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The traditional wisdom of using raw or green jackfruit in the treatment of diabetes has got the approval of science now. The results of a clinical trial presented recently at the American Diabetes Association annual conference shows that the consumption of Jackfruit365™ Green Jackfruit flour meal has led to the reduction of Glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c).
As many as 40 participants with Type 2 diabetes mellitus participated in the 12-week trial conducted in Kerala. The trial was initiated by corporate professional-turned-jackfruit entrepreneur James Joseph, founder of Jackfruit365™.
Tell us a bit about your tryst with jackfruit...
I took a career break in 2012 to write a book about my journey back to my home town without compromising my career. While writing the book I could see the jackfruit tree in my backyard and every day I saw a jackfruit on it growing fast.
In two months, it was fully mature and as a distraction to book writing I started asking myself, this is such a good food I grew up with, how come most of it is wasted? This thought led to several experiments and the fruit just stuck on to me ever since.
What was the initial response to seeing jackfruit in a new light?
A lot of people, including close relatives were disappointed that I left a highly respectable and rewarding career for something unattractive and treated as a nuisance by most people. Now I see a shift in their perception. I am now more known for my work with jackfruit than the 20 years I spent working for MNCs like Microsoft, Ford & 3M.
What inspired you to explore the use of raw or green jackfruit in diabetes treatment?
During the initial days, I realised jackfruit had a perception issue and needed a re-branding. So I developed the brand Jackfruit365™ in 2013 and placed freeze-dried jackfruits on five-star hotel menus with a lot of support from the executive chefs.
These surprise placements created media interest and that led to people from all walks of life reaching out to me with their knowledge and experience on jackfruit.
In April 2014, a priest told me about a hypoglycaemic incident he had when he took his normal dose of insulin after a cup of traditional green jackfruit meal of Kerala prepared like a mashed potato from mature unripe green jackfruit with coconut and turmeric, instead of his regular cup of rice. This indicated that the blood sugar level did not increase as much as a cup of rice would. This event created a scientific curiosity within me to explore the use of green jackfruit in diabetes treatment.
First I conducted a nutritional analysis and found out one cup of mature green jackfruit has 40% lower carbohydrate and calories than a cup of rice, and twice the amount of fibre. To reconfirm I conducted a glycemic study through Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Services and found out glycemic load is also 40% lower than a cup of rice.
The results are available on GlycemicIndex.com database. It was perfectly in line with the Standard of Care for Diabetes to reduce carbs, reduce calories, reduce less glycemic load and increase fibre in our daily food as part of Medical Nutrition Therapy for Diabetes.
However, many doctors I met suggested a randomised control trial, the gold standard for scientific evidence, for the wider acceptance of green jackfruit flour as a good replacement for rice or rice products.
By this time, we had developed a patent-pending flour from green jackfruit, based on a prompt from former President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. Jackfruit365™ green jackfruit flour utilises pectin in jackfruit for binding and can replace a tablespoon of rice flour or wheat flour in most common daily meals prepared in India from dosa to roti. In the flour form, it was easy to conduct a placebo-controlled randomised control trial on diabetes patients, like most drug trials are conducted.
What role will this finding play in diabetes treatment? What do experts say about this?
Benefits seen are as significant as medicine, hence when Jackfruit365™ flour is taken along with medicines, it may help decrease the use of medicines and insulin over a period of time. Those who are in pre-diabetes or early-stage diabetes can use green jackfruit flour as a medical nutrition therapy before starting on medication to control blood sugar.
Expert opinion is a three-month reduction in HbA1c compared to placebo group which is impressive and is both statistically and clinically significant.
How can jackfruit help mitigate nutritional and climate change concerns?
India and South Asia region has the lowest consumption of vegetables and fruits in the world and this is the root cause for our exploding number of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes. This is now also turning out to be the biggest risk factor for Covid-19 related deaths.
WHO’s recommendation to reduce NCDs is to increase vegetable and fruit consumption and reduce calorie density in our food like refined rice and wheat. One tree of jackfruit on an average produces one tonne of vegetable and fruit every year and most of it goes waste. If we are serious about controlling diabetes in India, we need a national plan to use every jackfruit produced in the country to reduce wheat flour and rice flour consumption.
This study clearly shows that if we can replace three spoons of wheat flour or rice flour with green jackfruit flour, we can reduce blood sugar levels and it is perfectly in line with WHO recommendation to control NCDs.