Dietary Chinese Herbs

Book excerpt: This work presents up-to-date information on chemical, pharmacological, clinical studies and historical uses of common dietary Chinese herbs. Authored by native experts in the field, the reader is introduced to each herb with a brief chronological review of Chinese literature on dietary herb uses, with chapters dedicated to each selected herb including color photos for each herb. In addition, Chinese characters as well as the Latin botanical name indices, and chemical structures for the known active compounds are also provided. The clear layout examines the health benefits that have been studied for centuries, including current clinical and toxicological data. A wide range of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) herbs are investigated for their suitability into daily diets for maintaining general wellness or disease prevention. In the past decades, natural health products, dietary supplements, functional foods, or nutraceuticals have emerged in the West due to the increasing demand for non-pharmaceutical healthcare products. Traditional Chinese Medicine disease prevention and treatment incorporates the use of foods, and herbal medicine in an integrated manner, and thus the dietary Chinese herbs in used in TCM for thousands of years could be sources for developing new, effective, and safe ingredients to capture the rapidly expanding opportunity in the global market place.