CHINESE New Year is around the corner, and one of the things people around the world are doing to prepare for the celebrations is to stock up on festive foods for the reunion feast.
On many tables, a hair-like plant called "fatt choy" will take centre stage, often cooked with shiitake mushrooms and dried oysters in a dish meant to usher in luck for the new year ahead.
Claims have appeared online over the years that fatt choy is not a type of seaweed as many have been led to believe through word of mouth but comes from the Gobi Desert instead.
Is there any truth to this?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Yes, the algae known as fatt choy – or to use its scientific name, Nostoc Flagelliforme – actually comes from the Gobi Desert and Qinghai Plateau, and in fact plays a significant role in the ecosystem of these regions.
This has been borne out by research led by Prof Dr Xiang Gao of the School of Life Sciences at the Hubei Key Laboratory of Genetic Regulation and Integrative Biology of the Central China Normal University and collaborators shown in a 2016 paper.
Additionally, they showed in their research that fatt choy has a role to play in arresting desertification – a process where once-fertile land dries up – due to factors such as the overharvesting of native plant life like fatt choy.
As the researchers state in the abstract of their paper: "The restoration of this dominant nitrogen supplier would be an ecologically sustainable solution for supplementing current measures already taken in the desertified regions."
Without going too deep into the technical aspects of desert ecology and biology, it also said that fatt choy can be used to restore the ecosystem of a desert where it was once part of the native environment.
"A goal of 50%-60% vegetation coverage is proposed by the Nostoc Flagelliforme restoration," they said.
It goes on to say that such plant life are the dominant algae in ecologically fragile desert steppes as they contribute organic nitrogen and carbon to nutrient-poor soil.
So given that fatt choy has in fact been over-exploited as a food source for decades, it might be time to give it a break this festive season so that it can be enjoyed in moderation for years to come.
References:
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4621453/#
