Micah Stanley
Anyone looking for a vegan meat substitute will love the jackfruit. We reveal what the jackfruit hype is all about and explore the question of how useful the meat alternative is.
The jackfruit grows as a huge fruit on trees in the tropics. In the countries of origin, people usually consume the exotic fruit when it is ripe and sweet. The ripe fruit tastes like a mixture of pineapple, mango and banana.
In the meantime, the jackfruit has also arrived here – and there is a real hype about the tropical plant, albeit in the unripe version. Alongside tofu, seitan and the like, jackfruit is a good meat substitute for vegetarians and vegans. With its fibrous consistency, the saccharine, as it is also called, is reminiscent of lean meat. Even meat connoisseurs and fans are often unable to tell the jackfruit-based curry apart from the “real meat” one.
Very trendy: jackfruit as a meat substitute
In most cases, unripe fruit is not edible. The jackfruit is a notable exception! Their flesh is tasteless when unripe, but it accepts spicy marinades well and thus ensures an intense taste experience.
The versatile tropical fruit can be processed in many different ways, for example as sliced meat, as a substitute for minced meat, in curries, burgers or as vegan “pulled pork”. Another plus point: the meat substitute retains the fibrous consistency even during cooking and roasting and offers a meat-like feeling when eaten.
The tree fruit is gluten-free, rich in iron, vitamin C, calcium and fiber. It contains little fat, its calorie content is 70 kilocalories per 100 grams. However, you should not eat the fruit raw: it is then inedible and hard.
Where does the jackfruit come from?
The main growing areas are in India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The jackfruit tree belongs to the mulberry family.
The fruits, which do not grow on the branch but directly on the tree trunk, can reach enormous proportions: a single fruit can weigh up to 35 kilos. A mature tree sometimes produces up to three tons of fruit per year.
Where to buy jackfruit
You still have to keep your eyes open for the meat substitute. But slowly but surely there are more and more manufacturers offering jackfruit products. The best chance of finding something is in organic shops and the large drugstores. The unripe pieces of fruit are available as preserves or as a convenience product, some of which are already marinated.
When buying jackfruit products, look out for the organic seal. Organic products do not come from the large monocultures, but from small family businesses – which usually do not use any pesticides.
How it looks with the life cycle assessment of jackfruit
All of this sounds almost too good to be true. However, the newly discovered meat substitute does have a small catch: the fruit only grows in the tropics and thus inevitably travels a long way before it reaches our stores. This means that their carbon footprint is large. However, the production of meat is still associated with significantly more CO2 emissions.
