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Get to the root of it
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Radish has many medical benefits
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Pungent ‘n’ spicy Radish
“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion.”
Tom Robbins, A Cook’s Book of
Quotations
The radish belongs to the mustard family and is a close relative of the cabbage, cauliflower, horseradish, kale and turnip. The Chinese and the Egyptians cultivated radishes thousands of years ago and ate them, by all accounts, with pleasure. The Greeks and Romans too cultivated the white roots, but they also loved to gripe about them. Pliny, the Roman historian, called the radish “a vulgar article of the diet...” with a “remarkable power of causing flatulence and eructation.”
The flowers, leaves, root, seed and seedpod are all edible. Indians eat the radish root fried, curried or added to dal or sambar. The root is ideal for pickling. If you can stand the strong smell, it is good even as a salad vegetable. The tops are a popular leafy vegetable. The skin on the root comes in many colours: white, red, black and purple. A 100 gm of the root contains just 16 calories. The leaves contain considerably more calories. The plant is rich in Vitamin C and potassium. In fact, the root matches the banana in potassium, and contains half the Vitamin C of an orange. Glucosinolates give the root and leaves a strong smell and a characteristic pungent, spicy flavour. These same molecules also give mustard a pungent bite.
The pungency of the radish probably inspired our ancestors to dream up medical attributes for the plant. In Chinese medicine and other traditional systems of medicine, the radish finds use as a digestive, laxative, expectorant, poultice, antispasmodic and diuretic. The sulphur content of the root inspired its use as an antibacterial, antifungal and even as deworming agent. As in the cabbage, cauliflower and kale, the glucosinolates in raddish are well known as goitrogens: they can inhibit the thyroid gland and cause goitre. It is not advisable to eat the root in excess (are hostel mess suppliers listening?), particularly if you have a pre-existing thyroid disorder.
Glucosinolates are currently the focus of anti-cancer research, but it is a long way yet from the laboratory to the drugstore.
RAJIV. M
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