe of fruit is in fact thousands of tiny fruits fused together like a mosaic. The media is in thrall. The\u00a0Daily Mail<\/em>\u00a0calls breadfruit \u201ca wonder food<\/a>\u201d; the\u00a0Huffington Post\u00a0<\/em>calls it \u201ca wonder food<\/a>\u201d; and the\u00a0New Scientist\u00a0<\/em>calls it \u201ca wonder food<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0The New Zealand Herald<\/em>\u00a0asked in a recent news headline, \u201cIs this the new wonder food<\/a>?\u201d Yes. Yes, it is. <\/p>\n

Since a single tree yields 450 pounds of fruit a year, some say breadfruit can feed the world; others see fermented breadfruit flour as a gluten-free alternative to ordinary flour. Medical researchers are intrigued by \u201cits potential chemopreventive abilities,\u201d which is to say that breadfruit reduces inflammation in mice. The breadfruit tree produces a sticky substance that can be used as caulk or glue. Its wood is relatively immune to termites. Burning breadfruit leaves creates an ideal mosquito repellant.<\/p>\n

The USDA has no data on breadfruit. There\u2019s no need for it. But in Hana, Maui, where Cole tends 120 varieties of breadfruit trees from thirty-one Pacific islands, genetic diversity is carefully documented and nurtured on centuries-old verdant groves. Cole, along with several other local breadfruit farmers, sells fruit to nearby restaurants and hotels, and to a pie company. Two of his more interesting trading partners are his mechanic, who fixes Cole\u2019s tractors in exchange for breadfruit, and a local \u201cartisan pig farmer\u201d who feeds blemished breadfruit to his swine. (\u201cI need to get him a tree,\u201d Cole reminded himself as we talked.)<\/p>\n

But the ambition here goes well beyond neighborly exchange.\u00a0Cole envisions breadfruit becoming a more sustainable version of corn, soy, wheat, or rice. By his account, breadfruit is an eco-friendly feedstock\u2014fuel for the industrial food system, where it could help with reforestation, feeding animals and humans alike without losing its character to genetic modification or trashing the planet.\u00a0Considering the prospect of this transition, Cole said, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty awesome, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ARS_breadfruit49\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The breadfruit went global during that extended bio-prospecting carnival known as colonization, when imperial regimes, unburdened by the fear of \u201cinvasive species\u201d\u2014or much of anything, for that matter\u2014realized that what God had sown on alien soil was more valuable than what was cached beneath it.<\/p>\n

Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks, the preeminent English naturalist, initiated the breadfruit\u2019s jagged path across the globe. It\u2019s native to South Pacific islands ranging from Papua New Guinea to Western Micronesia; Banks first encountered it in Tahiti in 1769, where it must have been hard to miss. Tahitians had devised an idiosyncratic preservation technique: they loaded the breadfruit in woven bags, soaked them in the ocean, and stomped on them for hours in the crashing surf. Chiefs wore elaborate robes woven from breadfruit fiber\u2014they called the cloth \u201ctapa.\u201d Islanders peeled breadfruit with seashells and wrapped them in banana leaves.<\/p>\n

Upon his return to London, Banks raved about breadfruit to King George III, who was otherwise occupied with keeping his North American colonies in the fold of empire. It wasn\u2019t until Banks promoted the breadfruit as an ideal source of cheap starch for English-owned slaves on West Indian sugar plantations that the King pricked up his ears, snapped his fingers, and summoned an explorer.<\/p>\n

\"Two_Tahitian_men_preparing_breadfruits,_c._1902\"<\/a>

Two Tahitian men preparing breadfruits in the early twentieth century.<\/p><\/div>\n

The gig went to Captain William Bligh\u2014a.k.a. Breadfruit Bligh, who in 1787 sailed the H.M.S. Bounty <\/em>to Tahiti, where he and his crew sowed and harvested and stowed 1015 breadfruit saplings to ship to the West Indies. A few days into the journey, a mutiny\u2014the famous Mutiny on the Bounty<\/em><\/a>\u2014occurred. The mutineers had taken up with Tahitian women and wanted to go back, go native, and start a utopian community, all of which they did. Bligh may also have treated them like total shit. He was set adrift on the\u00a0Bounty<\/em>‘s longboat with eighteen other men. (Later, he bitterly recalled how the mutineers \u201claughed at the helpless situation of the boat.\u201d) Lacking a compass, and quite pissed, he and his crew of outcasts raged across the ocean, covering five thousand\u00a0kilometers in forty-one days to disembark on the Dutch island of Timor, where they were rescued.<\/p>\n

Two years later, undeterred, Bligh bivouacked to Tahiti, secured two thousand\u00a0fresh saplings, and carried them without incident to Jamaica and St. Vincent.\u00a0The fruit prospered, due in large part to native bats, whose rank poop spread breadfruit seed better than the gentle Caribbean breeze ever could. By 1797, the head of the St. Vincent Botanic Garden could write that \u201cthe breadfruit thrives (if possible) better than in its native soil.\u201d The slaves, for their part, wanted nothing to do with any this botanical chest-thumping. They wouldn\u2019t touch the stuff.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

In time, others did. Today, breadfruit is culinary clay in the hands of a diaspora of chefs. Hawaiians call it ulu<\/em>, Nigerians call it ukwa<\/em>, Mexicans call it fruta de pan<\/em>, and Papua New Guineans call it kapiak<\/em>. Indians make breadfruit curry and breadfruit chips. Rastafarians make a \u201crundung\u201d stew with breadfruit.\u00a0Mexicans refry breadfruit the way they refry beans. In Trinidad, they make a breadfruit pumpkin soup. In Tobago, they love breadfruit pie. The Ministry of Agriculture in Kingston, Jamaica, has published recipes for breadfruit smoothies and deep-fried breadfruit croquettes on its website. The croquettes look particularly delicious.<\/p>\n

Still, Americans have always kept their distance from the crop. Melville, for his part, liked how the tree looked. In\u00a0Typee<\/em>, he called it \u201ca grand and towering object\u201d comparable in stature to New England\u2019s \u201cpatriarchal elm.\u201d Its leaves were \u201ccut and scalloped as fantastically as those of a lady\u2019s lace collar.\u201d<\/p>\n

But its taste is a different thing. In 1913 all\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor\u00a0<\/em>could offer was that the breadfruit was \u201cpalatable.\u201d Over the century, public opinion downgraded the fruit from \u201cpalatable\u201d to, as the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0recently put it, \u201call but inedible<\/a>.\u201d Epicurious, a popular cooking website, has recipes for \u201cfruit bread\u201d but not breadfruit. When a D.C.-based Smithsonian\u00a0<\/em>reporter was assigned to write about cooking with breadfruit, she came up empty. \u201cYou want fruit or bread?\u201d the owner of an ethnic foods store asked her. If you consult WikiAnswers (and, really, don\u2019t) about where to buy breadfruit, it says, \u201cNot sure if they sell it in the U.S.\u201d When I called my Whole Foods store in Austin to ask where I might find some breadfruit, the first word out of the produce guy\u2019s mouth was \u201cwhoa<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n

For a country that\u2019s willing to eat just about anything anyone shoves down its national gullet, this is a curiously elusive relationship to have with a high-yielding fruit whose taste, palatable or not, is about as threatening as baby food. It\u2019s hard to say why Americans shun breadfruit. Cole mentions that it \u201cdoes not have a great shelf life.\u201d Producers of animal feed\u2014those who determine much of what\u2019s grown and eaten in the United States (and elsewhere)\u2014may be too addicted to the higher crude protein contents of corn and soy to explore the environmental benefits of breadfruit feed. And the breadfruit may also lack the potential to yield a ubiquitous byproduct\u2014such as high-fructose corn syrup\u2014to justify its mass production.<\/p>\n

\"Young_man_carrying_fruit_of_a_breadfruit_tree,_Fiji,_ca.1900-1930\"<\/a>

Fiji, ca. 1900-1930<\/p><\/div>\n

But my hunch is that the American objection is primarily aesthetic. A picked breadfruit looks like a Nerf ball with a stick in it. When you bite into the flesh, there\u2019s no juice. The fruit\u2019s exterior resembles really bad acne. Neither Georgia O\u2019Keefe nor any of the Dutch masters ever eroticized the breadfruit. The American palate is remarkably tolerant, but it has its standards: our food has to pack a flavorful punch, or evoke grandma\u2019s kitchen, or at least display a modicum of healthful sex appeal. Breadfruit does none of the above.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s for the best, though. Consider the more common fruits and vegetables broadcast across the earth after European colonization. More often than not, their biodiversity has been hijacked by conventional agriculture, locked in a genetic straitjacket, and defended with poisons ranging from arsenic to DDT. Corn, bananas, wheat: to mass commercialize a crop is to create an army of cloned plants marching in lockstep against microscopic forces ready to level them in one fell swoop. Maybe it\u2019s time for the Breadfruit Institute to stage its own mutiny and keep the breadfruit safe at home, secure in ancient tropical groves, feeding pigs and filling pies. We here on the mainland won\u2019t miss a thing.<\/p>\n

James McWilliams is a writer living in Austin, Texas. He teaches at Texas State University and is the author of <\/em>Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong And How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whither the breadfruit? There\u2019s such a thing as the Breadfruit Institute, and there should be. Researchers consider the species a \u201cNUS\u201d\u2014\u201cneglected and underutilized species.\u201d But Ian Cole, the Breadfruit Institute\u2019s collection manager, thinks that\u2019s insane. He told me, \u201cIf you had a breadfruit tree in your yard, you would have food all year round!\u201d I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5027],"tags":[14831,14828,7760,14829,2861,14830,14833,14832],"class_list":["post-74831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-food","tag-american-eating-habits","tag-breadfruit","tag-colonialism","tag-fruits","tag-history","tag-pacific-islands","tag-the-breadfruit-institute","tag-wonder-foods"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhither the Breadfruit?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"James McWilliams on the history of breadfruit and why the \u201cwonder food\u201d is shunned by Americans.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/01\/fruit-mutiny\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fruit Mutiny by James McWilliams\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 1, 2014 \u2013 Whither the breadfruit? 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