Jackfruit could save millions from starvation
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About the pulled pork reference , I have had pulled pork in Arizona Phoenix where I work now. The unripe jackfruit do not taste like that. Just an "unripe" taste that's all. Unripe fruit has lot of milky sticky liquid oozing from the hives inside the fruit.
In its unripe form , its used for frying , something like potato sticks lookalike. In its ripe form its mixed with beef and made into squishy form. Keralites eat a lot of beef,unlike other states in India. (where beef is banned)
The seeds of the jackfruit , ( a single fruit has hundreds of seeds ) is used to make curry mixed with sour mango and sun dried shrimp. The outer casing of the jackfruit is re purposed as food to the cows. The jackfruit wood is good for carpentry and is used to make door , almirahs , windows in Kerala homes.
Probably the author is just an author. Might not have experience with the real fruit and do not know much about India as is with many western countries.
[Legislation on cattle slaughter by state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_slaughter_in_India#Legi...)
That sounds like most states ban it. Also the grandparent comment just said "other states" without stating the number.
Another important fact is, we don't use any fertilizer to grow Jackfruits. It's totally healthy and chemical free.
It tastes nothing like pulled pork to me though. It's mainly sweet and very slightly tangy/sour. Fresh jackfruit has a kind of "crunch" to it. I can't really describe the flavor without being self-referential... I mean, it kinda tastes like... jackfruit. Or maybe like pineapple mixed with banana?
The smell can be overwhelming, especially when it goes bad. But it's not that bad when it's fresh.
Oh and that sticky stuff is really sticky - hard to get off your clothes or your hands.
Yeah, you could find them everywhere in Karnataka and most of the states I went to in the South.
The regions of the US are surprisingly different in many ways, but may not even line up with the various state boundaries so most of the time it's just "America" too. Probably not as diverse as India (I've never been, so it's just a guess) but still nowhere near as homogeneous as some European countries are.
Going from one state to another is like going from one EU country to another; each of the 29 states has a different language, different writing-system, different culture, different cuisine, different traditions, different everything. Of course, there are similarities and towards the borders between states you get a kind of continuum of language and culture.
I don't think the EU has quite as many languages (and dialects) as that, though there are more than many people think. Have a quick look at the list here, for example:
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/saoghal/mion-chanain/en/
Many that previously existed have died out, of course. And as TV and radio became more prevelant, it did kill off a large number of dialects. I've noticed in the UK that in certain regions, it's the older folk who have the broadest accents and use the most dialect words, compared with younger people.
Do you see the same thing happening in India, or are they managing to preserve local tradition alongside the mainstream?
However, there is also a lot of intermingling...but I don't see it becoming one homogeneous race (like the Han Chinese) anytime soon.
It is complex! Some dialects are dying out, but the regions seem to be clustering around the 22 'scheduled languages'. In Karnataka (population ~ 60 million) for example, there are at least 4 dialects of Kannada. With the proliferation of social media, TV, and cinema, two things are happening: (1) the non-majority dialects are losing out to a 'standardized' mean similar to the Wisconsin-mean in the US, (2) paradoxically, non-standard dialects are gaining popularity because of their quirks. This is similar to how Irish dialects are highlighted in movies like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, In Bruges, etc. giving them more visibility than it would otherwise get. Another analogy is how we all know about Minnesotan 'dialects' and Californian dude-isms from Coen brothers' explorations of these themes.
The primary bulwark against the disappearance of dialects and languages in India is just the largeness of the masses of people who speak these languages. For example, Bhojpuri, a dialect that is different from standardized movie/TV 'Hindi' has tens of millions of speakers.
Somehow standardized languages seem to co-exist with dialects in much of India.
It is nearly impossible that any of the 22 languages will die out in the next few centuries. Even most dialects will survive because of the strength in numbers. (Note, the 22 languages includes Sanskrit, which like Latin and classical Greek has in some sense 'died out'. But the masses never 'spoke' Sanskrit, it was more of a formalized language for literature and administration.)
Edit: By Wisconsin-mean, I mean General American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American
That's a strange thing to say. Panini formalized it, but the language was in widespread use for a long time before that, quite like Latin and classical Greek were. Why else would people start using it for literature and administration? Of course, using it for these two purposes gave it a certain degree of prestige and made the language live on long after it was spoken by the masses.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=QYxpvZLg4hAC&pg=PA19&dq=sa...
"But there are evidences to show that to all intents and purposes, Sanskrit was a living language and view that it was spoken by at least a large section of the people."
The author then writes a more nuanced answer.
> This exclusivity of Sanskrit learning is also one of the likely reasons why Buddhist teachings are in Prakrits (dharma = dhamma, etc.).
This, while possibly true, is misleading in this context. All it means is that Sanskrit was on its way out by that time period, and in that region. It does not square with your previous claim that Sanskrit was never spoken by the masses.
As another factor of note, we are talking about a large geographic region and a large time period. I am not even sure what qualifies as "Prakrit". If it just means "vernacular", it would still qualify as Sanskrit. As you mentioned previously, Kannada has at least four dialects. Raichur Kannada sounds quite different from the Kannada of textbooks or news reports. But it's still considered Kannada. Can we use a similar approach to consider Prakrit as just a dialect of Sanskrit? I don't know. I am neither a linguist, nor a Sanskrit historian.
Sanskrit and Prakrits are different enough to not be dialects. It is perhaps a relationship more like literary Kannada and Tulu, which are wholly different languages with many similarities. (A relationship also shared by (Kannada, Tamil, Tulu, Telugu, Malayalam) and (Oriya, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi) which are all wholly different languages belonging to two families (Dravidian former, Indo-Aryan latter), with similar roots, but do not share a 'dialect' relationship between each other or with any other extant languages)
Buddhism definitely had egalitarian pan-caste aspirations compared to Vedic doctrine. It is only natural that Buddha and others preached in colloquial languages, rather than literary. It is true at the same time, that later Buddhist scholars wrote many works in literary Sanskrit.
Edit: Also, I did not claim that Brahmins were not numerous. They were probably the same percentage of the population as today, which is about 5-10%, which is still a 'large section', but far from the majority.
Panini, and to some extent, his near-contemporaries formalized Sanskrit. It wasn't formalized before that. Vedic Sanskrit was never formalized. Moreover, the book you cited says, "there are many sutras in the Astadhyayi of Panini which are meaningless unless they have any reference to a living speech".
> Sanskrit and Prakrits are different enough to not be dialects.
From the book, "It has been said in Bharata's Natyashastra that Prakrit and Sanskrit are different branches of one and the same language. In the earliest known forms of Prakrit, there are passages which can easily be translated into Sanskrit by the application of simple phonetic rules."
I agree with what you wrote about Buddha's choice of language.
But my point throughout is that there has to have been a time and a place where what was then considered Sanskrit was spoken by the masses. I'd find it hard to conceive of a situation where the educated classes created a dialect/language for themselves, and only this dialect could carry the name "Sanskrit".
No kidding. Jackfruit is everywhere in Bengali cuisine[0]! It's really popular with vegetarians and people on vrat, because it has a tougher texture (like meat) with certain preparations.
I don't know what pulled pork tastes like, but I dislike even the smell of pork, whereas jackfruit is delicious. So I'm skeptical of that comparison as well.
[0] West Bengal, too, not just East Bengali
Ripe jackfruit tastes a bit like a mix between cantaloupe, pineapple and mango, plus some floral notes. I absolutely love it and wish I could find it in my neighborhood more often.
It is extremely sticky, so the trick to cut it is to apply cooking oil in your hands and then cut it. :)
Interestingly I have never had ripe jackfruit.
My cousin's father-in-law served jackfruit biryani at his wedding banquet.
What if the same companies that sell you oranges could give some of those same oranges to the homeless? Or use a portion of their profits to (without deceit) send them to countries in need? Maybe I don't know enough about these things to really talk, but having fed the homeless once upon a time for about a year without the aid of government assistance I think we make too many excuses for things that really should just be done. Ah well, maybe someday soon we'll see true change that benefits all.
For example, chicken breast meat is very popular in the western world. Once they remove the white meat where does the rest of it go. What the producers can't sell domestically in the US or Canada they export to developing countries at cut rate prices. This drives the local farmers out of business.
Before donating fruits to countries in need (and can grow the same fruit) think long and hard about the impact that help might have on their local economy. In any other scenario this would be considered dumping and that country would be taken to WTO court.
But I don't think it's a zero-sum game. I think the total utility generated by free food is worse than the disutility of the farmer losing his business. Now those people have money to spend on other things that they would have spent on food.
Protectionism benefits producers at the expense of consumers.
Of course ideally you wouldn't send food directly, but just money, which they could use to buy food, or whatever they need.
I'm not sure i follow. Someone would have had to build something or farm something in the first place for it to be given away.
The economics of this are a bit more complicated than that though. If importing food from Brazil was cheaper, someone should already be doing it without any charitable intentions. And if if it's not, then it makes more sense for the charity to buy the food locally than pay more to import it.
A lot of (mostly urban) businesses do, in fact, give food to help feed the homeless. In downtown San Diego, one or more Starbucks locations gives away leftover items to a women's services center to help provide a free coffee and pastry breakfast to indigent women. Presumably they get a write off for it, plus they only serve fresh goods to their customers.
Or use a portion of their profits to (without deceit) send them to countries in need?
According to Diet for a Small Planet, the vast majority of starvation is caused by internal political strife and sometimes food aid gets sold off to put money in the pockets of corrupt politicians or simply rots on the docks because they don't want it delivered to the hungry masses who are often de facto a populace they are internally at war with.
Furthermore, when Western foods are delivered to other countries, locals develop a desire for a lifestyle that is economically out of their reach and frequently not sustainable locally. In other words, they hunger for foods that cannot be grown locally, at least not without ruining the local environment.
There have been all kinds of problems caused in the past by food aid, such as women being given just enough baby formula for their baby that their own natural milk production dried up, then the free aid stopped. I think the intent was to create a larger market for baby formula, but these women could not afford to buy baby formula. As a result, babies died.
On the one hand, help for the homeless can be life saving in the short run. On the other hand, in the long run, the homeless need the same things any middle class or wealthy person needs: The ability to solve their own problems and support themselves. Too much focus on treating homeless individuals like helpless charity cases can actively undermine the possibility of them getting their act together. It's a hard balance to strike. International aid is typically even more fucked up, from what I gather.
I know you mean well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Your suggestion has all kinds of potential to pave a road to hell.
That's not what happened. It was Nestle actively encouraging hospitals to recommend baby formula, by bribing doctors and providing the formula for free. Then, when the mothers left the hospital, they were pretty much forced into buying formula, and those who couldn't afford it basically had their babies starve to death.
In other words, it was Nestle literally killing babies in search of profit. There was no "food aid" element to this at all.
I knew that, I just see little difference between this deadly marketing ploy and the outcomes of a lot of things that do more strictly merit the label of food aid. But perhaps the detail that this specific incident was a twisted marketing ploy will help others more readily comprehend how and why well meaning food aid can have unintended negative consequences -- in short, how they can have a dark side.
I'm going to disagree with that statement (or perhaps with your wording). Less than half of the land area is urban, sure. But more than half is rural rather than uninhabited.
Even if you're going to be really picky about the definition, Almost 45% of the census blocks in the US have a population of zero, which is pretty stunning if you think about it. http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/nobody-lives-here-a-beautif...
Okay, but then then suburbs are uninhabited too. The neighborhood I'm in has 1500-2000 sqft houses on 10ksqft lots. That's 80-85% uninhabited, especially once you start to add up the amount of extra land for streets, ditches, canals, parks, etc. I bet most suburban landscapes are 90% uninhabited.
Here's an agricultural company that owns 10 combines and some 20+ other trucks and they claim to harvest 1500 acres a day. If you've got a 50k acre farm you're talking spending a full month with those folks harvesting your crop. So that's probably 2-3 dozen people. http://www.frederickharvesting.com/equipment.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05mpx0k
France recently passed law about supermarket food waste. (Although I'm not sure it is still law?)
http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/channels/supermarkets/france-supe...
Conveniently enough, I found a guide to orange carton dimensions and weights: http://www.south-africa-fruits.com/citrus-packaging.html So, let's see how much it costs to ship a carton of oranges from, say, Florida to Kenya (they could definitely use some citrus)! Oranges, while a pretty hardy fruit, have a shelf life of, at most, a few weeks at room temperature, according to multiple sources. I don't know if they'd be great sitting around in a cargo ship, with uncertain temperature and humidity changes for a month. So let's fly them over. Here's a calculator: http://www.worldfreightrates.com/en/freight
I calculated $154.74 - $171.02 per carton. That's quite a hefty premium on a carton of oranges (about 100 oranges, according to multiple sources). Sure, you might argue that a benevolent organization could come along and send bulk pallets (unfortunately, I couldn't find anything that would let me calculate the costs for a pallet of oranges), but I doubt you're going to find more than a 20% costs savings -- competition in this industry is stiff, and jet fuel is expensive.
In Boston, can buy navel oranges at my local grocery store for a dollar an orange, or less (I just checked Peapod!). So, yeah, it literally costs more to ship an orange across the ocean than oranges here cost, even with the relatively high cost of labor in the US. As wealthy Americans, we frequently pay for exotic foods (bananas in the middle of winter!) that cost very little to produce, and we're paying almost entirely for shipping. We don't think much about shipping costs, or think that it's unusual to get our food shipped to us, but that sort of thinking is dangerous.
It's far far cheaper to grow more food in starving countries than it is to ship them food. In Kenya, and all over Africa, food prices are much cheaper than they are here, even on open markets with relatively inefficient food delivery practices. It is cheaper (not to mention more environmentally sound!) to produce the food there, than it is to produce it here, and then transport it there. You make no sense. I mean, people in many African countries (let's be honest, Kenya is one of the wealthier ones) commonly feed their entire families on just a few dollars a day -- why not compost the fucking oranges, send them the money we would have spent on spilling fuel into the atmosphere, invigorate their economy, and let them eat like kings for the cost of flying over three oranges?
Saying "Now I understand there would be a cost in transporting these goods, as well as other factors, but still..." is just irresponsible. Yes, seeing oranges go to waste makes you feel bad. But the solution is not to ship it outside the relatively small radius where it makes environmental and economic sense to do so, when there are many other solutions for hunger that don't waste resources and kill the environment faster.
$3-$10k from just about anywhere to anywhere via sea for a 40 foot reefer. Which works out as virtually nothing per orange.
The oranges you buy in Boston could just as easily come from somewhere else and you'd probably barely notice any price difference.
"Fresh orange imports in 2012 were valued at nearly $107.4 million, an 11 percent increase from 2011. The imports originated mainly in Chile and South Africa" - http://www.agmrc.org/commodities__products/fruits/citrus/cit...
Food is the tip of the iceberg, many problems we face today actually have painfully simple solutions. Food waste for instance which is at 1.3B tons for stuff before super markets feeds all the hungry people needed.
Proper management of surplus resources (in this case food) can solve a lot of problems. But we would need a transparent, robust, and powerful system to make it profitable and beneficial for people.
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Though a google image search for "jackfruit tree" seems to show the trees I'm familiar with. Not very tall with a good portion of fruit within arm's reach.
This is useful especially when the fruit is very ripe as it likely to smash into pieces on impact. The rope trick is employed widely in Kerala to harvest this gigantic fruit from the jackfruit tree.
Fortunately I did learn a bit about a fruit I have never seen nor heard of before. So I guess it was worthwhile.
But if the article writer was looking for Tandoori Jackfruit, then yes, that is true -- there is not tandoori jackfruit!
Apparently they have a short shelf-life - the fruit must be eaten or preserved within a couple days of being picked. But they are quite tasty.
Where near Kodai? Yes, lots of jackfruit grows there, some height below the town.
Jack fruit Curry, tastes Awesome!!! http://www.blendwithspices.com/2011/12/andhra-panasa-pottu-k...
It is also much easier to find in cans in the U.S. than as whole fresh fruit.
I agree with the flavor being characterized as bubblegum pineapple. Maybe a bit banana-ish. I enjoy it, myself, but the rest of the family thinks it smells bad and tastes odd. It has never crossed my mind that it might resemble pulled pork in any way.
And for a "poor man's fruit", it is certainly very expensive to lay hands on outside of its normal growing range.
- Durian (looks similar to Jackfruit, a little rounder, and spikier), which is very popular in Malaysia and Singapore, and has a very strong smell. It has a more creamy consistency, and tastes quite different from jackfruit. People say, it's an acquired taste. Some love it, some hate it with passion.
- Jackfruit, I got to know this first in Viet Nam, but it can also found it in other places in Asia, smells and tastes sweeter. Also the reaction to it is less extreme than to Durian; I've seen it on the Seychelles as well.
- Breadfruit, I saw and eat it first on the Seychelles. It looks more similar to Durian, in shape, but less spiky. Apparently it has a very short shelf life, but you can make great fries from it.
It's very hard to describe taste. But I encourage to try it for yourself. (Or for Durian, maybe start with chocolate coated Durian candy, or Durian ice cream, and then go for the real thing; word of advice, if you buy it at the market in pre cut pieces to eat right away, and you do not intend to make it into cake or some derived dish, go for the more expensive packs, they are usually better, less mushy. You will likely have to get over the smell already, so taking the very mushy consistency out of the equation, may make for a slightly more pleasant introduction to Durian. Jackfruit on the other hand is pretty easy, I would say. Just pay attention to get fresh, not squishy (e.g. they are too ripe, or old) pieces.
For the record, it doesn't take like pulled pork... in any respect whatsoever...
Durian - good luck getting anyone to eat the bloody thing. I love it, but it's an acquired taste.
Heck, a good number of years ago, this is what a wild banana looked like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/In...
If some enterprising farmers can figure out how to minimize the seeds and other less useful qualities, then there's a good chance this will be a new staple.
I live in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. And our local grocer (Kroger) has Jackfruit. It's $5/lb and the pod is around 6-10 lbs.
They had one on sale, and I bought it, only knowing the name. The thing was pretty good, given I knew very little about preparation.
One thing though, is use olive oil liberally. The latex it gives off is sticky as hell. Not even soap will get it to release.
Source: frequent eater of Cambodian jackfruit :)
Pretty expensive, though, per pound or per calorie.
I actually prefer it slightly unripe, since it can quickly become exceedingly gooey and sweet.