The Financial Times featured an article entitled An insect banquet which introduced me to the previously unknown world of entomophagy (defined by Wikipedia as the consumption of insects as food). My attention was grabbed, as always, by the inclusion of a dish containing ginger. A Balinese delicacy has de-winged dragonflies boiled in coconut milk with ginger and garlic. This is what I love about ginger, its sheer versatility. If you are interested, I've managed to locate a recipe for this dragonfly stew at the World Museum in Liverpool. I think that I'll give it a miss!
Recent research in Iran has shown that consumption of ginger can significantly increase sperm count and viability. Well, in rats at least. Rats were divided equally into a control group, a group fed 50mg/kg/day and another group fed 100mg/kg/day. After 20 days it was found that those rats fed 100mg/kg/day showed signs of enhanced healthy sperm parameters and increased testosterone. It must be pointed out that the researchers have not made similar claims about human sperm.
The Indian government department responsible for promoting the export of spices (Spices Board India) has announced that ginger exports more than doubled to 10,500 tonnes during the period April 2010 to January 2011. These exports contributed to an increase in foreign exchange earnings.
Recently I was reading an article about the advertising industry where Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP was re-iterating his football analogy of world advertising markets. His 'Premier League' contains the BRICs and the 'Next Eleven' (or N-11) emerging markets. BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India and China. N-11 refers to Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam. What caught my eye was that out of these 15 countries only three (Russia, Iran and Turkey) do not produce ginger. Significant? I think not but interesting nonetheless.
And finally, something I stumbled across the other day. If you like the blues and you like ginger, you'll like this from Pixar Animations.
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