On one bitterly cold day recently James Wong found himself walking home in a
light coat. He's an optimist, he explains. But just to make sure he didn't
get a cold, when he got home he made his granny's chicken soup, using
echinacea root, goji berries and extreme quantities of ginger, chillies and
garlic.
“Well, I didn't get a cold,” he says. “It's something I make all the time. In
Asia you don't have a big thick dividing line between food and medicine.
That soup would be eaten as dinner even if you weren't feeling under the
weather.”
Wong's recipe for his Immune System Booster is in his book, Grow Your Own
Drugs, a set of instructions for plant-based remedies and beauty products
that accompanies the eponymous BBC Two series starting tonight. The title
may seem provocative but Wong is an engaging geek (the geek bit is his word)
with a mission: he wants people in the West to start looking at plants not
as soft furnishings but as chemical factories that are the source of elixirs
for everything from insomnia to cystitis and head lice.
Before you dismiss the idea of natural healthcare as flaky, he points out that
many plants contain the same active ingredients as over-the-counter drugs.
Aspirin, though now synthetic, was originally derived from sal acetic acid
which is found in willow, meadowsweet and the shrub spirea. Morphine-based
painkillers are based on opium from poppies, and the contraceptive pill was
originally isolated from the Mexican wild yam. The World Health Organisation
estimates that 80 per cent of the world's population relies on plant-based
medicine as its key form of healthcare.
“It's cultural. In Malaysia, where I spent a lot of my childhood, Western
medicine came along and was considered useful, but as an adjunct to
traditional medicine that never went away. In Northern Europe the Industrial
Revolution meant that people were ripped out of the countryside, where they
had this rich ethnobotanical knowledge, and popped into cities. Within a
couple of generations all that knowledge is lost. There's very little
methodology to pass on.”
Wong is 27 and an ethnobotanist - a scientist who studies the use of plants.
It was at his grandmother's home in Malaysia that he absorbed the idea that
plants aren't just pretty, but that many of them can be functional. “We'd
walk around my grandmother's back garden and she'd rip off a leaf of a palm
tree and a couple of minutes of origami later she'd have a perfectly usable
hat that would last for quite a long time,” he says.
“The plant next to it was one they used to stitch injuries together during the
Second World War. Not only was it fibrous but it had antiseptic qualities.
It was magical to me as a kid that you could do so much with the things most
people walk past. People have this idea that you have to hike to the depths
of the Amazon to find the source of plant-based medicines, and that once you
have got them you need a fully equipped pharmaceutical laboratory full of
people in white coats preparing this stuff in really elaborate processes.
“That's a myth. Plant-based medicines have evolved as a response to situations
where people don't have a lot of time or money. When I was studying shamanic
medicine in Ecuador, if a woman had eight kids and one of them had stomach
ache, she had to find something in her immediate environment that she could
cook up on the stove while taking care of her other seven children.”
What about evidence that this stuff works? Where are the clinical trials to
support the use of chicken soup as an immune system booster? They don't
exist, of course, because drug companies don't invest in expensive trials
unless they know they will get a return in sales. Wong is careful not to
make claims that he can't back up, and his book includes a number of
disclaimers - consult a doctor before trying natural remedies, and
particularly if you are on any other medication, check for allergies, make
sure you have identified the plants you use correctly, and so on. “We're not
saying this headache remedy is clinically proven to cure headaches, but that
the plants in it contain ingredients that have been demonstrated to have an
effect. The chemicals in them demand as much respect as a conventional drug
and can be considered a drug.”
There is a Blue Peter-ish charm in Wong's message and it chimes well with the
credit-crunch enthusiasm for anything homemade and economical. Many of the
ingredients are easily available and you don't need specialist equipment to
make them. Wong, who shares a house with fellow botanists in West London,
recalls how one housemate spent £25 on echinacea tincture. “I said do you
know what's in it? It's just echinacea chopped up and stuck in vodka for a
couple of weeks. There's echinacea in the garden, and I've got bottles of
vodka that people have left behind at parties. I don't drink it, I use it to
make traditional remedies.”
Grow Your Own Drugs, BBC Two, tonight, 8.30pm. The book, by James Wong, is
published by HarperCollins at £16.99. Available from Times BooksFirst for
£15.29, free p&p. 0870 1608080, timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
Sage honey for sore throat
Pungent sage leaves (Salvia officinalis) contain antiseptic, anti-inflammatory
and decongestant properties. The herb that it takes its name from the Latin
verb “to save”. Combined with the antibacterial and healing properties of
honey, this makes a great soother.
Ingredients
1 large bunch fresh sage leaves
Enough runny honey (buy sage honey if you can) to cover the leaves
Method
1. Wash and dry the sage leaves and place in a small pan with enough honey to
cover. Simmer gently for 1 hour. Allow to cool to a temperature you can
handle. (Be careful; sugar solutions and honey can become very hot and cause
scalding.)
2. Strain the honey into a sterilised jar containing a sprig of sage, if
desired.
Use
Take 1 tsp whenever needed to soothe a sore throat. You can also use to
sweeten and medicate hot lemon drinks for colds and flu; take 3-4 times a
day when needed.
Neem nit treatment for head lice
This recipe, free of organophosphates, uses plant extracts with known insecticidal
properties to kill lice and nits.
Ingredients
20 tbsp (100g) fresh rosemary leaves
20 tbsp (25g) fresh lavender flowers
200ml neem oil
200ml almond oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp tea tree oil
Method
1. Strip the leaves and flowers from their sprigs.
2. Combine the neem and almond oil in a measuring jug.
3. Crush half the rosemary and lavender with a mortar and pestle with a little
of the oil. Place the mashed-up herbs in a saucepan. Repeat with the second
half of the herbs, again adding oil for crushing.
4. Place the crushed herbs, neem and almond oil in the pan, and add the
chopped garlic. Heat gently for about 20 mins.
5. Strain through a sieve lined with muslin. Add the tea tree oil to the
reserved oil, stir, then filter into a sterilised 500ml bottle.
Use
Apply to dry hair, making sure that the hair is covered and that the oil
penetrates to the scalp. Cover with a towel and leave on for at least 1
hour, or overnight if possible. Then wash off with two applications of
shampoo. Apply conditioner and comb through with a nit comb. Use the next
application 7 days later to deal with any new nits.
Goji Berry and Shitake Soup to boost your immune system
In China, soups rather than teas are the traditional way of administering
health-giving herbs. This one is packed with nutrients that help to boost
immunity and generally ease the symptoms of colds and flu. Eat this soup as
soon as you feel a cold coming on.
Ingredients
2 tbsp dried Echinacea root
200 ml water, freshly boiled
5 tbsp goji berries, fresh or dried
2 litres chicken stock (homemade or from stock cubes)
3 chicken thighs or drumsticks (preferably organic)
2 large onions, peeled and sliced
12 shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
10 cm root ginger, peeled and shredded
2 fresh medium-sliced chillies, finely sliced
8 garlic cloves, chopped
Extra sliced ginger and chillies, to serve
Method
Combine the dried echinacea root with the water in a bowl to make a simple
infusion. In another bowl, pour just enough cold water over the goji berries
to cover, and leave to rehydrate. Set the echinacea and goji berries aside
and leave to stand.
Place the stock and chicken pieces in a large pan or slow cooker. Add the
sliced onions, mushrooms, ginger and chillies and place around the chicken
in the pan. On a very low heat, simmer gently for 1½ - 2 hours, or until the
chicken is tender and falls apart. Take off the heat.
Five minutes before serving, add the goji berries and chopped garlic. Finally,
strain the Echinacea infusion and add this to the soup, reheating if
necessary.
Use
Serve by ladling into bowls and garnishing with sliced ginger and chilli for
an extra kick.
