By Christin Chong, PhD, co-founder of honeyritual
When we set out to create honeyritual hot tea tonics, we wanted to make sure that the ingredients are not only healthful, but also actually tasty. There are various supplements and naturally healthy ingredients on the market, but we noticed many of them are not delicious enough for one to consume every day. Let’s be honest here--ginseng and mushrooms might be good for you, but they often have to be masked by other additives to make them tolerable. So we dug deep into our cultural heritage to recall what our moms used when creating nourishing recipes.
We remembered that we grew up eating honey red jujubes--they were juicy morsels found in tea, soups, and desserts. The versatility of honey red jujubes is highly valued in Asian cuisine because the mark of a seasoned chef is the ability to produce well-balanced flavors and the jujubes’ subtle earthy sweetness fits into both savory and sweet contexts. We knew we had a winner in terms of taste, but are jujubes truly healthful?
To answer this question, I used my neuroscience expertise to evaluate peer-reviewed scientific literature, and researched key instructive texts for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It was remarkable to witness the consensus between ancient texts and modern science. Interestingly, jujubes have had documented uses for millennia, and using current methods of research, they are now recognized as an outstanding source of bioactive compounds including antioxidants, vitamins, and flavonoids (see the science). Perhaps jujubes were part of our ancestors’ “natural supplement regimen”, before modern prevalence of multivitamins pills and other artificial sources. They also figured out ways to make tasty drinks and meals out of them!
With honeyritual, we hope to bring forth our ancestors’ (and our moms’) ancient wisdom for your benefit--and we hope that products like honeyritual set you on a path of discovery on your own.
What are your ancestors’ “natural supplement regimen,” and what can we learn from the past?
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