Speaker 1: So you want to go up this road here and
Speaker 1: get to the roundabout. You take a left and then
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 2: Past the Murphy's house.
Speaker 1: You know the Murphy's their young lad Sean. I think
Speaker 1: it's over in London now, oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand
Speaker 1: for frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support
Speaker 1: van drivers in Ireland with up to seventy five percent
Speaker 1: off new van policies.
Speaker 2: FBD Insurance Support. It's what we do.
Speaker 1: Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier
Speaker 1: will start to chase you and once he gives up,
Speaker 1: you should be there. Seventy five percent off based on
Speaker 1: five years no claims discount, Terms and conditions apply. Underwritten
Speaker 1: by FBD Insurance Plc FBD Insurance Group Limited training as
Speaker 1: FBD Insurance is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 3: Get value you can't argue with at Tesco with their
Speaker 3: amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our
Speaker 3: finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides
Speaker 3: and dessert for only sixteen EU row like Succulent Board
Speaker 3: be approved. Virus Angus striployin stakes with pepper Corn butter
Speaker 3: or Delicious Virus chicken parmesana, served with creamy potato gratam
Speaker 3: and our mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoyed goosillionaire
Speaker 3: or sold a caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop
Speaker 3: in store or online tasco. Every little helps, I've been
Speaker 3: able to most doors prices very inn express.
Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's that friend who looks so good in hats.
Speaker 4: They never don't wear a hat. Ali Ward, let's take
Speaker 4: a field trip. Coincidentally, not coincidentally at all. This is
Speaker 4: Indigenous History Month here in the United States of Colonized America.
Speaker 4: So we're heading to the Pacific to chat about foods
Speaker 4: of native populations in this movement to study and cultivate
Speaker 4: and reintroduce them. Last summer, I had this rare opportunity
Speaker 4: while doing a symposium for USC's Storytellers program. I was
Speaker 4: teaching climate scientists about psychom and I got to meet
Speaker 4: some really lovely and super brilliant folks, and one of
Speaker 4: them told me that he was working in breadfruit and
Speaker 4: knowing jack about it. Of course I had to corner
Speaker 4: him on a boat dock on Catalina Island to start
Speaker 4: asking him one million questions. One of these you may
Speaker 4: have like me, is what is a breadfruit? Is it
Speaker 4: a baked good? Is it a sweet juicy thing on
Speaker 4: a vine?
Speaker 2: Is it a carb?
Speaker 4: Is it meat? What's happening here? And we'll dig in.
Speaker 4: But first a quick primer is that the islands of
Speaker 4: Hawaii are right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 4: It's like two thousand miles in either direction from Polynesia
Speaker 4: or North America. So about a thousand years ago, folks
Speaker 4: from Polynesia cruised over on these big, double hulled canoes
Speaker 4: guided by stars. They got to Hawaii. They were like,
Speaker 4: these volcano maite islands are great.
Speaker 5: Let's live here.
Speaker 4: Let's bring our pigs, chickens, dogs, and foods like coconut
Speaker 4: and sugar cane and bananas and taro root and breadfruit.
Speaker 4: So many centuries later European explorers will call them landed.
Speaker 4: Then thought the islands were sweet and they were pretty.
Speaker 4: They liked the food. So the roasted breadfruit smelled like
Speaker 4: bread to these colonizers who called it breadfruit, although native
Speaker 4: Hawaiians have plenty of other names for it, which we'll
Speaker 4: hear about in a bit. But a botanist on Captain
Speaker 4: Cook's ship took some notes in praise of this food source.
Speaker 4: He wrote, their chiefest sustenance, breadfruit is procured with no
Speaker 4: more trouble than that of climbing a tree and pulling
Speaker 4: it down. If a man should, in the course of
Speaker 4: his lifetime, plant ten such trees, which might take the
Speaker 4: labor of an hour, he would as completely fulfill his
Speaker 4: duty to his own as well as future generations that
Speaker 4: we Europeans can do by toiling in the cold of
Speaker 4: winter to sow and in the heat of summer to
Speaker 4: reap the annual produce.
Speaker 5: Of our soil.
Speaker 4: They were like, Wow, what are we doing working so
Speaker 4: hard for wheat when breadfruit is good and easy to
Speaker 4: grow and harvest. Anyway, back to this dock outside of
Speaker 4: La California at the USC Wrigley Institute for Environment and
Speaker 4: Sustainabilities Storymaker Symposium of all these climate scientists, so this
Speaker 4: wonderful breadfruit expert studied environmental engineering at Yale and did
Speaker 4: doctoral research at Stanford University in biogeochemistry and social ecology.
Speaker 4: He's now a professor are of Indigenous Crops and Cropping
Speaker 4: Systems at the University of Hawaii at Manoah. And he said,
Speaker 4: if I were ever in Hawaii, he'd be happy to
Speaker 4: have me visit for a tour of his breadfruit farm.
Speaker 4: And so months later, already headed to Hawaii for some
Speaker 4: interviews and a visit family, I stopped by. I met
Speaker 4: some breadfruit and some dogs and some other researchers in
Speaker 4: this world. And now we have this scrumptious field trip
Speaker 4: on which take you.
Speaker 5: So all aboard.
Speaker 4: Let's go breadfruit growing with ethnobotanist, indigenous ecobiologist, doctor Noah
Speaker 4: Kekueva Lincoln and research assistant and soil scientists who's working
Speaker 4: on her PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa,
Speaker 4: Dali Altafuna for this field trip a Hawaiian breadfruit Revolusian.
Speaker 4: So to set the scene, I've been on Catalian Island
Speaker 4: outside of la for several days with about a half
Speaker 4: a dozen climate scientists and science communicators like Liz Neelee
Speaker 4: and Ed Yan. And for days we've all been sharing
Speaker 4: meals and telling campfire tales over glasses of wine, listening
Speaker 4: to stories of each other's lives and just become in pals.
Speaker 4: So it's near the end of the trip and now
Speaker 4: Noah and I are walking down a hill from the
Speaker 4: usc Ridley Institute to the rocky shoreline where a boat
Speaker 4: is docked, bobbing as it waits to take these climate
Speaker 4: scientists to a final dinner together.
Speaker 5: You have a minute when we walk, Yeah, we'll talk.
Speaker 5: We'll walk and talk.
Speaker 6: Noah Lincoln He him.
Speaker 4: And what's the genus and species of the breadfruit that
Speaker 4: you study the.
Speaker 6: Most, Well, they're all the same species. They are Artocarpus altilis.
Speaker 5: Okay, are you an artocarparologist?
Speaker 4: Have you looked up to see if that's an ology
Speaker 4: you knew I was going to be here?
Speaker 5: Did you look up earlier?
Speaker 6: I did not. I tend the lump at all under
Speaker 6: our broader work of ethnobotany or ethno biology. I guess
Speaker 6: we want to ology.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, how dare you with the
Speaker 5: you might have looked? Come back with an X. I
Speaker 5: can't do.
Speaker 4: Anything with that oranism and a quick primer. Breadfruit is
Speaker 4: in the fig family, and it's closely related to jackfruit,
Speaker 4: and there are three related species and the genus aartocarpus,
Speaker 4: which means in Greek breadfruit literally, so most of the
Speaker 4: cultivated breadfruits descend from the species known as bread nut
Speaker 4: which is native to the Papa ne Guinea area. And
Speaker 4: in general, breadfruit is bigger than you might picture it,
Speaker 4: like some way as much as a watermelon, and they
Speaker 4: look like huge green dragon eggs, though there are varieties
Speaker 4: can be.
Speaker 5: As tiny as an apple.
Speaker 4: Some of them also like blackberries, breadfruit are a compound fruit.
Speaker 4: So each big old breadfruit is actually up to two
Speaker 4: thousand flowers fused into one megafruit, which is why it
Speaker 4: looks spiky or scaled lizard or I suppose dragon skin. Okay, breadfruit,
Speaker 4: What was the first time you ever ate it? Because
Speaker 4: you're born on Hawaii, Yes, so.
Speaker 6: I mean we had it as kids, you know, but
Speaker 6: pretty sparsely, and probably been working on breadfruit for about
Speaker 6: ten years now. And I would say one of the
Speaker 6: things that was an epiphany to me was how challenging
Speaker 6: it is right to change our personal habits, and particularly
Speaker 6: around the way we eat and so, you know, especially
Speaker 6: with our staple foods. There are comfort foods, right. We
Speaker 6: grew up on rice and transitioning to you know, particularly
Speaker 6: our indigenous starches, of which breadfruits won. It was a
Speaker 6: very challenging and deliberate switch that took a lot of years.
Speaker 4: And staple foods are the ones that we tend to
Speaker 4: eat every day, and different cultures tend to lean toward
Speaker 4: their own staple foods. I think like wheat and rice
Speaker 4: and corn and millet and yam, potatoes, sweet potatoes. And
Speaker 4: according to the book Thinking Like an Island Navigating a
Speaker 4: Sustainable Future in Hawaii, before the western colonization of Hawaii
Speaker 4: by whalers and missionaries, the hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 4: on the Hawaiian Islands were self sufficient for food. But
Speaker 4: now eighty five percent of food is imported. So breadfruit
Speaker 4: has held this important place in terms of staple foods,
Speaker 4: and Noah and his colleagues are bringing it back. And
Speaker 4: so the first time you tried it, do you remember
Speaker 4: was it mixed in with something else you had?
Speaker 5: Was it fresh off a tree? Can you eat it
Speaker 5: right off a tree? Or must it be cooked?
Speaker 6: You can?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 6: Breadfruit is a fruit. It ripens, it goes through stages,
Speaker 6: so unlike most of our staple foods, like you know,
Speaker 6: rice or potatoes. But it's diverse it, you know, and
Speaker 6: its youngest stage me about the size of a baseball.
Speaker 6: It's it's a lot like a vegetable Okay, you can
Speaker 6: pickle it. People make things that taste like artichoke carts basically,
Speaker 6: oh yeah, and then you know, it matures and that's
Speaker 6: it's you know, basically at that point, a big potato
Speaker 6: on a tree. So that's when most people eat it.
Speaker 6: That's the stage I first had it. And it doesn't
Speaker 6: stick in your mind per se, Like nobody grabs a
Speaker 6: potato and tears into it and goes yum.
Speaker 5: You know know, are you sure about that?
Speaker 6: You slather up sour cream and bacon and butter, and
Speaker 6: then it's you know, takes on the flavor of what
Speaker 6: you're doing. But you know, it's a staple.
Speaker 5: It's a starch.
Speaker 6: And in some cases is a little bland, but if
Speaker 6: you know what to do with it, it can be delicious.
Speaker 4: We kept ambling toward the dock where other scientists from
Speaker 4: the symposium had started to gather to board the boat
Speaker 4: to dinner.
Speaker 5: Does it take a out for.
Speaker 4: The tree to mature in order to bear fruit or
Speaker 4: does it make fruit.
Speaker 5: Even when it's young?
Speaker 6: And this is a lot of the work we're doing,
Speaker 6: kind of these basic agronomy questions. And so, for instance,
Speaker 6: we have a trial in Hawaii spread out across the
Speaker 6: state in different habitats. You know, a sea spray habitat,
Speaker 6: a high wind habitat, a high elevation, cold temperature habitat.
Speaker 6: And we've seen fruit as young as eighteen months, and
Speaker 6: we've seen trees take up to seven years to start producing.
Speaker 6: So it depends on your site, your environment, your variety
Speaker 6: you're growing all those things.
Speaker 4: And for more on this you can see no As
Speaker 4: co authored twenty twenty paper Cultivation Potential Projections of breadfruit
Speaker 4: under climate change scenarios using an empirically validated suitability model
Speaker 4: calibrated in Hawaii, which warns that if we want to
Speaker 4: figure out how to grow food that can withstand future
Speaker 4: climate change, we've got to figure it out now to
Speaker 4: get ahead of it. And in perhaps the only good
Speaker 4: news about climate change, this study concluded that there is
Speaker 4: substantial and increasing potential for future bread fruit production in Hawaii.
Speaker 4: As the climate heats up. The trees like the warmth.
Speaker 5: And grows best in the tropics or closer to the equator.
Speaker 6: It is definitely a tropical tree, so even in Hawaii,
Speaker 6: you know, we're technically subtropics. Everyone thinks of us as tropical,
Speaker 6: but compared to places like Tahiti and Bali, Like, we're
Speaker 6: actually kind of cold.
Speaker 5: Oh wow.
Speaker 6: So when you move up the mountain in Hawaii, redfruit
Speaker 6: will pretty much only grow below about one thousand feet
Speaker 6: and above that it starts getting too cold.
Speaker 5: Oh, you wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Even have thought of that, because the volcanoes are so tall,
Speaker 4: like they are.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, Monica's technically the tallest mountain on Earth
Speaker 6: if you measure it from the seafloor, fourteen thousand feet
Speaker 6: above sea level. So yeah, you'll sit in the beach
Speaker 6: eighty five degrees signing, drinking a mytie and there's snow
Speaker 6: on top of the mountain right up there.
Speaker 5: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: And our very first episode of ologies with volcanology in
Speaker 4: case you need a primer on that, but with beaches
Speaker 4: all the way up to these huge volcanic mountains. Essentially,
Speaker 4: Hawaii has a broad range of soil types and elevations
Speaker 4: and thus ecosystems, And there's a classification called old Ridge
Speaker 4: life zones, and out of the thirty eight types of
Speaker 4: zone on the planet, Hawaii has twenty seven of them.
Speaker 4: And though redfruit isn't native to the islands themselves, again,
Speaker 4: it originated in and it was brought to Hawaii by
Speaker 4: early Polynesian settlers nearly a thousand years ago. Breadfruit grows
Speaker 4: well in many parts of the islands, and there's a
Speaker 4: seedless variety. Those are the ones that are commonly eaten.
Speaker 4: They have to be propagated by grafting a lot like apples,
Speaker 4: which we have a whole pomology episode about that. Oh
Speaker 4: and remember the Captain Cook expedition that I talked about
Speaker 4: in the intro. Well, once the European colonizers found out
Speaker 4: how great breadfruit was, they wanted to take it to
Speaker 4: the tropics to use it as a staple food for
Speaker 4: enslaved populations. And one absolutely bonker story, I'll sum it
Speaker 4: up quick. It involves that botanist that I mentioned in
Speaker 4: the intro traveling on a ship for a breadfruit tree
Speaker 4: gathering mission. And in order to fit this breadfruit tree
Speaker 4: nursery in the ship, he had to cramp the ship's
Speaker 4: crew and super close quarters, which they hated. A bunch
Speaker 4: of the crew got blackout drunk, I guess, spreading a
Speaker 4: bunch of pretty sexy diseases between them. The angry captain
Speaker 4: would flog his underlings. There was a coconut heist from
Speaker 4: the captain's personal stash, and then what has been called
Speaker 4: the most notorious mutiny in naval history, the Mutiny on
Speaker 4: the Bounty, which resulted in a lot of destroyed breadfruit trees,
Speaker 4: and then the ousted captain's new ship run aground on
Speaker 4: the Great Barrier Reef. Some of the mutineers also started
Speaker 4: a new colony on an island, so breadfruit In a moment,
Speaker 4: we're going to talk about a new type of revolution,
Speaker 4: this time in the hands of Native Hawaiians and ethnobotany
Speaker 4: enthusiasts like Noah.
Speaker 6: My academic trainings has been in ecology and soil science.
Speaker 6: But you know, as a child, I was very strongly
Speaker 6: engaged in our traditional plants, our crops. It's taught how
Speaker 6: to make herbal medicines, use our traditional foods, and essentially
Speaker 6: that is what people go off to school for to
Speaker 6: learn to become an hethnobotanists. Yeah, and so you know,
Speaker 6: I had very informal training in ethnobotany and to come
Speaker 6: full circle in my life back around and really re
Speaker 6: engaged with a lot of these crops that I was
Speaker 6: exposed to as a kid. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now, were your parents also born in Hawaii or did
Speaker 4: they move there at a certain point.
Speaker 5: How did your feeling end up there?
Speaker 6: Well, my father's side is ancestrally Hawaiian, so you know,
Speaker 6: we can trace our lineage back sixteen generations, probably further,
Speaker 6: but that's where you know, it kind of fizzles in
Speaker 6: terms of tracking things down. That whole side of my
Speaker 6: family is in Hawaii. Were based in Hawaii, and yeah,
Speaker 6: it's home.
Speaker 4: And when you first started trying to promote more agriculture
Speaker 4: around breadfruit, it wasn't as easy as sell as you
Speaker 4: thought it was going to be. Did you think people
Speaker 4: were going to say? Yes, absolutely time that breadfruit got
Speaker 4: its due in theissan? But what was difficult about convincing
Speaker 4: communities that this was something worth investing in.
Speaker 6: I would say I absolutely did not expect people to
Speaker 6: jump on it. I mean, we were passionate about bread
Speaker 6: fruit because we knew about it, and that's one of
Speaker 6: the big barriers. People don't know about it.
Speaker 5: Did you know about it?
Speaker 6: Now you know about it, and to get people excited
Speaker 6: about it, you know, to get them to engage in it,
Speaker 6: to use it, to bring it back into the food system.
Speaker 6: We knew was going to be a big educational push.
Speaker 6: And that's kind of what we've been hanging our coat on. Right.
Speaker 6: If we can just teach people, expose people all these
Speaker 6: wonderful things about the food, like a course, they're going
Speaker 6: to have it. But you know, if you just put
Speaker 6: it in the shelf, people walk into a store, they
Speaker 6: got no idea what it is. You know, that's scary.
Speaker 6: I don't want to grab a new food. I don't
Speaker 6: know how to cook or use or anything.
Speaker 5: Is it going to sit in the crisper until it's rotting?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I met seven bucks on that.
Speaker 5: Why did I do that?
Speaker 4: Seven bucks an exaggeration. We did some fact checking and
Speaker 4: the actual going rate for a whole breadfruit it depends
Speaker 4: on where you live, but in some places it's less
Speaker 4: than two bucks a pound, with the average breadfruit weighing
Speaker 4: two and a half pounds just over a kilo, So
Speaker 4: what that's like five seven bucks? But a twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: study Interactions between people and Breadfruit in Hawaii Consumption, Preparation
Speaker 4: and Sourcing Patterns in the journal Sustainability found that most
Speaker 4: Hawaiians ate breadfruit three times a year or less, and
Speaker 4: over seventy percent of those people got it from a
Speaker 4: friend's tree, although having your own breadfruit tree meant eating
Speaker 4: it about four times more than the people without the trees.
Speaker 4: So imagine having a tree with three pound potatoes just
Speaker 4: grown in your yard, and it's called Ulai, you said
Speaker 4: in Hawaiian and Hawaiian is Ulu Ulu. Yeah, And so
Speaker 4: when did the idea for a revolution with that in
Speaker 4: the middle revolution? Do you get it? And their logo
Speaker 4: has a fist uprising clutching a branch bearing a big
Speaker 4: old breadfruit. So Noah is very passionate about getting the
Speaker 4: word out and getting breadfruit back onto dinner tables.
Speaker 6: So we got into the broader food system of Ulu
Speaker 6: out of establishing a breadfruit farm. And so we've had
Speaker 6: a lot of time on the farm with groups of
Speaker 6: peace bull and friends, you know, doing hard physical labor
Speaker 6: and oftentimes raining, and but then afterwards you you're often
Speaker 6: sitting around and just kind of kicking ideas. And that's
Speaker 6: when a lot of I think kind of the catchphrases
Speaker 6: have come out, or you know, like how do we
Speaker 6: get how do we share this excitement? Right? We're so
Speaker 6: stoked on this food, and how do we get it out?
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of things that came out of
Speaker 6: those early sessions. We called it a solutionary food, which
Speaker 6: is the revolutionary solution that like our food systems need.
Speaker 6: You know, I do science because I want to see
Speaker 6: the effect of it in our communities. I want to
Speaker 6: see it applied and change to make the world a
Speaker 6: better place. And I think unless you really get it
Speaker 6: outside of our little circles, it's never going to do that.
Speaker 5: I know it.
Speaker 4: Had just become a tenured professor, but he was at
Speaker 4: the Wrigley Storymakers Program to hone skills at communicating his
Speaker 4: science to a broader public and especially to the communities
Speaker 4: affected by food scarcity and whose lives will be impacted
Speaker 4: positively through more sustainable farming. Where can people find out
Speaker 4: more about what you do or about breadfruit? Where do
Speaker 4: you if people are like a bread what where do
Speaker 4: you point them?
Speaker 6: Well, if you want to learn about breadfruit, I would
Speaker 6: definitely suggest going to eat breadfruit dot com. That is
Speaker 6: the what you ulu Producers cooperative. We work collectively with
Speaker 6: them to get a lot of the information and stories
Speaker 6: out there so you can learn about it. You can
Speaker 6: learn how to cook it, you can buy it, you
Speaker 6: can engage with it, you can read stories about the farmers.
Speaker 6: You can see cooking demonstration videos you well, so yeah,
Speaker 6: that's again part of this educational campaign. So yeah, you
Speaker 6: want to learn about breadfruit, eat breadfruit dot.
Speaker 4: Com Again, that's eat breadfruit dot com favorite recipe.
Speaker 6: Oh boy, So for early engagement, I really like twice
Speaker 6: cook patties. Oh so you know you steam them, mash
Speaker 6: it up with some diced onions, lee and parrens, salt, pepper, garlic,
Speaker 6: you know a little bit of oregano, maybe slam those
Speaker 6: out into patties and then pan fry them. That's a
Speaker 6: good one. Sounds like a latka, yes, a little bit
Speaker 6: like a lotca, but less oily.
Speaker 5: Good to know to me.
Speaker 6: Our favorite product we actually have out is a breadfruit
Speaker 6: chocolate mouse. So I told you breadfruit goes through stages.
Speaker 6: So after that mature potato stage, it actually ripens, it sweetens,
Speaker 6: it softens, and you take that ripe, sweet, soft bread
Speaker 6: fruit and we blend it with local honey, coconut milk,
Speaker 6: and local cacal oh, and then we freeze those. So
Speaker 6: it's a moose, but it's vegan, one hundred percent local
Speaker 6: and ninety five percent breadfruit. But you would never know
Speaker 6: that when you stick it in your mouth, it's it's delicious.
Speaker 4: And later finally made it to the Big Island in
Speaker 4: Hawaii and I was able to visit the Ulu co
Speaker 4: op and take home some breadfruit flour and yes, I
Speaker 4: got to try this chocolate breadfruit mouse and it was great.
Speaker 4: It was like a frozen yogurt custard texture and had
Speaker 4: this nutty flavor. I loved it.
Speaker 5: And a complete protein too, it is.
Speaker 6: Yeah, breadfruit has a strong human health opponent to it.
Speaker 6: So yeah, complete protein, all seven amino acids, fairly high
Speaker 6: in vitamins and minerals. There's a lot of emerging research.
Speaker 6: You know, it's a little bit more close to home,
Speaker 6: but particularly for our native Hawaiian Pacific islanders are very
Speaker 6: high at risk for type two diabetes hypertension, and there's
Speaker 6: a lot of research emerging showing that returning to traditional
Speaker 6: staples and starches drastically reduce those kind of diet related diseases.
Speaker 6: And so with breadfruit, that's related to a relatively low
Speaker 6: glycemic index, meaning that when you eat it, you're full
Speaker 6: for a while, you don't burn right through it, want
Speaker 6: to eat again in an hour or so.
Speaker 4: And for more on how your body processes food. You
Speaker 4: can see the wonderful two part Diabetology episodes on blood
Speaker 4: sugar with doctor Mike Natter, who is a self described
Speaker 4: diabetic diabetologist, and in it we go over the glycemic index,
Speaker 4: which essentially rates foods based on their blood sugar and
Speaker 4: insulin impact. And the higher the number on the glycemic index,
Speaker 4: the more potential for some adverse blood sugar effects. And
Speaker 4: plain white bread is up there at ninety out of
Speaker 4: one hundred, white rice is seventy. Boiled potatoes are high
Speaker 4: at seventy, but breadfruit is low to medium at forty
Speaker 4: seven up to seventy, and how it's prepared and what
Speaker 4: it's mixed with also makes a huge difference.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: A twenty fifteen study in the journal Trends in Food
Speaker 4: Science and Technology titled Breadfruit a traditional crop with Potential
Speaker 4: to prevent hunger and mitigate diabetes in Oceania explained that
Speaker 4: around nineteen fifty, studies found that Pacific Islanders were quote
Speaker 4: remarkably physically fit, with no evidence of malnutrition or obesity
Speaker 4: and no incidence of diabetes, But just thirty years later
Speaker 4: in the nineteen eighties, incidents of diabetes and obesity had skyrocketed,
Speaker 4: and that now Pacific island nations have some of the
Speaker 4: highest rates of diabetes worldwide. And obesity, I know, is
Speaker 4: a loaded word, but it's the medical term that researchers
Speaker 4: and doctors use when describing certain body compositions that may
Speaker 4: put people at greater risk for metabolic and cardiovascular disease. Now,
Speaker 4: other recent papers have found that a diabetes prevalence of
Speaker 4: forty percent in adults is common among Pacific countries as
Speaker 4: diets stray away from traditional crops to these imported and
Speaker 4: westernized foods. And even back in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: there was a paper title against the Tide of Change,
Speaker 4: Diet and Health in the Pacific Islands. It was in
Speaker 4: the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, and it warned
Speaker 4: that for many of the small dispersed countries of the Pacific,
Speaker 4: there is a grave concern about international trading and food,
Speaker 4: not only because of the adverse effects on health diabetes,
Speaker 4: but also in terms of food security, because there's an
Speaker 4: increasing level of dependence on these food imports. And that's
Speaker 4: another issue because the staple foods that are westernized that
Speaker 4: are being in tend not to grow well near the equator,
Speaker 4: so breadfruit is kind of on the way to swoop
Speaker 4: in and solve a lot of pressing problems for Pacific islanders. Wow,
Speaker 4: it must be so easy to be passionate about this
Speaker 4: because it's outside, it's food, it's tasty, it's tied to
Speaker 4: your heritage and culture. It like maybe can save massive
Speaker 4: amounts of people from hunger. I mean, it must be
Speaker 4: hard to put your laptop away at night and be like, okay,
Speaker 4: it's time for me to just kick back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you left out working with the farmers, which
Speaker 6: is one of the best parts because every time you
Speaker 6: go visit a farmer, you know, talk to them, share them.
Speaker 6: You leave with like big baskets and fresh mangos and
Speaker 6: light chy and yeah, all sorts of goodies.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for doing this. That'bsolutely amazing.
Speaker 4: So Noah said, if I were every in Hawaii, come
Speaker 4: on down to the farm. And as it happened, months later,
Speaker 4: I was headed there for a few interviews and field
Speaker 4: trips and to see some family. So we got to
Speaker 4: tour a breadfruit farm and taste it and get lost
Speaker 4: in a jungle and even harvest some now and that
Speaker 4: will be after the break. But first let's donate to
Speaker 4: a cause, and this week it's going to the Hawaii
Speaker 4: based Chef Hooey Fund, which connects the culinary world with
Speaker 4: their community through a strong network of local chefs, produce providers,
Speaker 4: and educators to deepen the connection to farmers and ranchers
Speaker 4: and schools and community organizations in an effort to build
Speaker 4: a more robust food system. So a link to them
Speaker 4: is up at Eatbreadfruit dot com and we'll link in
Speaker 4: the show notes. So thank you to sponsors of the
Speaker 4: show for making that possible.
Speaker 1: So you want to go up this road here and
Speaker 1: get it around a bit and you take a left
Speaker 1: and then you go past the Murphy's house, you know,
Speaker 1: to Murphy's there, you old lad Sean. I thank you
Speaker 1: over in London now, oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand for
Speaker 1: frustratingly bad directions. FBD stands for support. We support van
Speaker 1: drivers in Ireland with up to seventy five percent off
Speaker 1: new van policies FBD insurance support.
Speaker 2: It's what we do.
Speaker 1: Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier
Speaker 1: will start to chase yet and once he gives up,
Speaker 1: you should be there. Seventy five percent off based on
Speaker 1: five years. There's no claims discount terms and conditions apply
Speaker 1: underwritten by FBD Insurance PSC. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading
Speaker 1: as FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 2: Get value.
Speaker 3: You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club
Speaker 3: card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal
Speaker 3: deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert
Speaker 3: for only sixteen euro like Succulent Board be approved, Rush
Speaker 3: Angle Striploin steaks with peppercorn butter or Delicious Virus Chicken
Speaker 3: Parmesama served with creamy potato gretam and our mix of
Speaker 3: rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or Soldier Caramel cheesecake.
Speaker 3: Can't argue with that shop in store or online.
Speaker 2: Tesco. Every Little Helps available at most stores. Prices very
Speaker 2: in express, Okay, hop in.
Speaker 4: Let's find this farm which is one of many research
Speaker 4: sites that Noah and his team of scientists are monitoring
Speaker 4: and cultivating to learn where and how to grow and
Speaker 4: distribute more ulu as a staple crop for the islands.
Speaker 7: And it's absolutely beautiful, all of it.
Speaker 5: Kelly, I'm guessing you know how very good service to venaform.
Speaker 7: I don't.
Speaker 4: I can try and see.
Speaker 5: I've got one bar.
Speaker 4: Hey Dolly, Hey doally? Yeah we were lost. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 4: we're in kind of a spotty jungle. We've been through
Speaker 4: over two little bridges and we're now crossing another one
Speaker 4: lane bridge. Okay, so we're head of the re direction. Awesome,
Speaker 4: thank you so much, See you in a sec. Bye,
Speaker 4: We're really close.
Speaker 5: Is that her truck? Yeah? There we go. Yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 5: she waved. Hi Dolly. Oh look this looks like an
Speaker 5: orchard on our left.
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 4: Is she opening egg gate?
Speaker 6: Hi? Dolly?
Speaker 5: So, first off, can can you tell me your first
Speaker 5: and last name?
Speaker 8: Dolly?
Speaker 4: So we're looking at some very huge trees with giant
Speaker 4: leaves and a couple of roosters, which is amazing.
Speaker 5: How many bread fit trees do you have here?
Speaker 8: We have thirty trees. Thirty trees, and there's four varieties
Speaker 8: plus the ancestry, so five total.
Speaker 4: If someone comes in here and is like, I don't
Speaker 4: even know what a breadfruit is, what do you show them.
Speaker 8: The fruit first? So they're matured, and.
Speaker 5: So do they get smoother when they're mature like that?
Speaker 8: Yes, when they're smaller there's a lot spike here. These
Speaker 8: are different varieties. This is the Hawaiian variety, okay, And
Speaker 8: this is the ancestry one. This is the bread nut.
Speaker 8: So this one is like similar to a jackfruit a
Speaker 8: durian And this one is the bread fruit, which is
Speaker 8: it becomes smoother as it matures.
Speaker 4: These are the size of an oblong canalo or a
Speaker 4: large baby's head. And when you say ancestry, does that
Speaker 4: mean it's an older like.
Speaker 8: Old ancestry first kind?
Speaker 5: And then is there an advantage to having different cultivars?
Speaker 4: Like are these easier to grow or harvest or do
Speaker 4: they take like less time to mature?
Speaker 8: While these ones are more woody in terms of their growth,
Speaker 8: they are bigger in size compared to other varieties, they're
Speaker 8: a lot smaller. So these can feed the whole family.
Speaker 8: And there are different in flesh to the smaller one,
Speaker 8: which is our mafalla is a yellow flesh, so you
Speaker 8: can do chips stuff like that, but this one you
Speaker 8: can put them in coconut milk or you know, roast it.
Speaker 5: And then what about the ancestry one.
Speaker 8: So this one, it has a lot of seeds in it.
Speaker 8: A lot of people say you can roast the seed
Speaker 8: and eat it. But because of that, we only were
Speaker 8: growing these for propagation reasons.
Speaker 4: Oh, so you will take the seeds and then you'll
Speaker 4: use those to make more trees.
Speaker 5: How old are these trees?
Speaker 8: These are seven years old, seven eight years old. They
Speaker 8: were planted in twenty seventeen. So this is one of
Speaker 8: seven bread food sites we have around the islands.
Speaker 4: Dolly told me that the research involves seven different growing
Speaker 4: sites in various ecosystems, from a sea spray environment to
Speaker 4: mountains on several different islands, including Maui and this one
Speaker 4: we're at on the Big Island.
Speaker 5: The white environment is this? Is this a sea spray?
Speaker 5: Is this a jungle?
Speaker 8: It has more rain, It gets more rain compared to
Speaker 8: other sites good soil.
Speaker 4: I visited this farm with my wonderful in laws and
Speaker 4: your pod mom, Jarrett, who asked about some patches of
Speaker 4: dried sappy stuff.
Speaker 5: What's the significance of this kind of like almost like
Speaker 5: syrup or something that dried on the app.
Speaker 8: So they call that a latex. It's not only on
Speaker 8: the fruit but throughout the whole tree. Uh, But that's
Speaker 8: one indicator of maturity.
Speaker 4: And by latex, they don't mean the latex you're probably
Speaker 4: thinking about. Latex just means liquid in Latin, and it
Speaker 4: is just like a milky liquid from plants, and latex
Speaker 4: can be composed of a whole botanic soup of proteins
Speaker 4: and alkaloids and starches and sugars and oils and tannins
Speaker 4: and resins which gum up when they're exposed to air,
Speaker 4: and they act kind of like a free band aid
Speaker 4: for the tree. And for more on this you can
Speaker 4: see the wonderful Dendrology two parter with JKC. Clap and
Speaker 4: breadfruit latex specifically, should you lap it off a tree,
Speaker 4: Let's not. Traditionally it's been used for boat cocking and
Speaker 4: bird tree wrapping and healing skin infections, nerve pain, and
Speaker 4: I guess you could ingest it to help with diarrhea
Speaker 4: if you have that issue now. It was April when
Speaker 4: we were crunching around the leaves which serve as great
Speaker 4: mulch for the tree, as Dolly told me, But when
Speaker 4: is it breadfruit season? I was clueless, but Dolly said
Speaker 4: that harvest season is from June or July all the
Speaker 4: way to December, and in the past they have harvested
Speaker 4: one thousand pounds of bread fruit in one day from
Speaker 4: this one small orchard. But this little farm we're recording
Speaker 4: at is a champion producer with an even longer harvest window.
Speaker 8: It goes on to like January Febry, just because I
Speaker 8: think it gets perfect rain, good soil, just a good sight.
Speaker 5: You know, Like, what's the biggest bread for you guys have.
Speaker 8: Definitely the u Hawaii. Yeah, it's about four kg. It's big.
Speaker 8: It's like bigger than my head. Huge, huge fruits. So
Speaker 8: we get off from those.
Speaker 4: That's like eight pounds, like the size of a bowling.
Speaker 8: The leaves them all broader, and then the fruits are
Speaker 8: very different. They are more yellow coar to other varieties.
Speaker 8: So this is from the Ratumen Fiji. Inside yellow flesh
Speaker 8: fruit really good for making ulu chips.
Speaker 4: And then it kind of like an ostrich skin texture
Speaker 4: on the outside.
Speaker 8: Uh huh. It also goes smooth in texture. When it
Speaker 8: goes yellow, it's mature.
Speaker 5: Then you know, it's just like a green light. You're like, okay,
Speaker 5: so wait that, how do you get up there?
Speaker 8: So we maintain our trees by puny every year. You
Speaker 8: gotta at least have twelve feet high in order for
Speaker 8: us to get all the fruits. So it's just me.
Speaker 8: So I have fruit pickers, just blow them in the
Speaker 8: truck and that's it.
Speaker 4: How do you make sure that there's not a bunch
Speaker 4: of bread fruit on the ground just being wasted.
Speaker 8: So I try to every time I harvest, I would
Speaker 8: know all these one would be ready by next week,
Speaker 8: or if something happens, I don't turn up next week,
Speaker 8: I know they're going to be ready, So I just
Speaker 8: take them ahead of time.
Speaker 5: And they can ripen off the tree. Yes, they can,
Speaker 5: kind of like a banana or apples. Have you always
Speaker 5: studied fruit? Nope?
Speaker 8: This was so I started with No Lincoln as a
Speaker 8: master student from Samore. I came here in twenty eighteen
Speaker 8: on a scholarship, but I was mainly focusing on sore fertility.
Speaker 8: And then he had this grant on bread food and
Speaker 8: I jumped it. And then I'm from Sawmore. We ulu
Speaker 8: all the time. So yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 5: Do you have a way that you like it prepared?
Speaker 8: So I'm traditional. I like it the old way of
Speaker 8: putting in coconut milk when it's like perfect maturity, a
Speaker 8: little bit soft but still firm, and then you peel
Speaker 8: that and putting water, boil, take out the water and
Speaker 8: put coconut milk. Yeah, that's my favorite way.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's say that you plant one, but you're hungry
Speaker 4: and impatient, and.
Speaker 2: It takes how long for a tree to produced fruit
Speaker 2: in the first place?
Speaker 8: Firm like three to five years you'll get fruits. And
Speaker 8: then I read in literature that it can go up
Speaker 8: to fifty years it will produce. That's just so much
Speaker 8: year round.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are there ways to preserve it for the off months?
Speaker 8: So there is one island that used to do a
Speaker 8: lot of the fermenting. They did go hole and put
Speaker 8: all the ullhu inside. And we have new organizations now
Speaker 8: like Ullu CoAP that takes all the fruit in and
Speaker 8: make it use of all that harvest. They froze it,
Speaker 8: they dry it, they pro cook it. Yeah, they do
Speaker 8: all yeah, flour.
Speaker 4: Do you have any tips for anyone who either has
Speaker 4: a bread fruit tree or is thinking about planting one,
Speaker 4: Like any tips on how to make your trees happy?
Speaker 8: Well, as long as they're in a nice cool environment
Speaker 8: and with space, because ulu are big trees and they
Speaker 8: require space to grow in. Keep watering them every day
Speaker 8: and good soil. They'll be happy. They'll be happy.
Speaker 4: And of course, location, location, location, Breadfruit is grown successfully
Speaker 4: in ninety countries throughout South and Southeast Asia and Madagascar,
Speaker 4: the Caribbean, and of course the Pacific Islands. Now, if
Speaker 4: you're in a tropical region, pretty much good to go.
Speaker 4: But apparently, like many Americans, breadfruit hasn't been able to
Speaker 4: thrive in Florida, Mexico and Brazil.
Speaker 5: Not have breadfruit and be patient with them for a
Speaker 5: couple of years, right.
Speaker 8: Yes, but then three to five years you'll have fruits.
Speaker 4: So Dolly says that these ones can grow up to
Speaker 4: fifty feet tall, but some breadfruit trees can be eighty
Speaker 4: five feet tall, like an eight story building, almost thirty meters.
Speaker 4: But they prune theirs back to help with airflow and
Speaker 4: to reduce the chance of disease that can flourish when
Speaker 4: these dense leaf canopies stay too moist. They also prune
Speaker 4: them to keep them about twelve feet high, just for
Speaker 4: practical ladder climbing reasons. I mean, you try getting breadfruit
Speaker 4: out of something the size of a building.
Speaker 5: Ever been banked on the noggin by a breadfruit?
Speaker 8: Nope?
Speaker 5: Not on breadfruit trees, right.
Speaker 4: I imagine you'd have to look up if you're picking them,
Speaker 4: make sure nothing's coming down.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you had to just make sure you're holding it
Speaker 8: and drop and make sure no one's it might fall
Speaker 8: in there?
Speaker 5: Do they shatter when they drop? Like if they're ripe?
Speaker 8: They like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then you're picking up red foot off the ground.
Speaker 8: Yes, but we take them before that stage.
Speaker 5: So they're not just goofy goops.
Speaker 4: So some cultivars are round and spikier. Others are egg shaped,
Speaker 4: like a big green spaghetti squash with smooth reptile scales.
Speaker 5: I wanted to.
Speaker 4: Cradle one like an infant and tell it it was
Speaker 4: doing a great job.
Speaker 8: So I did bring some fruit pickers in case you
Speaker 8: guys want to pick some ulu and take with you.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, I didn't know. I get a souvenir. That's
Speaker 5: so cool.
Speaker 4: I had no idea. So this is a part where
Speaker 4: you don't stand under it, yes, right, unless you want
Speaker 4: a concussion.
Speaker 5: Look at that. Yeah, it just plunks it right down. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like a little baby in the grass. Hello.
Speaker 2: Cool, that's so heavy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you need muscles for this work, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
Speaker 8: who needs to go to the gym?
Speaker 4: And Dolly bounces between sites doing field work as she's
Speaker 4: a third year PhD student, and just the day before
Speaker 4: she was on Kowhai to collect soil and leaf samples
Speaker 4: at another bread fruit farm. You know, just island hopping
Speaker 4: talking to plants.
Speaker 8: There's so much opportunity with bread food and it's fun
Speaker 8: and it's who would not want to come out to
Speaker 8: the open air and be away from the lab and
Speaker 8: be outside and do this kind of work. So yeah,
Speaker 8: it has been great. Yeah, the field work situation, the
Speaker 8: gym work in.
Speaker 5: The field work, this is great. Thank you so much
Speaker 5: for learning us come and check this out.
Speaker 8: Thank you for having him.
Speaker 5: I got to pick some, get picked. I'm excited to
Speaker 5: eat them.
Speaker 4: So ask scholarly people culinary questions and the answer might
Speaker 4: be indigenous botany. Thank you so much to doctor Noah
Speaker 4: Keekoweva Lincoln and Dolly Altafuna for hanging out on a
Speaker 4: doc and in an orchard, respectively. And to find out
Speaker 4: more about their work and their mission, you can check
Speaker 4: out Eat Breadfruit dot org and we'll also link to
Speaker 4: the Chef Hooey fund donation page for them. And we
Speaker 4: are at Instagram and on Blue Sky at Ologies and
Speaker 4: I'm at Ali ward on. Both smologies are our shorter,
Speaker 4: kid friendly versions of classic episodes and they are in
Speaker 4: their own feed. You can find Smologies wherever you get podcasts,
Speaker 4: Kids safe Ologies, merch is at ologiesmerch dot com. All
Speaker 4: of this is linked in the show notes and also
Speaker 4: at aliwar dot com, slash Ologies, slash Breadfruit. Aaron Talbert
Speaker 4: Adminsiologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts.
Speaker 4: Kelly R. Dwyerd is the website. Noel Dilworth is our
Speaker 4: scheduling producer. Susan Hale Managing directs the whole Shabang. Jake
Speaker 4: Chafe as one of our talented editors and producer, researcher
Speaker 4: and additional writing for this episode was done by the
Speaker 4: lovely Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Thank you so much
Speaker 4: MM for taking the lead on the so beautifully. Nick
Speaker 4: Thorburn wrote the theme music, and thank you also to
Speaker 4: Sam Mason, Christine Kyle and your pod mother Shared Sleeper
Speaker 4: for going on this Breadfruit adventure in Hawaii and the
Speaker 4: USC story Makers Program for having me so that I
Speaker 4: could meet your scientists and I could pepper them with
Speaker 4: questions and if you stick around to the end of
Speaker 4: the episode, I tell you a secret. And we got
Speaker 4: to the farm, two Australian sheep dogs barreled out of
Speaker 4: the gate like monsters, and I stooped down to greet
Speaker 4: them and they mowed me over into the grass. This
Speaker 4: is within seconds of meeting Dolly, and they pinned me
Speaker 4: down with face licks. Hi babies, they're friendly. I loved
Speaker 4: every second. This farm trip was already a success by
Speaker 4: that point. Okay, thanks for coming along.
Speaker 5: I'm a field trip. I hope you had fun.
Speaker 7: Okay for my pacademology, zoology, lithology, Yeah, zoology, meteorology, ethnology,
Speaker 7: serialogylogy's give by.
Speaker 5: These breadfruit plants are fantastic.
Speaker 1: So you want to go up this road here and
Speaker 1: get to the roundabout and you take a left and
Speaker 1: then you go past the Murphy's house. You know the
Speaker 1: Murphy's their young lad Sean. I think he's over in
Speaker 1: London now, Oh yeah. FBD doesn't stand for frustratingly bad directions.
Speaker 1: FBD stands for support. We support van drivers in Ireland
Speaker 1: with up to seventy five percent off new van policies.
Speaker 2: FBD insurance support. It's what we do.
Speaker 1: Can't miss it. Once you pass there, a little terrier
Speaker 1: was starting to chase yet and once he gives up,
Speaker 1: you should be there. Seventy five percent off based on
Speaker 1: five years no claims. Discount terms and conditions apply. Underwritten
Speaker 1: by FBD Insurance Plc. FBD Insurance Group Limited, trading as
Speaker 1: FBD Insurance, is regulated by the Central Bank of Island.
Speaker 2: Get value.
Speaker 3: You can't argue with at Tesco with their amazing club
Speaker 3: card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal
Speaker 3: deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert
Speaker 3: for only sixteen euro like Succulent Board be approved. Irushanged
Speaker 3: a strip loin steaks with pepper corn butter or delicious
Speaker 3: Irish chicken Parmeshama served with creamy potato cretam and her
Speaker 3: mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or Soldier
Speaker 3: Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in store or online.
Speaker 2: Tesco. Every little helps available the most stores, prices varying.
Speaker 2: Express