The Netherlands - Brain Tonic Mushroom Soup

I forgot to include this interesting story about finding a brain tonic herbal soup mix in Den Haag's China Town. 

I can't read Chinese characters, especially when they are too fancy. I can only read a word that means "monkey head mushroom" and "brain". The rest looked like some encrypted ancient language to me. Lucky enough, I was there with a friend from China. She translated almost everything on the package, and it says that it can improve your brain and also make you smarter. Ha!

The only ingredient I recognize was monkey head mushroom and golden mushroom. And it's actually pretty weird they didn't include goji berry in the ingredients list even though I clearly saw goji berries (on the first picture, the red seed-like dried fruits at the bottom of the package). The rest of ingredients can actually be found in Google and Wikipedia (and I'm actually quite surprised I was able to find good information about those ingredients).

All of the ingredients for Chinese herbal soups are normally preserved by drying. In this case, I have to rehydrate the monkey head mushroom (above) separately in a bowl of water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the water from the mushroom. They call it monkey head mushroom because when it is at its original or rehydrated state, if you rub the caps, you feel like rubbing a monkey's hairy head :)

The ingredients were nicely and individually packaged. It made me think that this herbal soup premix is actually of high quality. The goji berries also look fresh (they are bright red; some poor quality goji berries look pale orange and are shrunk too much).

In the English instruction, they only said "add lean pork meat" into the soup but when my Chinese friend read the instruction written in Chinese, it actually said "add lean pork or chicken meat" into the soup. Why would they change the instructions? Is pork meat better for English speaking communities? LOL. Lost in translation.

I simmered the soup in low heat for 3 hours. It's very delicious (to me, who is used to drinking herbal soup since young). It's slightly earthy but also sweet because of the goji berries.

Do I feel smarter? Well, you tell me. I left my favorite gloves in an iceskating rink 1.5 hours away by car from Wageningen during an iceskating rink event organized by Thymos, a sports association in my university, a week after I drank this soup. It definitely doesn't improve my short term memory. But hey, it tastes great. I don't mind eating this soup again :D

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Brain Tonic & Sugar in Drinks

This is one of the weird stuffs I saw on the shelf in the US: Brain Toniq.

I don't know what it does to you, but I want to try tasting it.

Ingredients List

I think this is not the first time I see blue green algae on the list. Seems like it is gaining popularity. But what about the rest of them? Choline? Eleutherococcus extract? Rhodiola Rosea extract? What the hell are those? They're not something that normal people would know. I'm a student of food science, and I don't know what those are and what their functionalities are.

And.. that's why we need Wikipedia. It's not the best website for accuracy, but it's a good place to look for possible leads to more accurate sources. I found them, it's quite a long reading, but if you want a summary, scroll down to the next paragraph after the explanation on Rhodiola rosea.

Choline: 

The cation appears in the head groups of phosphatidylcholine and sphingomyelin, two classes of phospholipid that are abundant in cell membranes. Choline is the precursor molecule for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine which is involved in many functions including memory and muscle control.Choline must be consumed through the diet in order for the body to remain healthy.^[6] It is used in the synthesis of the constructional components in the body's cell membranes. Despite the perceived benefits of choline, dietary recommendations have discouraged people from eating certain high choline foods, such as egg and fatty meats.

Eleutherococcus:

Some species, notably E. senticosus (Siberian ginseng), are used for herbal medicine.

Rhodiola rosea:

Rhodiola rosea may be effective for improving mood and alleviating depression. Pilot studies on human subjects^[2][3][4] showed that it improves physical and mental performance, and may reduce fatigue.

After reading Wikipedia, I suddenly remembered that I learned about choline in my psychology and human physiology courses. Eleutherococcus is basically a family of ginseng (not sure which ginseng). Rhodiola rosea.. I'm not sure what kind of root it is, but it's supposed to help physical and mental performance. 

Why use such a complicated term any normal person will not understand? I don't know.

80 Calories doesn't sound too bad, but all of them seem to come from 20g per 8.4 fl oz (250 mL) of sugar.  Seems legit because 1 g of sugar gives you 4 Calories. So is it considered high?

Comparing sugar level is a little hard because different beverages have different serving size, so the best way to compare is to find the concentration of the sugar by dividing the mL serving size by the weight of the sugar (so that leaves the unit in g sugar / mL drink). 

For example, this one has 20/250 = 0.080 g sugar / mL. 

Teh Pucuk Harum, a fairly new bottled sweetened tea in Indonesia, has 26/350 = 0.074 g sugar / mL.

Of course, it's a little difficult to compare these numbers when you go to stores, unless you really have nothing to do and you decide to take out your calculator / phone and start calculating the sugar concentration of each drink. Like a geek. Or an overly health conscious person.

But what is there to be ashamed of? You are responsible for what you eat. The company provides the list; you decide whether to buy it or not to buy it. The labels are there for you to look at.

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