Vegetable Caterpillers Kill 6, Wound 110

[drhoz]

Further to the insane value placed on Tibetan Cordyceps -

Last month, the Associated Press reported that a gun battle between Tibetan groups feuding over access to the lucrative wild caterpillar fungus left up to people six dead and more than 110 injured in a Tibetan area of Sichuan Province.admittedly more wtf_humans, but relevant to the last

Comments

[new_shit]

tl;dr, in a hurry. So why is the caterpillar fungus so important?

Icon love.

[cougarfang]

It's apparently one of the Big Three in Chinese medicine (along with ginseng and deer antlers). It's tastes herbal/grassy and somewhat sickly-sweet (甘) and is reputedly good mostly for balancing yin and yang, and also boosting your immune system, eradicating tumors, energy boosts and combating fatigue, strengthening one's heart, detoxing one's liver and digestive system and combating inflammation and boosting resistance to poisons and disease, expanding one's bronchi and easing the lungs, strengthening one's kidneys and detoxing them, helping bone marrow make blood, and generally everything that Chinese medicine is supposed to do except all at once. (I'm summarizing a few of the top hits from google.com.tw when I search for this in Chinese

[new_shit]

OOOOH sounds like good stuff. Still, I dunno about eating caterpillars.

[fusion_mobile]

Rule #1 when drinking tequila.

"DON'T EAT THE WORM!"

[georgiarepublic]

Do you write headlines for the National Enquirer too?

Also, to reiterate what was asked in the above comment, what is supposed to be so good about the fungus?

The one paragraph about it in the linked story doesn't elaborate.

[drhoz]

see the previous cordyceps post. 'summer-grass winter-worm' is hugely valuable in traditional chinese medicine - i.e. claims it cures everyting, actually does bugger-all

[amnotcute]

Do you write headlines for the National Enquirer too?

I'd want to read those articles if so.