A fungus widely used in folk medicine in Taiwan – Taiwanofungus camphoratus – has been proven to contain an anti-inflammatory compound whether it grows in the wild or is cultivated, a local research team said Monday.
David Sheng-Yang Wang, an associate professor in National Chung Hsing University’s Department of Forestry and the head of the team, unveiled the results of the study at a news conference that was also attended by university president Shaw Jei-fu.

The study was also recently published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Though T. camphoratus contains some 100 components, the team was able to prove that the fungus, which can only be found in the wild growing on the inner bark of a local camphor tree called Cinnamomum kanehirai, has anti-inflammatory properties through its bioactive compound antrocamphin A.

The study also found that the same amount of antrocamphin A can be derived from T. camphoratus after being cultivated for nine months, Wang said.

In isolating the antrocamphin A compound, the study only solidified the medical credentials of the fungus, which currently sells for up to NT$500,000 per kilo when found in the wild.

It has long been prized in folk medicine for treating liver cancer, food and drug intoxications, abdominal pains and hypertension, but Wang cautioned that because there are no standards used to verify the quality of the fungus sold in Taiwan, big discrepancies exist in the price and quality available.

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Read the whole thing, and incorporate these foods into your diet.

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February is Heart Health month and what better day than Valentine’s Day to keep you and your sweetheart healthy? Remember, Food is medicine and the best way to get this medicine is to eat whole foods to get your daily nutrients.

For the appetizer, you can create a dish with tomatoes,feta cheese, balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil and rosemary. Tomatoes have lycopene, an antioxidant similar to Vitamin A, which provides that bright red color to tomotoes. Lycopene is believed to have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. It helps prevent prostate cancer. Lycopene is absorbed better when tomatoes are cooked, or combined with olive oil, as in this dish. Lycopene is also found in strawberries, watermelon, guava, apricots and pink grapefruit.

Rosemary has been traditionally felt to improve memory. In fact, in ancient Greece, students would place rosemary sprigs in their hair when studying for exams. Rosemary should not be used by pregnant women or women who wish to become pregnant.

Garlic is believed to help reduce blood pressure and the risk of heart disease. Slicing, chopping, mincing or pressing garlic before cooking will enhance the beneficial effects of garlic. Garlic is also being investigated for it’s potential anti-cancer properties. Garlic should be eaten raw, or stand for ten minutes before heating, in order to preserve it’s beneficial properties.

The sliced avocado is a nice accompaniment because has heart healthy monounsaturated fat.

…
Cinnamon, which was used in traditional Chinese medicine, is sprinkled over the dessert. Again, it is felt that cinnamon may help control blood sugar levels.

Here are some heart healthy beverages that go well with a healthy Valentine’s Day dinner. First there is hot green tea, with a bit of sliced ginger. Green tea and black tea come from the same plant. The key difference between the two is in preparation. For black tea, the leaves are allowed to ferment, a process believed to lessen the potency of the active ingredients in green tea. Green tea is made by steaming the freshly cut tea leaves. Eating lycopene rich foods as well as green tea daily is felt to reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

Red wine is part of the Mediterranean diet and can help reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke. Remember though, you lose that benefit to the heart if you have more than one glass of red wine a day. The same benefit to the heart can be gained by drinking purple grape juice instead of red wine. And pomegranate juice has three times as much antioxidant activity as red wine, so it may be a healthier option.

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Feeling tired and drained? You’re not alone.

“Lack of energy” is one of the top five complaints doctors hear.

According to Oriental medicine, the cold months are the perfect time to recharge and generate vital energy – Qi – in order to live, look and feel better.

The ancient Chinese believed human should live in harmony with the natural cycles of their environment. The cold and darkness of winter urge us to slow down. This is the time of year to reflect on health, replenish energy and conserve strength.

Winter is ruled by the water element, which is associated with the kidneys, bladder and adrenal glands. The kidneys are considered the source of all energy or “Qi” within the body. They store all of the reserve Qi in the body so that it can be used in ties of stress and change, or to heal, prevent illness, and age gracefully. During the winter months it is important to nurture and nourish the kidney Qi. It is the time where this energy can be most easily depleted.

The Nei Ching, an ancient Chinese classic, advises people to go to sleep early and rise late, after the sun’s rays have warmed the atmosphere a bit.

Eating warm hearty soups, whole grains, and roasted nuts help to warm the body’s core and to keep it nourished. Sleep early, rest well, stay warm and expend a minimum quantity of energy.

Seasonal acupuncture treatments in winter serve to nurture and nourish kidney Qi which can greatly enhance the body’s ability to thrive in times of stress, aid in healing, prevent illness and increase vitality.

Here are some dietary suggestions that can lead to an increase in vitality and radiant health.

Drink ample water. Eat kidney-shaped foods such as black beans and kidney beans. Eat blue and black foods, blueberries, blackberries, mulberry and black beans. Eat seeds. flax, pumpkin, sunflower and black sesame along with nuts, especially walnuts and chestnuts which have been found especially effective for increasing kidney Qi. Eat dark, leafy green vegetables along with asparagus, cucumbers and celery.

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Medicinal or tonic cuisine is a centuries-old tradition in China. It’s based on the notion that all ingredients can be classified as yin (foods that slow the metabolism), yang (foods that increase it) or neutral. When combined in the right proportions, these ingredients can help attain the key to all health: balance.

Tonic cuisine’s scientific efficacy remains up for debate, but Chinese herbal doctors swear by its powers to help cleanse and rejuvenate the body, prevent disease and maintain health and longevity. “There are around a hundred Chinese herbal medicines that can be considered both as food and medicine,” says Mary Cheng, senior manager and pharmacist at Eu Yan Sang, a 130-year-old traditional Chinese medicine company. “We eat tonic cuisine for the beneficial effects of the herbs themselves, preserving your health, and because [the herbs] blend great with the dish.” (See 10 things to do in Beijing.)

Appetite whetted? Here’s a look at some of the ingredients most commonly used in tonic cuisine, and some restaurants that serve it.

FOX NUT
Valued for its antiaging properties, the neutral fox nut is also said to benefit the internal organs (particularly the spleen) and be an antidote to indigestion.

ASTRAGALUS ROOT
Typically taken in teas or soups, astragalus, a yang tonic, is believed to strengthen and promote the flow of energy, to protect the immune system and to reduce inflammations.

WOLFBERRY
Otherwise known as lycium fruit, wolfberry is rich in antioxidants and minerals. Considered a yin tonic, it is thought to remove toxins from the liver and kidneys.

JUJUBE
Also called red date, jujube is a neutral tonic used to relieve stress, replenish energy, and treat anemia.

LOTUS SEED
This neutral tonic is believed by herbalists to strengthen the spleen, replenish the kidney and nourish the heart.

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So, on Chopsticks we present “Steamed Black-bone Chicken with Red Dates and Chinese Yam”. It’ll help you keep warm during those chilly winter days and can be the centerpiece of a whole table when you entertain guests.

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In your excellent article “Strategies for dodging colds, flu” (Living Here, Nov. 15), you suggest eating 10 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I have read articles in the past that suggest five servings. I have never been sure if it is meant to be a combined total of five fruits and veggies or five servings of each. No information is given as to what amount of a fruit or vegetable is considered a serving. I assume a serving would be a half-cup, as 12 one-cup servings would be 3 quarts, too much for a 130-pound woman to eat. Do you recommend equal quantities of fruits and veggies, or does it matter?

– Opal Ruff

Thanks for your great question – it’s time for us to update those fruit and veggie recommendations!

As you may remember, a number of years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture came out with its slogan “Eat 5 To Stay Alive,” meaning eat five servings of fruits and veggies per day. More recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teamed up with other organizations, including the Produce for Better Health Foundation, to come up with more specific (and increased) recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake for Americans based on age, gender and activity level; the more active you are, the more you need.

And because serving sizes can be confusing and at times misleading, recommendations are now made in cups of produce per day rather than servings per day.

For example, a moderately active female age 19 to 50 needs about 5 cups of fruits and veggies each day. (Moderately active means you get 30 to 60 minutes of exercise per day.) It’s usually recommended that you eat about two-thirds of this as vegetables and one-third as fruit, so that would mean roughly 2 cups of fruit and 3 cups of vegetables.

Why more vegetables than fruit? Vegetables tend to be a little more packed with phytonutrients than fruits, and they contain less sugar.

In case you’re wondering how to measure out cups of fruits and veggies, 1 cup usually refers to a measuring cup, just as you would use in cooking. But there are exceptions. In the vegetable group, 1 cup of raw or cooked vegetables, or 1 cup of 100 percent vegetable juice is considered a cup, but you actually need 2 cups of raw leafy greens for that amount.

In the fruit group, 1 cup of fruit or 100 percent fruit juice is a cup, while a half-cup of dried fruit is the equivalent of 1 cup for these purposes.

Eating more produce, and less high-fat and processed food, is strongly associated with a reduced risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. In fact, the American Institute for Cancer Research estimates that if the only change we made in our diets was to eat the recommended amount of fruits and veggies, cancer rates would drop by about 20 percent. Focusing on fruits and veggies as the mainstay of your diet should also lead to reduced caloric intake and weight loss.

Here’s a sample fruit-and-veggie menu for one day that provides more than 5 cups of produce. You’ll see that it’s not that hard to get your 5 cups in.

• Breakfast: A banana on your cereal plus a half-cup of low-sodium tomato juice.

• Midmorning snack: A half-cup of raisins or other dried fruit.

• Lunch: A large salad with 2 cups of raw spinach leaves, plus 1 cup of other veggies and fruits (tomatoes, carrots, shredded beets, cabbage, etc.).

• Dinner: 1 cup of cooked veggies, such as broccoli or cauliflower.

• Dessert: Half-cup of berries or cut-up fruit (plus a little dark chocolate, of course!).

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A promising cancer drug, first discovered in a mushroom commonly used in Chinese medicine, could be made more effective thanks to researchers who have discovered how the drug works. The research is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and was carried out at The University of Nottingham.

In research to be published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Dr Cornelia de Moor of The University of Nottingham and her team have investigated a drug called cordycepin, which was originally extracted from a rare kind of wild mushroom called cordyceps and is now prepared from a cultivated form.

Dr de Moor said: “Our discovery will open up the possibility of investigating the range of different cancers that could be treated with cordycepin. We have also developed a very effective method that can be used to test new, more efficient or more stable versions of the drug in the Petri dish. This is a great advantage as it will allow us to rule out any non-runners before anyone considers testing them in animals.”

Cordyceps is a strange parasitic mushroom that grows on caterpillars (see image). Properties attributed to cordyceps mushroom in Chinese medicine made it interesting to investigate and it has been studied for some time. In fact, the first scientific publication on cordycepin was in 1950. The problem was that although cordycepin was a promising drug, it was quickly degraded in the body. It can now be given with another drug to help combat this, but the side effects of the second drug are a limit to its potential use.

Dr de Moor continued: “Because of technical obstacles and people moving on to other subjects, it’s taken a long time to figure out exactly how cordycepin works on cells. With this knowledge, it will be possible to predict what types of cancers might be sensitive and what other cancer drugs it may effectively combine with. It could also lay the groundwork for the design of new cancer drugs that work on the same principle.”

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A traditional Chinese dish in celebrating the first day of winter is “Tang Yuen”, a dessert with sweet rice (powder) and brown sugar as its main ingredients. Typically, this family oriented dessert is where the kids help with kneading sweet rice dough (mix sweet rice powder and water) and shaping them into bit size snow balls. Throw in the sweet rice snowballs into a pot of boiling water, and when they are done, the little snow balls will bobble about in the pot. The brown sugar is added to the boiled water to taste. For texture and taste variety, grounded black sesame paste or red bean paste are common fillings.

Other than having a legitimate excuse to have a sweet treat, the main ingredients, sweet rice and brown sugar are also a good source of nutrition. The properties of both are warm and neutral and are governed by the spleen/stomach meridians, and thus, after a bowl, one feels warmth from the inside out.

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Every morning at 6am, Murah Mansyah and his sister Devi raise the shutters of their stall at the Tekka hawker centre in Singapore’s Little India district to serve up a mouthwatering selection of Malay and Indonesian specialities. According to my guide, Winnie Ubbink, their little shop is a popular place for breakfast. She recommended starting the day with a fiery bowl of lontong (rice cakes) in a broth of coconut milk, chopped red chillies, cabbage, potatoes and a boiled egg. Nothing gets the heart pumping like a mountain of chopped chilli first thing in the morning and at S$3 (£1.30) it seemed like a delicious steal – but breakfast didn’t end there.

Either side of the Mansyahs’ “Devi” stall were rows of Northern and Southern Indian outlets from which Winnie returned bearing roti prata (a flat bread with a fried egg inside – a Singaporean derivative of the Pakistani and Indian paratha, served with a curry dipping sauce); dhosa (black lentil flour pancakes accompanied by lentil curry and coconut chutney dips) and two glasses of hot, sweet tea.

You swiftly learn that a visit to Singapore is a series of feasts punctuated by short, sharp bursts of sightseeing to burn off enough calories to make room for the next meal. Food is so important to Singaporeans that, in the island’s many languages and dialects, they’ve replaced the greeting “how are you?” with the more specific “have you eaten?”

To give my tastebuds a brief rest, I immersed my other senses in the exotic aromas, colours and clamour of Little India’s Serangoon Road, where Hindi pop songs blast out from shop-fronts selling everything from saris to sweets. This is the place to come for vegetarian restaurants, too, while stalls festooned with flower garlands compete for attention with henna tattoo stores, jewellery shops and fortune-telling parrots.

Across the Rochor Canal, the golden dome of the Sultan Mosque rises over the Arab quarter. In Arab Street, carpet sellers display their wares in neatly rolled bundles propped up in open-fronted colonial-era shops. Basketware, leather goods and jewellery were out in abundance, but the best place for some timely Christmas shopping was the Mustafa Centre, a maze-like multi-storey emporium rammed to the rafters with everything from high definition televisions to jars of Tiger Balm at knock-down prices.

Shopping is a national pastime almost on a par with eating in Singapore. However, my spending spree was thankfully curtailed by an appointment to try the fish head curry at Little India’s Banana Leaf Apolo restaurant, which has been serving up the disembodied heads of red snappers since 1974. The head arrives complete with eyeballs in a hot curry sauce with rice, served on a banana leaf rather than a plate and is traditionally scooped up in your fingers – although knives and forks are provided. I was expecting something fiddly and soggy but instead was rewarded with succulent, firm white meat and a rich curry sauce that turned my finger nails yellow with turmeric.

“Food is one of the main things that keeps our different ethnic groups connected,” said Winnie.

If anywhere lives up to the cliché of “cultural melting pot”, it is Singapore, where immigrants from around the world arrived in droves after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles set up a free trading post there in 1819. Raffles oversaw the demarcation lines drawn up for the ethnic areas: the area south of the Singapore River became Chinatown; a swamp at the mouth of the river was reclaimed for the commercial district, where the gleaming modern business district has arisen; Muslims were settled in Kampong Glam, originally the site of a Malay village, named after the gelam tree which grew in the area; and across the canal was Little India.

Today, Chinese chefs, including James Ho at the excellent My Humble House restaurant on the Esplanade, experiment with condiments and ingredients such as mango chutney, deep-fried curry leaves, and Japanese kurobuta pork, while a Tamil chef at a hawker centre might serve a fried noodle dish.

Assimilation hasn’t always been peaceful: in the 1960s race riots erupted between the predominantly Muslim Malay and the southern Chinese, the largest immigrant community. More recently, in the interests of cultural harmony, there has been a renaissance of the Peranakan culture, the descendants of 15th- and 16th-century Chinese immigrants who intermarried with the Malay people and differentiated themselves from later waves of migrants from China with their unique language, art, food and dress.

At the forefront of this cultural revival is the Peranakan museum, recently opened in Armenian Street. One of the few surviving Peranakan traditions is the closest thing Singapore has to an indigenous cuisine: Nonya, a hybrid of Chinese and Malay food. Nonya was a term used to describe Peranakan women and their considerable homemaking abilities. Aside from being dab hands with a needle and thread (the embroidered robes and jewellery on display at the museum are dazzlingly intricate), the Nonya created an early form of fusion cooking – blending Chinese and Malay ingredients to delicious effect.

Chicken, fish and seafood form the backbone of Nonya cuisine, along with pork, cooked in rich curries made from rice flour and coconut cream. One of the most popular dishes is laksa – seafood and noodles in a spicy coconut soup, which I slurped down one lunchtime at the Straits Kitchen on the ground floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The Straits Kitchen specialises in buffet lunches with most of Singapore’s culinary styles represented, including Nonya.

Other popular dishes here include Hainanese chicken rice (steamed chicken, chicken soup and rice cooked in chicken stock) and rojak (a raw turnip, pineapple, tofu, torch ginger, guava and apple salad sprinkled with nuts, covered in an intense sweet and sour sauce).

Winnie remembered hawker salesmen coming to her childhood home selling rojak, which they wrapped up in the large leaves of the simpoh air tree – she pointed out the tree on a hike along a newly opened walkway linking the city’s substantial green spaces known as the Southern Ridges. Hawkers were moved off the streets in the 1960s and into the modern food courts that are now dotted around the city – most atmospheric of which is Lau Pa Sat Festival market on Raffles Quay, an octagonal Victorian pavilion with towering white wrought iron arches.

Although most Singaporeans prefer to eat cheaply and cheerfully in the hawker centres, there is an abundance of fine dining opportunities in the city. Claymore Hill, off the main shopping strip of Orchard Road, has a number of high-end restaurants, including Les Amis, where Austrian chef Armin Leitgeb – an alumnus of several Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe and the US – creates his menus to include the best local, seasonal ingredients. His lobster pasta with Japanese shrimps and black Perigord truffles was a harmonious blend of geography and flavours that could only be achieved somewhere like Singapore.

The Fullerton, where I stayed, is a grand, Doric-columned building, that was a post office in the colonial era. It also offers a fine-dining experience at its top-storey Italian restaurant with roof terrace, The Lighthouse, run by Italian chef Diego Martinelli. Here the view provides plenty of architectural clues to the high esteem with which food is held in Singapore.

To the left are the four upturned chopsticks of the Civilian War Memorial, each symbolising one of the city’s four main ethnic groups – Chinese, Malay, Indian and “Others”. These 61-metre high utensils commemorate the tens of thousands of civilians massacred under Japanese occupation during the Second World War. To the right of the war memorial are the spiky metallic shells of the Esplanade concert hall, modelled on what Singaporeans refer to as the “king of fruit”, the durian.

I tried my first durian at a fruit stall in the Geylang district east of the city centre. They come in varying degrees of potency – the strongest given the designations “D24 Super” and “Mountain King”. Biting into the creamy yellow flesh of a D24 revealed notes of custard, vanilla, mango and strong hints of onion and garlic. I was grateful that after taking on the “king of fruits” it is customary to kiss the “queen” – the refreshing mangosteen.

Singapore’s signature dish is chilli crab. One of the best crab restaurants is at Long Beach Seafood at East Coast Parkway. I marginally preferred the drier, fragrant black pepper crab to the rich red sauce of the chilli crab – and it was less messy, too, as fingers are the only way of breaking into the hard-shell crustaceans. Fortunately for any visitors who are just stopping off in Singapore for a few hours in transit, Long Beach is just a 10-minute taxi ride away from Changi airport. Just remember to wash your hands before you get back on the plane, and see if you can wangle an upgrade: you may well need the extra belly space.

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