Breadfruit is low-fat, energy rich and grows easily in tropical climates.Healthy Pizza
One serving of it has almost half of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C, more potassium than a banana, some anti-oxidants, a moderate amount of essential vitamins and minerals, can help reduce obesity, lower blood pressure and ward off cancer causing chemicals in the body.Along with the health benefits of breadfruit, it makes awesome pizza.
Today we're exploring how easy it is to make healthy food that not only works well in your body, but nurtures local economy, points consumption choices toward sustainability and creates the opportunity for a local food industry.
Another Breadfruit fact: in Yap, it is second only to coconuts for falling from trees and smashing car windshields and rooftops.Harvesting the fruit and preserving it from being damaged in the process is a two-person job. One is the cutter and the other is the catcher. A long stick with a blade attached cuts the fruit from its branch, and it can fall from over 20 feet, one lucky individual is tasked with getting a hand-made coconut leaves basket underneath it before it hits the ground and goes omnidirectional.
There's more than one kind of breadfruit, each one with its own density and personality. Boiled, peeled, then pounded, or passed through a food mill, creates the base. With some water, salt, yeast and a bit of flour (max 2%) to get rid of the stickiness the breadfruit turns into ready-to-bake pizza dough.
The complete recipe works for both Yam or Breadfruit, however the breadfruit requires less flour, giving it the advantage when it comes to health and lowering dependency on imported products.
Creating Opportunities
Local food isn't easy, first it must be harvested, cooked and peeled, then processed into fusion products... and finally prepared to eat.That is either a lot of work for one person, or an opportunity for local businesses to create a local food industry and supply chain: from harvesting, to making breadfruit flour, to produce semi-added value products like dough, and finally to process the final product: breadfruit pizza.
Harvesting and selling local foods is already being done, the processing into ready-to-use and final products is a gap that can be filled by local entrepreneurs.
With ready-to-bake pizza ingredients in local stores, the preparation time barely exceeds that of making Ramen and canned meat for several people, at the roughly the same cost - however the health and economic benefits go through the roof in favor of the pizza.
Growing a Healthy Economy
People could spend the same amount of time and money preparing a better tasting and healthier meal that the whole family loves that is also good for Yap's future.When you purchase packaged and canned food your money leaves the island and supports a global corporation that results in cheaper, unhealthy and more shelf stabilized products showing up that keep us in the same consumption and economic cycle.
When you purchase a local food product your money stays on the island and goes to the family business who made up part of Yap's food industry.
Consumption choices that lead to a healthier future for Yap and that could serve as a model for the rest of the world.
Breadfruit pizza dough can be stored for 1-2 days without refrigeration, up two 2 weeks in a freezer and left-over pizza is just as good as the first day.
With the ingredients ready to go, pizza preparation is a matter of chopping toppings and spreading the dough into a pan. These pizzas had pork, eggplant, onion, local chili and bell peppers as well as mozzarella cheese, and cooked in 25 minutes.
Healthy local food so easy to prepare that even a blogger can do it made from less than 10% imported ingredients.
Alex Raimon and family provided the breadfruit from their property in Tomil and Yap Fusion presented the final product with them at their home.
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