Friday, May 09, 2008 Peña: Ang Malunggay, wow! By Rox Peña E-ssue
IT IS said that necessity is the mother of inventions. I say hunger is the mother of concoctions.
As a young boy, I still recall the hard times in the 70s when corn was mixed with rice. I did not get to eat that mixed staple though. We were lucky to have enough pure rice on the table.
Now with the skyrocketing price of flour comes a new concoction, the "wonderbread," a healthy mixture of sweet potatoes and malunggay. It is cheaper, and more nutritious than the ordinary pan de sal. Tinapay with malunggay?Aba, bago 'to!
To rural folks, malunggay is just an ordinary ingredient of some local dishes. Nothing special about it. It's not even mentioned among the "halaman" in the song "Bahay Kubo". It's a backyard plant, sometimes doubling as a living fence, whose leaves are regular ingredient in sabo balatung, suam mais and tinola. Its fruit, agud, (the local name describes how it is eaten), is a major ingredient of my mother's pinakbet.
Now this lowly plant is getting the recognition it deserves. Its natural wonders are now being discovered. Malunggay, called Moringa in English, is said to be the world's most nutritious crop, according to the Biotechnology Media and Advocacy Resource Center (http://biotechforlife.com.ph).
The Web site says that on a gram for gram comparison, fresh malunggay leaves are seven times the vitamin C in Oranges, four times the calcium and two times the protein in milk, three times the potassium found in bananas and 75 percent of the iron in spinach.
With research and technology, other uses of the wonder plant unfold. Malunggay seeds contain 40 percent oil, which is excellent for massage because of good anti-oxidant properties and a four to five years shelf life.
Because of its high quantities of Oleic Acids (part of the Omega 9 EFA family), it is good in cooking and a replacement for olive oil.It is odorless to mild nutty flavor.
On a larger scale, malunggay oil can be used for biofuel. Unlike other food grains, which are used as biofuel feedstock, it will not compete for the use of irrigated and productive land. Malunggay can be grown on idle lands.
And did you know the seed can be used for water treatment?
The edible fruit also has the ability to detoxify contaminated water for drinking and cooking.
In my many years of field experience in wastewater treatment, I did not see a single literature citing the use malunggay seeds for water treatment. What's good about the seed is that the oil can be extracted without reducing its effectiveness for water treatment.
Malunggay is not just a food, it is also a medicine.According to Dr. Lydia M. Marero of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute, malunggay promotes good eyesight, digestion, facilitates bowel movement, and is a cure for stomachache.It is also used to cleanse wounds and ulcers.It helps alleviate scurvy, asthma, earache, and headaches.
For its high calcium content, lactating mothers are advised to eat malunggay leaves to produce more milk.
And here's good news to men with low sperm count. A study conducted by experts and reported by Dr. Vivencio Mamaril of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) showed that the fruit of malunggay helps immensely in raising semen count.By the same token, consuming the malunggay fruit leads to higher motility or semen movement, which translates into increased opportunity for the semen to fertilize an egg.
