A fruit that has been used for centuries in countries around the world gets the thumbs up from a team of researchers from British Columbia. Breadfruit, which grows in abundance in tropical and South Pacific countries, has long been a staple of many people's diets. The fruit can be eaten when ripe, or it can be dried and ground into a flour and reused in many types of meals, explains UBC Okanagan researcher Susan Murch.
“Breadfruit is a traditional staple crop from the Pacific islands with the potential to improve global food security and reduce diabetes,” said Murch, a chemistry professor at the newly established Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science. “Although humans have lived with it for thousands of years, there has been a lack of basic scientific knowledge about the health effects of a breadfruit-based diet in both humans and animals.”
Breadfruit can be harvested, dried and ground into a gluten-free flour. For the project, researchers had four breadfruits from the same tree in Hawaii shipped to the Murch Lab in UBC Okanagan. PhD student Ying Liu led the research into the digestion and health effects of a breadfruit-based diet.
“Detailed and systematic studies of the health effects of a breadfruit diet had not been performed before and we wanted to contribute to the development of breadfruit as a sustainable, environmentally friendly and high-yielding crop,” says Liu.
The few studies done on the product have been to examine the glycemic index of breadfruit – having a low glycemic index, it is comparable to many common commodities such as wheat, cassava, yam and potatoes.
“The aim of our current study was to determine whether a diet containing breadfruit flour poses serious health problems,” explains Liu.
The researchers designed a series of studies — using flour ground from dehydrated breadfruit — that could provide data on the effects of a breadfruit-based diet fed to mice, as well as a model for enzyme digestion.
The researchers found that breadfruit protein appeared to be more easily digestible than wheat protein in the enzyme digestion model. And mice fed the breadfruit diet had a significantly higher growth rate and body weight than standard diet mice.
Liu also noted that mice on the breadfruit diet had significantly higher daily water consumption compared to mice on the wheat diet. And at the end of the three-week trial, body composition was comparable between the breadfruit and wheat diet mice.
“As the first full-scale, fully-designed breadfruit diet study, our data showed that a breadfruit diet does not have any toxic impact,” said Liu. “Fundamental understanding of the health effects of breadfruit digestion and diets is imperative and necessary for the establishment of breadfruit as a staple ingredient or as a functional food in the future.”
The use of breadfruit is nutritious and sustainable and could contribute to food sustainability for many populations around the world, she adds. For example, the average daily consumption of grain in the United States is 189 grams (6.67 ounces) per day. Liu suggests that if a person eats the same amount of cooked breadfruit, they can meet nearly 57 percent of their daily fiber needs, more than 34 percent of their protein needs, while consuming vitamin C, potassium, iron and calcium. and phosphorus.
“In general, these studies support the use of breadfruit as part of a healthy, nutritionally balanced diet,” says Liu. “Breadfruit flour is a gluten-free, low glycemic index, nutritious and complete protein option for modern foods.”
