Content
- Bamboo is not just for vegetarians
- Bamboo as a vegetable food and drink
- Bamboo as a medicine
- Tips & Tricks
Bamboo is not just for vegetarians
In Asia, bamboo has been used as a traditional food for a very long time. Meanwhile, more and more friends of Asian cuisine appreciate bamboo as tea, bamboo water, vegetables, asparagus substitute or sprouts in the kitchen and on the plate.
Bamboo as a food plant is similar to the coconut palm. Particularly suitable for consumption are plant parts of the following bamboo varieties:
Pre-cooked and pre-cooked or loosely available bamboo products in Germany are imports from Asia and Latin America. In Europe bamboo is grown as food only in Italy at Genoa (Val Fontanabuona).
Bamboo as a vegetable food and drink
Both seeds, grains, sprouts, shoots and young shoots of bamboo plants may contain in the raw state bitter substances and the toxic cyanogenic glycoside. Cooking neutralizes the bitter and toxins. Freshly harvested bamboo shoots or even bamboo spikes have a very firm, pale yellow flesh.
Bamboo tea from young bamboo leaves or the oat-like grain of bamboo is considered very healthy in Asia because of its high silica and silicon content. A herbal tea can also be made from young bamboo leaves of the varieties Sasa palmata and Sasa kurilensis. Bamboo tea does not contain any tea or caffeine and is therefore also suitable for children.
Bamboo as a medicine
In traditional medicine, too, energized bamboo water and bamboo extract are used for a variety of ailments.
Bamboo leaves are also the main food source of the panda bear. It eats up to 20 kg of bamboo per day and is insensitive to the hydrocyanic acid contained in raw plants.
Tips & Tricks
In Japan, bamboo shoots are cooked with rice flour. Inlaid they are then also obtained from us as Achia or Atchia.