How to Get Food From a Breadfruit Plant

You are lost on an island in the South Pacific. You've been able to procure fresh water and erect a crude shelter (priorities number one and two in a survival situation), but now your stomach is rumbling and you know without a doubt that you must find food and soon. Never fear as your location almost guarantees that you are close to a breadfruit tree and that means sustenance. Here's how to get it.

Things You'll Need

• Pot
• Water
• Fire
• Rock

Instructions

1. Learn well how to positively identify a breadfruit plant. The breadfruit is a tree and can grow up to 30 feet high. Its leaves, about 1 foot wide and 2.5 feet long, are dark green and divided. Breadfruit trees possess an almost lime-colored fruit, roughly the shape of a ball, that can measure up to 1 foot in diameter when fully grown.

2. Locate a breadfruit tree. Look for the breadfruit throughout the South Pacific, the West Indies, Polynesia and anywhere in humid, tropical regions, on the edges of forests.

3. Harvest the breadfruit tree's ball-like fruit.

4. Remove the hard outer covering of some of the fruit. The pulp inside is edible raw.

5. Slice up several other fruits and lay the slices out in the sun to dry. Once parched, grind the slices up into flour using a rock and use as desired.

6. Remove the seeds from the fruit and throw them into a pot of boiling water over a fire--or simply roast them over a fire. After ten minutes of boiling or roasting, eat the seeds.

Tips & Warnings

• The sap of the breadfruit tree is very thick and sticky and can be used as a caulk or a glue if needed.

• If you aren't sure that you are dealing with a breadfruit plant, don't eat any part of it.