No, jackfruit isn't the next kale
Talk about it at the recent Organic Produce Summit spurred my colleague to write this up for The Packer, “Is jackfruit the next kale?”
It's not even close. I'm not sure we'll ever find “the next kale.”
What made kale the trendiest of trendy vegetables over the past five or six years is people looking for the superfood to end all superfoods. They wanted compact, instant gratification nutrition that you could shred up, dehydrate, powder and otherwise sprinkle all over everything or hide in a smoothie.
BAM!
Instant health and wellness.
And it wasn't a faceless, cream-colored multivitamin pill, either. It was super green, and green, in the eyes of consumers wanting to eat better but tempted by 99-cent French fries at Wendy's, equals goodness.
Kale was, and is, sanctimoniously good for you, the “most nutrient-dense vegetable.”
And, depending on your taste buds, you can actually make it taste good, although I get a lot of push back on that from some circles.
Trend Spotter: Jackfruit
What is jackfruit? Jackfruit is trendy, exotic and – when hacked apart and stewed with barbeque sauce – it can kind of seem like meat.
But guys, jackfruit doesn't have a lot to add from a nutritional value standpoint. You can eat a jackfruit “pulled pork” sandwich, but you're getting the nutritional equivalent of three pieces of bun. It's carbs.
I've had tasty jackfruit, and I've had OMG PINEAPPLE GYMSOCKS STINKY OVERRIPE jackfruit.
Retailers on the leading edge of stocking whole jackfruit know this smell.
It's not a straight up meat replacement, either, unless you're boiling and toasting the seeds, similar to the process of making chestnuts. No one talks about the whole latex allergy thing, either. It's possible for latex-allergic people to react to jackfruit (among other tropical fruits.)
And there's another problem – kale is affordable, and there are dozens of fresh-cut items with kale, and it's pretty easy to put kale in just about any salad.
The same goes with kale's trendy cousin, cauliflower.
Cauliflower crumbles? Doable, on a mass scale.
Shredded kale salad? Definitely doable.
We haven't figured out how to cut jackfruit on a manageable scale yet.
So, yes, jackfruit is trendy, but it's no kale.
Until we get it a little more manageable, a little easier to handle, and a little less 20-pounds-of-spiky, sticky weirdness, it's a $30 novelty for most consumers.
