My dentist and his staff keep attending seminars in which there are new reports on a natural sweetener, Xylitol. It can be extracted from oats and berries, for example. It has about 2/3 the number of calories as sucrose for the same sweetness, so it is not a diet product. However, it has impressive action against the bacteria that form plaque leading to tartar on the teeth. It may also act against the bacteria that cause caries and gingivitis. Or so I was told again yesterday.

I don't think the dentist is a nut, but I am interested in hearing whether people with medical knowledge have been tracking this. Sucrose does little for us except provide quick calories. Xylitol may do far more for us and would thus seem preferable to sucrose (as well as artificial sweeteners if calories are a concern). It can have the laxative effect of most sugar alcohols and artificial sweeteners if consumed beyond one's limit.

This isn't really a recipe either, like some recent posts to this thread, but I want to note that Rainier cherries are coming into season.

I don't ordinarily go gaga over fruits, but these are like tiny little peaches (but huge for cherries), sweet and pretty as hell. If you don't know what they are, go get some.

Funny, my Sprout's pediatrician just recommended Xylitol gum to help get over strep. Maybe not just for dental caries?

I started chewing it some years ago when I had an ear ache, and found that it was recommended for its antibiotic properities. Trident rules!

Hey thanks for the tip!

Xylitol gum is also very popular in Korea. Here, not so much

LOL -- yeah, well, you have a little bit of an issue there about chewing gum, I recall.

Cigarettes were ok, but gum, not.

And no durians in the subway.

Cigarettes are sort of OK. Many, many places are now non-smoking (including pubs), cigarettes are heavily taxed, and it's illegal to have non-taxed cigarettes (and enforcement of this is pretty strict).



Yep! No durians on the MRT.

(you know you've been Asia too long when the footprints on the toilet seat are your own, you stop in front of the escalator to plan your day, and you now like durians).

FWIW, eating locally grown Bing Cherries while sipping Beefeater's on the rocks is a recipe for Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Warning: professional driver on a closed course, do not attempt. Do not mix cherries with gin unleass you beez otherwise done for the night. Do not giggle when talking about eating cherries. When consuming cherries, make sure there is a recepticle for the pits and stems. Stop with the giggles already. Cherries may be closer than they appear, so, like, open up, doofus. YMMV, please consult an adult before mixing metaphors.

I may just have give that a try later tonight

Cherries are the best fruit ever. Sadly, for some reason New England isn't cherry country. If a foodstuff comes in 10 flavors including Cherry, stores here only carry 9. I hear that the cherry crop this year is a bust. For the next couple of months, I'll gorge on fresh cherries whenever I can. (If the price goes above $4.99 per pound, I'm out. I'm a cheap fanatic.)

When I was at the FEMA Camp 17 meet-up last year, I discovered Pluots. OGFG!! What a concept! The local farmer's market had about 12 varieties. Plus fresh figs. Almost got me to consider a move out there. Almost. Now I'm on a quest for more. Whole Foods, maybe. Want. Pluots. Now.

I haz pluots. And apriums. And Rainier cherries. And heirloom tomatoes for my BLTs.

I love the farmers' market.

Can I move in?

For the record, Pluots are evil and wrong. Also vile. Yuck.

Also for the record, my ridiculous attempt at growing termaters 'n' peppers in a pot on the driveway seems to be bearing fruit, literally. I got three little 'maters already and the pepper is a day or so from flowering. This despite temps of 103 yesterday and 97 today. I may get a cup or so of salsa out of this after all! As long as somebody brings an onion and some cilantro.

Must love pluots.

That was a quick romance. My loss, Kate's gain.

There is, according to my dentist, research underway on other uses of Xylitol. Some are trying to tie it into prevention of atherosclerosis, others into prevention and treatment of osteoporosis and gastric ulcers. It has been used as a sugar substitute for diabetics because it is claimed not to affect insulin levels. Xylitol is now in widespread use in Europe as a sweetener for chewing gum. It is not good for dogs (hypoglycaemia and liver failure) but may help prevent caries in cats.

I suspect that Xylitol will, as with most folk medicines (the Finns have used it for a long time, deriving it from Birch trees), show itself as ineffective for some of the uses now being championed. If it just works in the mouth and throat, that would be good enough for me. The British Dental Health Foundation has accredited Orbit Complete for prevention of caries and other oral infections. The Wrigley Company is quite proud of its reformulation of Orbit Complete to have Xylitol as its sweetener (unlike Trident, which seems still to use a combination of sweeteners). It is available as a bulk sweetener named "Ultimate Sweetener," which is derived from sugar beets. On dentist's instructions, I use three Emerald Forest's Ricochet Sours to melt in my mouth before going to sleep. It seems to be possible to obtain the anti-caries effect without consuming sufficient quantities to act as a laxative (which is common to sugar alcohols).

Meh. I still love you despite your *ahem* inconsistent taste in fruits.

One word: Tayberries.

More words: along with being sweet/tart like raspberries, there's a... perfume-like (for lack of a better term) quality to tayberries that make them unique and well worth seeking out if you're a fan of berries.

Oof! The Rainier Cherries have finally shown up in my produce department. Local bings are great, but the Rainiers? They taste like cherries, nectarines, and the faint scent of grape Kool-aid powder; they taste like a childhood summer. They taste like that first, innocent, kiss.

They taste like I've been eating my way through a rather large bag of them...time to stop now or regret the consequences tomorrow.

Also mulberries - so delicious and juicy. I've never seen them on sale commercially, but we are lucky enough to have two trees in our garden, each over 400 years old. The only problem is you have to wear a swimsuit to pick them otherwise everything you are wearing will be dyed purple. This year I plan on making mulberry vodka - if anyone has a recipe I can adapt I would love to hear it.

They showed up in my store 2 weeks ago and I had to try them. One word: Ick. Texture of a plum. Taste, or lack of taste, of an apricot. Ya'll can have them. There are many reasons to move back to the state of my birth. The pluot is not one of them.

I have my first ripe zucchini today!!! Many more to follow and yellow squash right behind. I also found out a common weed in my garden is cultivated elsewhere in the world. Purslane. It delicious! I'm allowing it to proliferate amongst my vegetables. Apparently it's very high in alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid, as well as vitamin C. Crunchy, a little salty. A succulent and relative of the flowering portulaca in CA gardens. I've had it by itself, in salads and sauteed in olive oil.


Also, too I'm eating nasturtium flowers and leaves in salads. The flowers are a peppery surprise. to my sister kate for telling me the sekrit of how to get them to grow.

Are you being nasty to your nasturtiums?

I like the little red huckleberries. They are really tart though and require a lot of sweetening for jelly etc. They grow in bushes that like to grow out of rotting trees up here in the NW. They are real small, so it takes zillions of them to make a couple of jars of the best preserves I've had in a long time. Use soon after making to enjoy the full flavor.

The first time I got these was at Whole PaycheckFoods. They just looked really pretty. I didn't see the price until I got to the cashier and by then it was too late. They are the best cherries I've ever had, and I am not generally a fan of cherries. I ate half of them on the drive home. I now always get these whenever I see them.

The farmers market by me sells mulberries for a couple of weeks. Growing up we had a tree in the backyard and another in the park at the end of the street. I spent alot of time in those trees.