Car­ol Quash

The di­etary fi­bre, potas­si­um and vi­t­a­min C con­tained in bread­fruit have el­e­vat­ed it to su­per­food sta­tus, mak­ing it an easy choice for Jen­ni-Marie Samuel to use as the base for her cre­ation of a new prod­uct.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go food sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy ma­jor is a coun­try girl at heart, hav­ing spent her child­hood days in Matelot, where there was no short­age of white and creamy yel­low bread­fruits.

Whether pre­pared in her home kitchen or on the bank of the riv­er, she knows first-hand the rich taste of a good oil down, roast­ed and fried bread­fruit, and soft, fluffy fu­fu, es­pe­cial­ly when served with steamed fish or salt­fish. For her fi­nal-year project, she was re­quired to come up with a nov­el prod­uct and make it mar­ket-ready.

Her hy­dro­col­loid-coat­ed bread­fruit chips were a dif­fer­ent con­cept while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly act­ing as an ex­ten­sion of a fa­mil­iar food.

She told Guardian Me­dia that, af­ter much re­search, test­ing and eval­u­a­tion, she was hap­py she de­cid­ed on her coat­ed bread­fruit chips, which are a health­i­er op­tion than reg­u­lar fried bread­fruit chips.

“Hy­dro­col­loid is used in the food in­dus­try and in the cos­met­ics in­dus­try as an emul­si­fi­er. For the pur­pose of my project, I was us­ing it to re­duce the oil up­take of fried chips. I made a so­lu­tion with the hy­dro­col­loid I chose, which is xan­than gum, to coat the bread­fruit chips and then fry them, re­duc­ing the oil con­tent and the fat con­tent.”

Hy­dro­col­loid coat­ings are thin, ed­i­ble lay­ers made from wa­ter-lov­ing poly­mers such as pectin – a nat­ur­al plant fi­bre used main­ly as a gelling agent, thick­en­er and sta­bilis­er in foods like jams and jel­lies. The coat­ings block oil ab­sorp­tion dur­ing fry­ing, lock in mois­ture, and ex­tend shelf life with­out preser­v­a­tives.

Samuel loves that she was able to use a lo­cal and nu­tri­tious base for her new prod­uct in the form of bread­fruit.

“It’s a healthy op­tion over­all be­cause it is high in fi­bre, and the hy­dro­col­loid coat­ing al­so adds to the fi­bre con­tent of the bread­fruit. And fi­bre is some­thing that a lot of peo­ple aren’t get­ting enough of now.”

Among bread­fruit’s key health ben­e­fits are that it im­proves di­ges­tion, helps low­er bad LDL cho­les­terol, sup­ports heart health, strength­ens im­mune de­fence, pro­motes col­la­gen pro­duc­tion, and helps man­age blood sug­ar lev­els.

She said that, for the pur­pose of the project, she mar­ket­ed the chips un­der the busi­ness name she cre­at­ed, Cari­pan; a com­bi­na­tion of Caribbean and pan, the Span­ish word for bread.

But, she ex­plained, there was an­oth­er rea­son why she chose to spot­light bread­fruit.

“So I re­al­ly got in­to it, hav­ing grown up in the coun­try­side eat­ing a lot of foods like bread­fruit and cas­sa­va and see­ing how our lo­cal foods are not giv­en as much love, out­side of the pop­u­lar things like dou­bles, roti, pelau. I want­ed to cre­ate a prod­uct that would at­tract the wider pop­u­la­tion, and hon­est­ly, I would love to see it go­ing or ex­port­ing with­in the re­gion to the Caribbean di­as­po­ra, and even glob­al­ly.”

Af­ter the project, Samuel con­tin­ued to pro­duce and sell the chips, as well as sor­rel drinks and three vari­a­tions of ba­nana bread: clas­sic ba­nana bread, raisin ba­nana bread, and choco­late chip ba­nana bread.

“I grew up with my grand­par­ents, and I had al­ways had an in­ter­est in cook­ing and bak­ing. I de­cid­ed I would bring every­thing to­geth­er un­der the Cari­pan name I used in my project be­cause of what it sym­bol­is­es. As the Bible says, ‘give us this day our dai­ly bread,’ and I want­ed it to be the un­der­ly­ing mis­sion of what I do.”

Bread­fruit was first brought from Tahi­ti to the Caribbean by Cap­tain William Bligh in 1793. It was in­tend­ed as a source of food for the slaves in the West In­dies be­cause it was an ex­cel­lent source of en­er­gy. How­ev­er, the slaves did not like it and re­fused to make it a part of their di­et. In spite of this, bread­fruit trees con­tin­ued to flour­ish. By the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, bread­fruit was ac­cept­ed as a good source of food. To­day, it is found through­out the Caribbean re­gion and is used in a va­ri­ety of lo­cal dish­es. Bread­fruit is al­so known as Pem­bo­va.