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Food or medicine? The food–medicine interface in households in Sylhet
Open accessAbstract
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Bangladesh has a rich traditional plant-medicine use, drawing on Ayurveda and Unami medicine. How these practices translate into people׳s homes and lives vary. Furthermore, the overlap between food and medicine is blurred and context-specific. This paper explores the food-medicine interface as experienced by Bengali women in their homes, in the context of transnational and generational changes. AIM AND OBJECTIVES: The aim is to explore the overlap of food and medicines in homes of Bengali women in Sylhet. The objectives are to explore the influences on medicinal plant practice and to scrutinise how catagories of food and medicine are decided. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The paper draws on in-depth ethnographic research conducted in Sylhet, North-east Bangladesh as part of a wider project looking at food and medicine use among Bengali women in both the UK and Bangladesh. Methods included participant observation, unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews with a total of thirty women. RESULTS: The study indicates that the use of plants as food and medicine is common among Bengali women in Sylhet. What is consumed as a food and/or a medicine varies between individuals, generations and families. The use and perceptions of food-medicines is also dependent on multiple factors such as age, education and availability of both plants and biomedicine. Where a plant may fall on the food-medicine spectrum depends on a range of factors including its purpose, consistency and taste. CONCLUSIONS: Previous academic research has concentrated on the nutritional and pharmacological properties of culturally constructed food-medicines (Etkin and Ross, 1982; Owen and Johns, 2002, Pieroni and Quave, 2006). However, our findings indicate a contextualisation of the food-plant spectrum based on both local beliefs and wider structural factors, and thus not necessarily characteristics intrinsic to the products׳ pharmacological or nutritional properties. The implications of this research are of both academic relevance and practical importance to informing health services.
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Among the Bengali women examined in North-eastern Bangladesh, the use of plants as food and medicine is common.
“though the use of plants as food and medicine is common among the Bengali women examined”
From Potent substances—An introduction (2015) · cites this paper as Jennings et al. (2015)
The use and perceptions of food-medicines among the Bengali women examined is varied and linked to multiple factors including age, education and availability of both plants and biomedicine.
“the use and perceptions of food -medicines is varied and linked to multiple factors including age, education and availability of both plants and biomedicine.”
From Potent substances—An introduction (2015) · cites this paper as Jennings et al. (2015)
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Research works printed but not linked: 16
- Ahmed, 2013, Harnessing pluralism for better health in Bangladesh, The Lancet, 382, 1746, 10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62147-9 · DOI
- Etkin, 1982, Food as medicine and medicine as food: an adaptive framework for the interpretation of plant utilisation among the Hasau of Northern Nigeria, Social Science & Medicine, 16, 1559, 10.1016/0277-9536(82)90167-8 · DOI
- Frei, 1998, Plants as medicines and food. Zapotec criteria for selection, Journal of Applied Botany, 72, 82
- Jennings, H.M., 2014. Travelling People, Travelling Plants: An Exploration into Food–Medicine Practice Among Bengali Women Across Transnational and Generational Landscape (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation), UCL.
- Karim, 1988, Shamanism in Bangladesh, Asian Folklore Studies, 47, 277, 10.2307/1178280 · DOI
- Leonti, 2006, Wild gathered food in the European mediterranean: a comparison, Economic Botany, 60, 130, 10.1663/0013-0001(2006)60[130:WGFPIT]2.0.CO;2 · DOI
- Leonti, 2012, The co-evolutionary perspective of the food-medicine continuum and wild gathered and cultivated vegetables, Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, 40, 1295, 10.1007/s10722-012-9894-7 · DOI
- Owen, 2002, Antioxidant in medicines and spices as cardioprotective agents in Tibetan highlanders, Pharmaceutical Biology, 40
- Pieroni, 2007, Does the taste matter? Taste and medicinal perceptions associated with five selected herbal drugs among three ethnic groups in West Yorkshire, Northern England, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 3
- Pieroni, 2007, Traditional medicines used by Pakistani migrants from Mirpur living in Bradford, Complementay Therapy Medicine, 16, 81, 10.1016/j.ctim.2007.03.005 · DOI
- Prendergast H.D.V., Etkin N.L., Harris D.R., Houghton P.J. (Eds.), 1998. Plants for Food and Medicine. In: Proceedings of the joint meeting of the Society for Economic Botany and the International Society fo Ethnopharmacologyr, London 1–6 July 1996. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK.
- Rahmatullah, 2010, A survey of medicinal and functional food plants used by the folk medicinal practitioners of three villages in Sreepur Upazilla, Magura District, Bangladesh, American–Eurasian Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 4, 363
- Sandhu, 2005, The use of health foods, spices and other botanicals in the sikh community in London, Phytotherapy Research, 19, 633, 10.1002/ptr.1714 · DOI
- Shepard, 2004, A sensory ecology of illness and therapy in two Amazonian societies, American Anthropologist, 106, 252, 10.1525/aa.2004.106.2.252 · DOI
- Thomas, J., 2006. Animist Themes among Bengali Muslims. (Unpublished Dissertation).
- Wilce, 2004, Madness, fear and control in Bangladesh: clashing bodies of knowledge/power, Medical Anthropology, 18, 357, 10.1525/maq.2004.18.3.357 · DOI
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Potent substances—An introduction
Lo, V., Kadetz, P., Datiles, M. J., & Heinrich, M. (2015) · Journal of Ethnopharmacology · doi:10.1016/j.jep.2014.12.058 · Cited by 4
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Metadata
- Authors
- Jennings, H. M., Merrell, J., Thompson, J. L., & Heinrich, M.
- Affiliations
- University of London (GB)
- Swansea University (GB)
- University of Birmingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Heinrich, Michael
- Venue
- Journal of Ethnopharmacology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-06
- Volume
- 167
- Pages
- 97-104
- ISSN
- 0378-8741 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2038698946
- Cited by
- 64
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 3.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Ethnopharmacology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Economic & Social Research Council, New Dynamics of Ageing Programme, UK (RES-354-25-0002)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Ethnobotanical and Medicinal Plants Studies
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Food, Nutrition, and Cultural Practices
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Complementary and alternative medicine › Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies
- Keywords
- medicinal plants, traditional herbal medicine, Ayurveda, Bengali women, generational change, transnational migration, Sylhet, local beliefs
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Bangladesh, Female, Food, Humans, Medicine, Traditional, Middle Aged, Plants, Medicinal, Young Adult
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