One of the first questions asked in my college biochemistry
class was "What is the difference between a drug and a poison?"
Many answers were offered...but only one was correct, "the dose."
After years of working with herbs and their regulatory status as
dietary ingredients, another question arose, "What then is the difference
between a food and a medicine?" There is no easy answer, even as
this question becomes more pertinent with the explosion of functional
foods.
In herbal medicine, often it is a plant's defensive
or secondary compounds that make it useful therapeutically. These
same secondary compounds also often make exotic foods unpalatable
for mainstream tastes. However, as the functional food area grows,
nature's bounty of traditionally used exotic foods will be a treasure
chest for new product development.