A Brief but Amazing History of Breadfruit
On the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, in 1996, members of the Joseph family cook breadfruit over hot rocks in a traditional stone “oven,” surrounded by their backyard breadfruit agroforest. The rectangular baskets in the foreground, used to carry the fruit to the fire, are made of coconut stems (the stiff, woody part) and woven coconut leaves. Photo by Diane Ragone
What Is Breadfruit?
Although breadfruit is technically a fruit, it’s most often eaten as a starch, like potatoes or rice. Breadfruit grows throughout the tropics, including Hawaii, Samoa and the Caribbean. Hundreds of varieties exist. The best-known types are about the size of melons, with spiky or pebbly skins that range from brownish to greenish yellow. When baked or roasted, breadfruit gives off the wonderful aroma of warm, freshly baked bread—hence the name.
What Does Breadfruit Taste Like?
Breadfruit can be eaten at any stage of ripeness, but most people go for the mature but still firm breadfruit, which tastes like a potato. When small and green, it’s similar to an artichoke, and when fully ripe, it’s like sweet, soft bread. Also, breadfruit can be dehydrated and milled into a versatile, gluten-free flour.
Fresh breadfruit is extremely versatile in the kitchen. Depending on its ripeness level, it can be baked, steamed, coal-roasted, boiled, pickled, candied, added to soups, stews, curries and salads, mashed into pancakes or used for pies and cakes—and it makes killer French fries.
What Are the Benefits of Eating Breadfruit?
Like rice and potatoes, breadfruit is gluten-free, expanding the options for people who don’t eat gluten. Also, breadfruit’s creamy white or yellow flesh is packed with complex carbs, including fiber, which means it causes less of a spike in blood sugar levels compared with white rice, white potatoes or white bread.
The Origins of Breadfruit
One of the most productive food crops on earth, breadfruit originated in the South Pacific, in the region spanning modern-day Malaysia, Indonesia and New Guinea. Sometime before 3,000 B.C., ocean explorers from that area and what’s now Taiwan set out across the Pacific to settle new lands, and breadfruit saplings went with them.
Over millennia, as their navigating skills increased, these explorers reached thousands of islands over roughly 20 million square miles—a third of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing Micronesia, Melanesia, and the vast triangle of Polynesia, defined by Hawai’i, New Zealand and Easter Island at the outermost points.
Woodcut of a breadfruit harvest. Illustration by Dietrich Varez
Breadfruit played a major role in the success of this remarkable migration, furnishing food and a lot more. The light, strong wood was used to build houses and the canoes that carried the navigators on their historic voyages of discovery (and, later, for surfboards). The tree’s sticky white latex was used as a waterproof caulk for the canoes, for glue, to catch birds (the feathers were made into capes and the birds often released), and as chewing gum. The inner bark was beaten into a soft, flexible cloth, and the leaves used to cure infections. Breadfruit flowers, when burned, naturally repelled insects. In traditional Pacific Island communities, these uses for breadfruit continue to this day.
All this comes along with the astounding yield of the tree: Up to 800 pounds of nutritious fruit per tree every year, for 50 years or more. Compared to rice, corn and wheat, breadfruit trees efficiently produces much more food on the same footprint of land. Also, cup for cup, breadfruit has significantly more calories than rice, potatoes or corn, making the fruit an ideal crop for regions where hunger is severe.
Breadfruit in Hawaiian Religion
Breadfruit’s abiding presence in Polynesian culture includes religion, too. In Hawai’i, where breadfruit is known as ulu, there’s a beautiful parable about the breadfruit tree. In one version of the story, the Hawaiian god Kū turns himself into a breadfruit tree to keep his family and village from starving. When a few greedy men run off with all the fruit, the tree withdraws into the ground—because its gifts are meant to be shared, not exploited. The men repent and return the fruit, and the tree grows back for the benefit of all.
“The Mutineers turning Lt Bligh and part of the Officers and Crew adrift from His Majesty's Ship the Bounty, 29th April 1789,” National Maritime Museum collection, London. Painting by Robert Dodd/Alamy
From the Pacific to the Caribbean
By the 1700s, traveling Europeans had encountered breadfruit, and were astonished by its productivity. Sir Joseph Banks, a naturalist traveling with Capt. James Cook to Tahiti in 1768, famously said of breadfruit, “…if a man should in the course of his life plant ten such trees he would completely fulfill his duty to his own as well as future generations.” Banks convinced King George III of England that breadfruit would be an ideal food for export to the Caribbean, to feed the enslaved people there.
That set in motion the infamous mutiny on the English ship Bounty, subject of at least three Hollywood movies. In 1789, the breadfruit-laden Bounty set off from Tahiti for the West Indies under the command of Captain William Bligh. Mid-ocean, a crew member named Fletcher Christian assumed control of the ship, tossed Captain Bligh onto a small boat with a few other men, and threw the entire boatload of breadfruit saplings overboard. Bligh miraculously survived, and successfully sailed a second boatload of saplings to Jamaica, landing in 1793. At least one original tree is rumored to still be living.
From Jamaica, breadfruit spread throughout the Caribbean and to other tropical areas as well. Formerly enslaved people from Jamaica took breadfruit to Costa Rica in the 1800s as a reliable source of food for their new lives. Today, those naturalized Costa Rican breadfruit are a promising source of new income for farmers.
Workers cutting cane on a Hawaiian sugar plantation, pre-1960. California Historical Society Collection at the University of Southern California Digital Library
The Rise of Modern Agriculture and Western Diets
In the 19th century, plantation-style agriculture of single crops began to take hold throughout the tropics. Huge tracts of sugarcane, bananas, cassava and pineapple started to edge out the traditional “agroforests”—multitiered, intercropped farms—where breadfruit had traditionally been grown.
A century later, processed food rolled in from the West; pizzas and burgers, canned chili and packaged mixes replaced fresh foods grown in the backyard, like breadfruit. In Oceania, obesity and heart disease soared. Meanwhile, hurricanes increased in number and strength, driven by climate change. Breadfruit trees had been a line of defense, not only against malnutrition but also storms, since they held soil in place. Fewer trees left both land and people more vulnerable.
Noel Dickinson in the Breadfruit Institute’s Regenerative Organic Breadfruit Agroforest, harvesting holy basil (tulsi), a medicinal herb that’s also an excellent groundcover. Dickinson manages every aspect of this garden, and applies the regenerative organic techniques learned on the job to her family’s 10 acres of neem trees. Photo by Diane Ragone
The Breadfruit Revival
In the past few decades, pioneering individuals and organizations around the world have understood the promise of breadfruit to address modern problems. Springing into action, the Breadfruit Institute in Hawai’i and its director, Dr. Diane Ragone; agroforestry expert Craig Elevitch; Dr. Susan Murch and her breadfruit-propagation team at the University of British Columbia at Okanagan; the University of Hawaii’s Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative, directed by Dr. Failatusi Avegalio; and many others have collaborated to restore breadfruit as an important crop for people and planet.
At Patagonia Provisions, we’re honored to join them. We fund the Regenerative Organic Breadfruit Agroforest at the Breadfruit Institute on Kaua’i as well as the Institute’s comprehensive Agroforestry Guide, which helps new farmers learn how to incorporate breadfruit with other plantings. And we’re helping create a market for breadfruit by using breadfruit flour.
Jungle Foods
Based in Costa Rica, Jungle Foods buys fresh breadfruit from small farms and oversees the processing of breadfruit into flour.
A Polynesian Perspective
“Engage with humility, embrace with respect, sustain with aloha.”