Ooooooooo sh*t

My sister sent me this...

The Medical Properties of Sauerkraut

Liberty cabbage - Feedback's cure for bird flu
OUR main theme this week is cabbage - and a saga of devotion to the truth
even when it flies in the face of sacred symbols of national identity.
Last year Korean scientists reported that their national dish, the spicy
fermented cabbage called kimchi, cured infected chickens of bird flu. Those
who know the depths of passion and loyalty with which Koreans regard the
dish, which they regularly polish off three times a day, were hardly
surprised. But now, in a flourish of disinterested reductionism, scientists
at Seoul National University report that it is not just kimchi that cures.
Sauerkraut - cabbage fermented anaerobically in brine, but without the
garlic, chilli and Korean identity - has the same healing power.
To those who doubt the whole story, we offer this observation. In Both Korea
and Japan, where kimchi has become a chic food in recent years, there have
recently been outbreaks of bird flu in poultry, but no human cases of the
disease. Coincidence? Considerably better animal hygiene than elsewhere in
the region? Or cabbage? You be the judge.
But this indicates a gloomy prognosis for the Anglo-Saxon world, where
fermented cabbage is widely regarded with horror and only indulged in as a
topping for hot dogs or Reuben sandwiches by a few reckless eccentrics. Are
anglos to be felled by a bird flu pandemic because they are unable to bring
themselves to sample even a French choucroute in the interests of survival?
History, as ever, comes to the rescue. There are perfectly good precedents
for anglos to eat sauerkraut. During the first world war, when Woodrow
Wilson was whipping Americans into a frenzy of anti-German fervour,
sauerkraut - a common dish in the US, given that Germans were the nation's
second largest ethnic group at the time - was not banned. It was instead
renamed "liberty cabbage", rather as French fries became freedom fries
during the recent Franco-American tiff over Iraq. Back in 1917, red-blooded
Americans would no sooner have given up their kraut than their fries (which,
by the way, are Belgian). And you would have had a job getting that
quintessential British hero Captain James Cook to give up sauerkraut. He
insisted upon it, with its remarkable levels of vitamin C, to save his crew
from scurvy. Seems the nickname for Brits shouldn't have been "limeys" after
all.
But those timid souls who really can't face the noble kraut have other
survival options. The Korean scientists say it is lactobacilli, the bacteria
that create the tangy sourness and preserve the pickle, that see off the
virus. So there should be lots of other potential anti-flu foods about, from
properly fermented buttermilk to Kosher garlic dills (the all-salt kind,
none of this vinegar nonsense). Maybe it wasn't the chicken soup that
deserved the name "Jewish penicillin", but the plate of pickles sitting next
to it.

Sad

WE're saved Roll Eyes