Plants as food source

There is an increasing interest to discover more  use for plants as medicines in Chinese Medicine, Naturopathy, Ayurvedic medicine, etc. Plants are used to make inks and dyes, oils, cosmetics, soap, etc

While at a friend's house, they served us a refreshing drink and we just could not identify by taste or odour its origin. It had a stand-alone taste and flavor

The hosts, who own a garden at the outskirts of Pondicherry had made the drink from the Hibiscus flowers. They dried the flowers in the sunshine, added lime, water and sugar and made a extract out of it. They used a spoon full of the extract to prepare one glass of the drink. We were delighted to discover how organic farming is producing newer ways of using different plant products for human use

 Let me suggest that we ought to be even more alert to find new ways of using the plant source as a food resource for us. There is so much dependence on animal source for food in spite of some health risks associated with  meat and meat products. The plant Kingdom has a variety of sources from which we can find protein and carbohydrate rich food for human consumption 

I am not proposing a blind or forced vegetarianism. But what I am proposing is to harness the resources  of plants for preparing food for human consumption, so that we include more body friendly food in our diet

M.C.Mathew(text and photo