Over 80% of the world’s hungry live in tropical and subtropical regions where slight increases in the cost of imported food, fuel, and fertilizers lead to greater food insecurity. Traditional knowledge and crops in these areas are diminishing, and diet-related diseases like type II diabetes are rising. Breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson) Fosberg, has been a staple and traditional crop in the Pacific for over 3,000 years and is now grown for food security in the Caribbean and other tropical regions. Although some evidence suggests that a traditional diet based on breadfruit and other Pacific staples might prevent type II diabetes, detailed scientific studies are lacking. A major issue is the reported wide variability in the fruit’s nutritional composition, including many different cultivars grown in diverse ecosystems. A meta-analysis of nutritional data was conducted to determine a consensus on fruit nutrition. We identified 41 individual studies providing rough data on carbohydrates, vitamins, and/or minerals. Most studies lack sufficient botanical data such as species, cultivar names, or descriptive information indicating the fruit’s maturity stage or local environmental factors like soil composition or rainfall. Despite these shortcomings, the compositional data of breadfruit suggest it has potential to mitigate type II diabetes and obesity in Oceania and elsewhere in the tropics where breadfruit is cultivated. Further studies will identify specific elite cultivars recommended for this purpose.
