Healing with Food Article

Daikon

Accompanying recipe: Daikon Tonics

Have you ever wondered about the dab of juicy, grated white stuff that's served with tempura and sushi? It's grated daikon. Because this pearly white radish aids digestion it often appears with these dishes. Daikon also is a venerable weight loss remedy in Asia.

While using foods for specific medicinal purposes may sound novel today, every world culture has a tradition of doing so. Foods contain phytochemicals, which are biologically active substances with recognized healing properties.

Our common foods typically contain smaller percentages of medicinal properties than do herbs. This makes food remedies milder and safer than herbal remedies.

We may not use herbs daily, but we do eat. So favor foods specific to your healing needs to skillfully support your well being.

Daikon cleanses the blood, promotes energy circulation and increases the metabolic rate. It contains diuretics, decongestants and, in terms of phytochemicals, the digestive enzymes diastase, amylase and esterase. This makes it a primary ingredient in a great variety of home remedies.

Regular use of daikon helps prevent the common cold, flu and respiratory infections. Daikon treats hangovers, sore throats, colds and edema, and it helps cleanse the kidneys and decongest the lungs. This restorative vegetable also has anticarcinogenic properties.

The first radish, with a coarse black skin, originated in Egypt. Daikon, a white or green-skinned radish that's shaped like a giant carrot, was developed in Asia, while in Europe the petite red and icicle radishes flourished.

Because radishes have such potent medicinal properties, I like keeping them on hand. Daikon and black radishes store better than red radishes but all are interchangeable in their culinary and medicinal properties.

In today's markets, daikon is relatively inexpensive and widely available. Buy it only when it is heavy for its size, firm and with a fresh, vibrant, snow-white appearance. If it's oversized, pithy, withered or discolored it will taste disagreeably hot and pungent. Fresh daikon has a sweet taste and cooking enhances this sweetness and eliminates its bite.

Daikon is shipped with its leaves intact but grocers typically remove and discard the greens. Request daikon with tops, as these healthful greens are delicious in soups and stews. It's not necessary to peel daikon. To cook daikon, cut it into any desired shape and use it as you would a carrot in soups or casseroles or in steamed, braised or stir-fried dishes.

For home gardeners, daikon is an easy crop to grow and can grow prolifically and prodigiously, reaching weights of up to 100 pounds.

Daikon has properties that help counter obesity. But no one food is a cure-all for extra weight. View overweight as a sign of an overall imbalance in the body. By upgrading your diet to whole (versus refined or processed) foods and by reducing carbohydrate consumption most overweight problems resolve themselves, specific medical conditions notwithstanding (see Healthy Diet).

And the wonderful thing about eating freshly prepared, whole foods is that they deeply satisfy in a way that stale or refined foods cannot. As you integrate such quality foods into your diet, cravings diminish and your overall health and weight come into balance.

Daikon Tonics has recipes that use daikon as a remedy for asthma & bronchitis, weight loss, colds or sore throats, and as a digestive aid.

May you be well nourished,

Rebecca Wood