[CH] Re:Tasmanian Pepper Berry Challenge
raincrone@juno.com
Wed, 28 Mar 2001 08:05:18 -0500
> The leathery leaves of the plant usually contain >significant
quantities of a
> hot tasting compound, together with a large number >of the aromatic
compounds
> present in some other essential oil bearing plants,
It sounds tasty, and I'm always up for a plant-growing challenge,
especially if it results in cleared sinuses and
a tingling tongue. :)
But as an herbalist, I'd want to know which compounds were in there, and
in what amounts, before I'd wanna eat it. Hundreds if not thousands of
seemingly innocuous aromatic plant compounds are medicinal, or
genuinely risky in some way, or both at different strengths or with
different manner or length of use.
Longtime use by a particular culture is not a reliable guarantee of
safety, either. Give ya an example: through the '50s and early '60s, the
Japanese tended to blame their historically rather unusual rates of
liver cancer mainly on several specific pollutants, and were frustrated
and baffled when reducing those didn't help nearly as much as it
should have. Finally in the late '60s it was discovered that
coltsfoot-blossom tea, at that time a very popular Japanese social
beverage people regarded as being in the safe-as-houses-'cause-
Grandma served-it category, is in fact quite a nasty liver carcinogen.
Once it lost popularity, rates normalized (as if there's such a thing as
a normal rate of primary liver cancer, but you know what I mean.)
So personally, I like to know what's in stuff, and how it works, before I
put it in my aging and pollutant-soaked
carcass.
(Please, no screaming from the "You safety-minded
folks are just timid-assed alarmists who want to ban everything and take
away all our fun/freedom/
whatever" people. If you've read this carefully, you know I'm talking
about my own personal choice, not
governmental regulation...so by all means go whack the FDA if that's who
you're mad at, but please, leave me out of it. :))
Keep on rockin',
Rain
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