Word: kava
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Captain James Cook saw a lot of strange things when he was exploring Polynesia in 1769, but the virgins chewing kava brought him up short. After pulling the plant's root out of the ground, island girls worked it over in their mouths, reducing it to a pulp, then spit the whole mess into coconut milk. The mixture was then strained through fibers, collected in a bowl and consumed by the tribe at large. Cook's men found the practice distasteful, but what did they know? Kava, after all, had been a popular tonic in the South Seas...
What the Polynesians believed--and what many Americans now believe too--is that the lowly kava root has mind-altering effects. Prepared and consumed properly, it is said to alleviate stress, ease melancholy and generally elevate mood--all without addiction or hangover. Sound too good to be true? That hasn't stopped supermarkets, drugstores, health-food stores and discount chains like K Mart from stocking up on kava capsules, droplets and tea bags--or consumers from eagerly snapping them up. Kava sales in these stores jumped from barely a trickle to $3 million last year, and should double...
Critics are uneasy. Kava, they fear, will turn out to be merely herbal medicine's root du jour, a scientifically unproven preparation that is at best useless and at worst dangerous. But doctors and consumers are two different groups, and even as concerns are raised, kava's popularity continues to grow. "I think kava is really hot," says Dr. Hyla Cass, a UCLA psychiatrist and co-author of Kava: Nature's Answer to Stress, Anxiety, and Insomnia (Prima Health). "It's a sleeper...
...terrible everywhere in the Pacific, Theroux discovered, although he was bemused by such oddities as omelets made from enormous eggs laid by the megapode birds of Savo in the Solomon Islands. (His verdict: "The yolkiest eggs I had ever seen.") To be sociable, the author occasionally took swigs of kava, the mouth- and mind-numbing intoxicant of the islands, which is made by chewing the root of a plant known as Piper methysticum and then mixing the blob with water. The best kava, connoisseurs assure him, comes from root masticated by pretty teenage girls...
...arrived in Fiji to celebrate the islands' 100th anniversary of becoming a British colony and the fourth birthday of its independence. Robed officials crouched in ritualistic gestures of respect, schoolchildren lined the roads and waved, and a considerate, perhaps mischievous chieftain gave Prince Charles a bowl of kava, a very potent local brew. Later, at a reception held in Suva, Fiji's capital, a less formally attired Charles witnessed at close range still more of the island's fundamental splendors, dancing in the balmy night with Helen Frankhen, a student at the University of the South Pacific...