PURPLE POWER

Packed with nutrients, the deep-coloured jamun gives an excellent health boost during the monsoon while ensuring year-round wellness

- VIBHA VARSHNEY

JAMUN, THE Indian black plum, has an intrinsic relation with the monsoon. The seed-sized fruit, also known as Malabar plum or Syzygium cumini, waits until the arrival of the season to acquire that deep purple hue and grow sweeter and luscious. Then, with the first few showers of monsoon, it starts dropping, at times from a height of 11 m, as if to paint the surroundings and to accentuate the smell of wet earth. A remarkable aspect of jamun is that the fruit, though available only around the onset of the monsoon, contains antimicrobial compounds that can boost immunity at a time when infections, especially of the stomach, are common.

Its pulp comes loaded with vitamins and mineral nutrients, such as sodium, potassium, calcium, phosphorous, iron and zinc; water-soluble vitamins like ascorbic acid, thiamine and niacin; and even amino acids like alanine, asparagine, tyrosine, glutamine and cysteine, according to a 2014 review paper by researchers from the Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

The fruit also contains flavonoids and other compounds like jambosine and jambolin that have hypoglycemic propertiesmeaning, these compounds can halt the conversion of starch into sugar. This is the reason jamun is popular among those with diabetes. Even in the Siddha, Ayurveda and Unani systems of medicine the fruit is prescribed for patients with diabetes. Since jamun is seasonal, diabetes patients also depend on the powder made from its seeds for deriving the health benefits.