Not so long ago in the West, touting food as medicine got you pitying looks, if not outright derision. Real medicine was white pills made by white men in white lab coats. We've come a long way, on both hemispheres, with more and more Westerners accepting that the body heals itself, with the right nutrients, and more and more Chinese accepting that inadvertently swallowing your own saliva will not breed intestinal worms.

The following health foods are commonly seen in Chinese cooking, and commonly seen as yucky by a great deal of meat and potato advocates, at first. But with two exceptions, they are cheap and easy to purchase, and will have a positive effect on your overall health. Nobody's prescribing them to cure cancer or remedy kidney failure, only to partake of them as the surest way to ensure you never have either. *

Pine Nuts

Pine nuts are ten to thirty five percent protein, and bursting with dietary fiber. There's reason enough to start chewing on a fistful, especially considering the direction that meat prices are heading. Some misguided folks may warn you of their high saturated fat content, as though saturated fat from a tree could be deleterious, taken in moderation. Besides, pine nuts balance the saturated with the unsaturated, packing a lecithin punch to bind cholesterol away from your blood vessel walls.

That's the occidental health scoop. From an oriental perspective, those who acquire a taste for pine nuts' tartness will enjoy their salubrious effect on the lungs, preventing coughs, and overall cooling effects, heat-producing foods being so much more prevalent and in need of balancing out.

Jellyfish

Might as well dive right into the ‘gross' stuff, lest people assume health food is all nuts and berries. While jellyfish will never be mistaken for jam, there's magic in that briny blob. All eight species of sea turtle eat jellyfish almost exclusively, and there's never been an incident of a leatherback checking into a hospital. The secret is the jellyfish's collagen content, even higher than in Keira Knightley's new lips. The Chinese have used jellyfish collagen as an antidote for arthritis, high blood pressure, bronchitis, and as a cancer preventative so assiduously that western doctors are finally taking jellyfish to the lab, and ‘discovering' the health benefits of the antigens contained therein.

If you think you could never stomach jellyfish, think again; you might have already eaten some, thinking it was clear noodles. It also comes dried and crunchy, so you could munch some and pretend it was a normal Chinese snack - a fish cookie, for instance.

Lotus Seeds

OK, back to the forest foods. If you live in a Chinese walk-up apartment community, then strolling about with hands clasped behind you, dribbling seed husks is the fasted road to acceptance short of taking everyone out to a KTV banquet. Start with lotus seeds for a truly win-win combo. Unless you're a Daoist monk or a five-year-old, your qi could use a good boost, and lotus seeds kick start both kidneys and spleen. More qi means improved energy, appetite, sleep, and blood circulation.

Granted, that doesn't sound too scientific. How about the alkaloids in lotus seeds, then? They dilate blood vessels, reducing blood pressure. They also have sedative and anti-spasmodic properties. Less pressure, less spazzing, more sedation. That can't be bad.

Abalone

Here's one of our few health foods that'll set you back a bit, assuming you're ordering some in a restaurant and not scuba-diving off the coast of South Africa. It's fairly savory to the western palate, for a giant sea-snail anyway, and boasts shellfish levels of minerals such as selenium and magnesium. Multi-vitamins do too, so why the high price? Its relative scarcity is driven by great demand in China. The TCM texts praise the abalone for cleansing the liver and enriching yin energy, which is ironic; most men gobble abalone hoping for a raging yang.

Bamboo Shoots

It's a shame so many people's first experience with bamboo is with canned shoots. "Fetid" is among the kinder adjectives their flavor brings to mind. But there are many fouler tasting medicines with fewer benefits. Bamboo shoots are a detox program on a plate, promoting excretion, eruption of skin blemishes, and combating all manner of toxemia, particularly alcohol.

Bamboo shoots are also a paradigm of the cold system of foods, an excellent balance to the meat, oil, and chilies that constitute the bulk of so many Chinese restaurant meals. Pickled, steamed, even out of the can, bamboo provides healthy, hard-to-get doses of Vitamin A, Niacin, and Phosphorus, besides good old Iron and Calcium. Definitely a vegetable to acquire a taste for.

Chili Pepper

You can't go far wrong with Red Hot Chili Peppers, especially their early stuff, and cayenne peppers will ensure a minimum of swelling and inflammation brought on by any ill-advised rocking out. Cayenne peppers, if not the hottest member of the capsicum family, are among the most potent for health. Thank goodness, then, that these are the very same peppers prevalent in Sichuan cuisine, be it soup, candy, or cakes.

The blessing lies in the burn. Capsaicin is the chemical that makes your tongue feel like it's caught fire, but it's the same chemical that reduces blood platelet stickiness and ranks as a one-of-a-kind antioxidant. That explains all those venerable Sichuan ren smoking, drinking baijiu, and frying everything but their tea. The vessel dilating properties of capsicum, warming the extremities, explains how they spend those dank Sichuan winters with no indoor heating.

Sichuan Peppers

It's understandable to assume that Sichuan peppers are the red devils just mentioned. In fact, they're peppercorns, those little black bits that lead you to believe you've just eaten live bees, rather than shuijuyu. The peppercorns numb while the chilies burn, for the one-two punch of masochistic pleasure common to Sichuan cooking.

That tingling pungency does more than produce a sweat. Peppercorns are very mildly toxic, killing harmful bacteria in your stomach and intestines, but also forcing your system into action and paradoxically preventing vomiting, which is helpful when a peppercorn gets stuck on the back of your tongue and you have to fish around for it with your fingers.

Bird's Nest

Maybe you're thinking you'll never be hungry or adventurous enough to eat twigs. Fair enough. How about swallow spit? C'mon, it'll prove you're rich! Usually only liquids made from grape cost fifty Euros and up per cupful. But bird's nest soup is hard to come by, as the cave swift who spits up a home lives mainly in Indonesia. And while wine can be healthy, does it moisturize the skin, metabolize fat, improve concentration, and alleviate asthma? Like abalone fans, however, bird nest-eaters most appreciate that strange-but-true mix of increased female energy and libido.

Coriander

Coriander is known to many as Chinese parsley, and to many Mexican food fans as cilantro. Yet coriander is far more useful than your average garnish, so much more so that it deserves its own top ten list, David Letterman style:

10. Protects against Salmonella bacteria

9. Lowers bad cholesterol (LDL) and raises good (HDL)

8. Works as a natural chelation treatment

7. Alleviates symptoms of arthritis

6. Protects against urinary tract infections

5. Lowers blood sugar

4. Is a good source of fiber

3. Provides plenty of magnesium and iron

2. Prevents nausea, and

Number One, relieves intestinal gas.

Bitter Melon

If you're not into chi koo, eating bitterness, look into it; it's the traditional pastime of the Chinese masses. You can start with bitter melon. It's bitter to swallow, alright, but not nearly as bitter as having your feet bound, or losing your ancestral lands to the local magistrate. Besides, bitter melon abounds in potassium, beta-carotene, and B vitamins. Best of all though, are its powers of lowering blood sugar and insulin, so effectively that doctors warn those taking diabetes medication to avoid it. If you're not, and wish to avoid Type 2 diabetes, then naturopaths and a billion Chinese people, if not the Surgeon General, recommend koo gua, the bitter melon.

* Pei pei pei! [Heaven forbid!]