Superfoods. Traditional medicine
“Researching the health benefits of natural foods at VSU’s Agricultural Research Station.”
Superfoods. Traditional medicine. Home remedies. Around the world, consumers are clamoring for relief from ailments that modern western medicine has yet to defeat, from cancer to the common cold. In the age of the internet and global connectedness, influencers and content creators take to social media to report a “new” lifehack or kernel of ancient wisdom seemingly every day. And yet oftentimes, what comes as a revelation to someone from one part of the globe is simply an old family recipe for someone else.
Strikingly, certain foods are identified again and again as having some type of curative or restorative properties across time, cultures and geography. Garlic, ginger, turmeric, blueberries, pawpaw – these crops are amongst those that appear in all sorts of cures you can mix right at home. At VSU’s Agricultural Research Station, we call these foods nutraceuticals, as scientists examine the potential for different foods as medicine. Dr. Haiwen Li is currently conducting research on this topic, investigating the obesity and cancer-fighting properties of baby ginger. Dr. Li’s work continues the legacy of the late Dr. Rafat Siddiqui, Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Research at VSU’s College of Agriculture before his untimely passing. During his time at the Agricultural Research Station, Dr. Siddiqui studied the health benefits of foods like papaya, verifying first of all that the fruit does have medicinal qualities, and going on to identify the chemical compounds that promote good health.
Dr. Li’s work on ginger follows along similar lines. Her lab has found that ginger extract can both inhibit the growth of fat cells and kill the cells of certain cancers in mice. The effectiveness of the extract seems to vary based on its concentration, but one clear observation to come out of this project is that immature ginger actually packs greater health benefits than ginger that is fully grown and ready to harvest. As such, research continues on immature ginger and the precise mechanisms by which it seems to offer such exciting properties. While ARS scientists are hard at work on nutraceutical research, it might not be a bad idea for the rest of us revisit some home remedies our grandparents used to swear by. Who knows what potent medicines we might find already growing in our own backyards?