THE CAROB TREE (Ceratonia siliqua)
PRODUCES A NEARLY PERFECT FOOD
BUT OUR CITIES ARE CUTTING THEM DOWN
Common Names: St. John’s bread, Locust, Locusta
Christopher Nyerges [Nyerges has been teaching ethno-botany since 1974. He is the author of “Guide to Wild Foods,” “Foraging Edible Wild Plants of North America,” “How to Survive Anywhere,” and other books. He can be reached at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]
The fruit of the carob tree has long been regarded as one of the ultimate survival foods. It can be stored for years, its nutritious, and it requires no cooking before consumption.
According to archivist Richard E. White of Highland Park, California, a large number of the carob trees growing around Glendale, Pasadena, Temple City, and other Southland cities, from Los Angeles County to Texas, were planted by Seventh Day Adventists in the aftermath of the Great Depression and Dustbowl era. According to White, “Years ago, some farsighted Seventh Day Adventists planted carob trees around and on the grounds of almost all the Pasadena area public schools, apparently hoping that the students would gather and eat this free and nutritious food should there be another Depression and a scarcity of food. If children were encouraged to eat carob instead of candy bars, there would soon be no more litter problems under the carob trees and, perhaps, fewer cavities in youthful mouths.”
Health-food enthusiasts and authors were advocating carob over chocolate since the 1940s at least. The reasons are many. The pods, once ripened, can be picked and eaten with no preparation whatsoever (besides wiping off the dust). They are very sweet and chewy, though the hard seeds should be spit out.
Though carob is often compared to chocolate, chocolate and carob are two very different creatures. Chocolate’s appeal is the presence of the stimulating theobromine, but raw chocolate is bitter. By contrast, carob has 60 percent fewer calories per pound than chocolate and lacks any stimulants. Also, the carob pod is naturally sweet. Carob’s natural flavor is akin to dates, and the flavor is completely different from chocolate.
NUTRITION
The carob pods are analyzed as having 4 percent protein (4.5 grams of protein per 100 grams, 20.4 grams of protein per pound) and 76 percent carbohydrate. In addition, carob pods contain substantial phosphorus (81 milligrams per 100 grams, 367 milligrams per pound) and are extremely rich in calcium (352 milligrams per 100 grams, 1,597 milligrams per pound).
Carob contains none of chocolate’s oxalic acid, which interferes with the body’s ability to assimilate calcium. It is rich in A and B vitamins and many other minerals.
Clearly, carob is a superior food that ought to be utilized by more of use.
Unfortunately, many cities have since made war on the carob trees, and have slowly begun to cut them down. This is usually a result of planting them in inappropriate spots, such as between a sidewalk and street in the urban areas. In such cases, the shallowly-watered roots often break sidewalks, and the pods continually fall to the ground, causing people to sometimes trip and fall, and then sue the city!
According to arborist and Pasadena resident Timothy Snider, “When carob trees are pruned, they tend to go rotten. And I don’t mean pruned wrong, just pruned. So ideally, they should never be pruned. And they should never be planted as street trees, because the cities always want to prune them, and they usually do wood butcher jobs, and hack at the tree. Then they are even more prone to the sulfur fungus, which tends to eat them out. Carob is a good tree, but should be planted in more open areas like parks, fields, farms, and graveyards. Remember, the carob in its original state is more of a shrub. They had to be trained to be trees, so it is really inappropriate to use carobs as street trees.”
There was a short-lived carob farm in Riverside County, California, but it was discontinued because it did not produce the quality of carob that is produced in its native home.
The carob tree is native to the Middle East, where the pods have a long history of use as food. The trees widely planted throughout Pasadena and the United States – mostly in the South and the West — all produce edible pods, though they are inferior to the commercially grown pods. Most commercial carob today comes from Cyprus.
Remember the prodigal son in the Bible? After he left his father’s home, he was hungry from famine and without money, and looked in the pig’s feed for carob husks to eat (Luke 15:16). Biblical scholars who focus on the botany of the Bible believe that these husks were not corn, as commonly believed, but carob.
Carob makes another appearance in the New Testament. In Mark 1:16, John the Baptist is described as eating “locusts and wild honey” in the desert. Although many believe that these locusts were the insect relatives of grasshoppers, Thaddeus M. Harris in his Natural History of the Bible, suggests that the “locusts” were actually carob pods.
Harris spends a lot of time in his efforts to prove this, adding “It is well known that the insect locusts were eaten in the east. And commentators have exhausted their learning and ingenuity to prove that St. John ate these insects in the wilderness. But the origins of the word “locust” signifies also buds or pods of trees… And everyone must suppose that the Baptist lived on a food which nature itself furnished to accommodate his palate.” Furthermore, as Harris points out, carob pods have long been called “locusta,” and the tree is still commonly referred to as Saint John’s Bread Tree.
The ripe brown pods can be simply washed, and eaten – being sure to spit out the hard seeds.
You can also remove the seeds, and grind the pods into a sweet flour which can be added to cake, cookie, and pancake recipes, adding sweetness and a brown color. I’ve done lots of experiments with carob pods. I always remove the hard seeds first, and then I ground up the pods into a flour. I have made drinks and many types of cakes and cookies from this carob. However, I still prefer to simply eat the whole pod and spit out the seeds.
According to food writer Tony Kienitz, “As anyone who grows these trees will tell you, carobs yield a boatload of pods. In springtime, hundreds of six-inch-long, pale-green pods tassel each tree. In late summer, these pods ripen to a deep brown and begin raining to the ground. The whopping crop is a maintenance burden to some, a religious symbol to others.
“St. John’s bread is the colloquial name given to the tree based on the belief that the locusts that fed John the Baptist were actually carob pods. Dried carob graces Jewish tables during the holiday Tu Bishvat. During Ramadan, Muslims serve drinks made with carob juice.”
