A vegetarian restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri, offers the Jack BBQ: jackfruit, onions, and kosher dill pickles served on sourdough bread. PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE HEBERT, THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

This question has actually already been answered here before. Last year, Rosanna wrote about the fruit, revolving around an article from The Guardian that featured a recipe for pulled pork but with jackfruit replacing the meat. Earlier that month, we had linked to an NPR segment that called them a “nutritional bonanza” that may help with the food crisis in developing countries. And the year before that, we had written another post calling the fruit a “mega food.” So when will that happen for good? Hopefully, soon! Stacie Stukin writes for NatGeo on the would-be fad-food:

When Annie Ryu first encountered a large, spiky orb called jackfruit, she was perplexed. “I thought it was a porcupine,” she says.

But when she ate it prepared in a curry, she was amazed at how meat-like it was in taste and texture. That was in 2011, when she was traveling in southern India as a premed student helping community health workers improve prenatal care. By 2014, she had waylaid her medical career to start The Jackfruit Company.

For years the fruit—native to India and part of the Moracaea family that includes breadfruit, figs, and mulberries—has been popular with vegans, who use the unripe fruit in dishes like tacos, enchiladas, and pulled “pork” barbecue sandwiches, as well as in authentic Indian curries, like ghassi, made with ground coconut, black chickpeas, and spices like red chili, coriander, and cumin.

But now there seems to be a jackfruit zeitgeist that parallels market demand for plant-based meat alternatives. According to the Nutrition Business Journal 25 percent of U.S. consumers decreased their meat intake from 2014 to 2015, and meat alternative sales nearly doubled from $69 million in 2011 to $109 million in 2015.

Even though industry advocates like Michele Simon, the executive director of the newly formed Plant Based Food Association, says that they’re “still trying to get consumers to wrap their heads around tofu and tempeh,” that isn’t stopping Ryu and several companies, including Upton Naturals, Native Forest, and Hain Celestials, from launching jackfruit products.

Chef Hari Nayak, a cookbook author and the culinary director of Café Spice, grew up in India with a jackfruit tree in his backyard. He’s developed jackfruit recipes for clients like Whole Foods Market. Here in America, he says, “It’s gone from the exotic into the mainstream.”