v: Of Weeds and Weans
Festive flavours Joseph Nolan As the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness slips into bare branches and rain, we console ourselves with feasting. Especially for children, sweets and candies loom large, and we tend to take the flavours of the festive season— Cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum, C. verum, C. cassia), Cardamom (Elletaria cardomomum), Peppermint (Mentha x piperita) —rather for granted. But the flavours of Festivus have medicinal uses too, and help us to counteract overindulgence, as well as the salted, smoked, dried, pickled, and stale, winter fare of former times. My first encounter with Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens, Oil of Wintergreen) was a box of funny coloured TicTacs on my aunt’s dashboard. I was suspicious of the little green candies, having always disliked mint flavoured things, but found that I really liked these odd tasting ‘mints’. The cool, sweet, mint-like taste is due largely to methyl salicylate, an excellent anti-inflammatory chemical cousin of aspirin. Generally used topically in medicine, Wintergreen is great for relieving the pain of bumps and bruises, pulled muscles, sprains, and strains. You can safely mix its essential oil into homemade Arnica montana (Arnica) or Bellis perennis (Bruisewort, Daisy) balm at your standard 2%, to increase the analgesic properties. Methyl salicylate can be toxic when ingested at too high a dose, so Oil of Wintergreen should not
be used as a flavouring at home. Commercial food production keeps the total Wintergreen content below 0.04%, which would be virtually impossible to do in your kitchen. Why exactly Mint became so much more popular than Wintergreen, I will never understand, but the fact remains that redstriped Peppermint (Mentha x piperita) candy canes rule the season. For children, Mint tea can be useful for the bloating and mild nausea that comes after eating too much sugar. It refreshes the palate and brightens the mood, as well— invaluable on the come down from a party or other exciting event. Mix with a little Matricaria recutita (Chamomile) to relax a griping belly and an over-excited, tired child. The essential oil invigorates and sharpens the mind, which can also be helpful to dispel holiday torpor if there is something that needs to be accomplished, like tidying up or getting ready for guests. Mints, the candy or gum kind, with xylitol rather than sugar, can also be helpful for morning sickness in pregnancy. The use of xylitol by pregnant mothers has been found to reduce incidence of dental caries in their children by up to 70% (Isokangas, et al. 2000). The benefits are believed to derive from xylitol’s ability to prevent transmission from mother to child of Streptococcus mutans, a bacterium closely associated with dental caries and gum disease (ibid.). 19
