Worry not…

I enjoy eating sweet corn…

…the variety we have here that they call jagung Ligo after that popular brand of sweet corn kernels.

However, it is so very sweet so I was worried about the sugar content. That was why I went and googled to find out more about it. Well, according to this website, it is perfectly all right. I bought half a dozen that day and had two for tea that afternoon after which, I checked my blood sugar level – it was 6 something, not quite ideal but that was fine.

My late father had diabetes when he was younger. No, it was not hereditary or anything but more the result of his constant drinking of CocaCola. He was a businessman and he would order a bottle (Yes, they came in bottles at the time) from the nearby coffee shop in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If his friends dropped by to chat, he would call the coffee shop again and order drinks for them and probably another round of Coke for himself if he had finished his bottle for the morning or afternoon. The waiter would let him record everything in the small 555 notebook and he would pay the total at the end of every month.

However, my dad was a very determined individual, very strong-willed and he immediately cut out all intake of sugar, drinking nothing but Chinese tea from then onwards.

He also heard that the hair of the corn…

…was good for treating diabetes so he went round collecting all that he could find and dried them in the sun. He would boil it to make tea and drink and eventually, he managed to get everything under control.

We did not have sweet corn at the time and the variety available then wasn’t so nice and was not so popular. It must have been difficult getting hold of the hair but somehow or other, my father did manage. I never paid much attention to the use of the hair of the corn for treating diabetes even though it did seem to work but when I googled for whatever I could find about it, it turned out that it wasn’t some old wives’ tale, after all.

According to this website, the use of corn silk, or the hair of the corn, as a medicine was first recorded by a Chinese physician, Lan Mao and its nutrients and compounds are what lend it its medicinal/health properties. Where diabetes is concerned, the article goes on to say that corn silk has been used in Chinese medicine for controlling blood sugars for centuries. Animal studies in labs have also found that ingestion of corn silk helps control hyperglycemia by increasing the insulin levels in the blood. It has also been seen to help recover injured B cells of the pancreas, where insulin is produced. Hmmm…interesting, don’t you think?

Well, the other day, I saw them selling it at the neighbourhood shop round the corner from my house so of course, I bought half a dozen, 3 for RM5.00, 4 for RM6.00 in August, 2019 so despite the current trend, the price has not increased all that much.

As always, I peeled them, leaving the last layer intact…

…and boiled them in water…

…with some salt added and in no time at all, they were cooked and I could sit down and enjoy eating them…

Well, since it is all right to eat it, I certainly would buy some more should I happen to see them selling, that’s for sure but of course, like everything else, it is best not to go overboard, everything in moderation!