I have to say, from personal experience, kimchi will cure what ails you. If'n it don't kill you.

lol, I read this somewhere, thought it was amusing.

Hey, I actually liked kimchi when I tried it (in Korea).

Well, there's a variant that's made with (I think) turnip. Our KATUSAs liked that one better than the cabbage one when I was stationed in South Korea. I liked the cabbage version better, myself.

I wonder which type they fed the chickens?

Kimchi is too hot for most Americans no matter what it will do.

Now I'll be awake all night, imagining how you make chickens eat kimchi

Kimchi is what got me hooked on Korean food back when I was an Army linguist-in-training. Heck, I've got a jar of kimchi in the fridge right now.

The other-than-cabbage varieties are pretty good - the radish is amazing. (That's probably what Mark was referring to.)

Cross-Eyed Bear: Perhaps he same way my wife (who is Korean) makes me eat it....."No kim-che, no nook-ee". Works every time!

I LOVE kimchi, aka, "the food of the gods" and I like it HOT, thank you. It goes great with bulgogi beef and rice. So this is good news

My only question is, how would it occur to anyone to feed sick birds kimchi as a curative? Is this just something that was funded by the kimchi industry? : )

Oh wait, I know, let's get a bunch of lefty moonbats and have them set up a protest against Big Kimchi. That'll do the trick.

Is this from the university that brought us the story of the woman who was paralyzed for 20 years and 3 weeks after treatment with stem cells walked and we have never heard of again?

I got my first taste of Kimchi in Nam when my bat was assigned to work with a bat of ROK Marines. IT is hot but I like it. ROK Marines are almost as hard as American Marines BTW. A bat of them held off four (4) NVA arimies outside of DaNang when the Chicom /NVA broke the Tet truce in 68.

"variant that's made with (I think) turnip"

Actually, it was probably kaktugi (kimchied radish or Mu), which is my personal favorite. I bought a batch every week from a grocery across from my apartment near Osan.

There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi, with the traditional chinese cabbage variety best known. There's even a kimchi museum somewhere in Korea. I've only tried about a dozen variations myself.

Good to know that kimchi may ave positive effects against avian flu. As it's currently killing 70% of its victims, eating kimchi and possibly surviving is a bargain.

Hmmm.

The radish is Daikon. Daikon is excellent for almost any purpose and adds a great deal to any dish. When Japanese pickled daikon is the yellow vegetable you find in some sushi.

Frankly this is pretty amusing. I will admit that I grew up eating kimchi as a kid in NH and I very very rarely got either a cold or the flu. Then again I drank ginseng tea by the gallon too so that might have had an effect.

Perhaps it's due to the change in the body's ph balance. Every living organism has a preferred range of ph. Change the ph and you change the environment. Might explain why acidic beverages such as orange juice also help.

*shrug* not a clue but if an outbreak of avian flu happens here in the USA, it'll be interesting to see my Italian friends try to choke kimchi down. :)

at least it appears that I'm not alone in liking kimchi.

I like kimchi, but in no way did it cause these birds to recover. Jeesh! I need to start selling bridges.

I love kimchi, so it's nice to know that it has health benefits beyond the vitamin C content and so forth. Plus, as P.J. O'Rourke noted, after you've chowed down on the stuff you can always use your breath to clean the oven.

And, Cross-eyed Bear: Birds have no taste receptors for capsicum (the "hot" component of kimchi), so chickens wouldn't mind eating it at all. Lots of birds love hot peppers. Now you can go to sleep. ;-)

Good kimchi is very very good. The thing with kimchi is that it must be excellent--the kimchi must be at the top of its game. It not, it sucks. Kind of like folk music.

My husband loves kimchee- a taste he acquired when we were stationed in Asia. Me, not so much.

However, all cultures have developed fermented foods, because it's a good way to preserve food without refrigeration. And fermented stuff does have many health benefits, according the book Nourishing Traditions.

Capsicum (sp?) is considered good for parasites in poultry. Birds don't taste the hotness and the chemical inflames the lining of the intestines just enough to make the whole ecosystem less hospitable to worms. (Yes, I know you all just *needed* to hear this. LOL.) Who knows why it would help defeat bird flu.

Kimchi has other stuff in it, of course. And yes, it is *very* *good*.

I always thought it was the really *hot* kimchi that was antiviral in humans. The ordinary 'mild for american taste' stuff will help prevent your catching a virus only by keeping infected people at a distance, along with everyone else.

Its not the spice in kimchi that makes its so healthy, its the powerful antioxidants and probiotics that are release from the fermentation process.. I assume sauerkraut and other cultured vegetables will have the same effect.. I believe fermented milk would also have a lot of benefits.. I am reading a book about a guy who cured himself of AIDS by eating lots of sauerkraut, kimchi and fermented dairy.. Even grains are more powerful when fermented... Sauer Power!

- DeputyHeadMistress is on the mark about the fermentation reasons. Lacking economic cooling and limited food waste, kimchi and most of its variations are designed for room temp storage in semi open brick pots. The same for the many varieties of bean paste. Other common foods are smoked or dehydrated such as squid, ect.

- My ex was korean and on a clear night you could smell the kimchi the nape of her neck. Personally I love almost all the korean dishes, and still take our mixed blood son out to a good korean dinner once in awhile. As far as the chicken thing, the birds are always fed whatever's available thats clean, and old kimchi is one of those things. The hot red cabbage type is the best. She used to mix up 300 gallons of it at a time turning our patio into a kimchee factory, and causing a bit of consternation with our neighbors. Most of it went to the Bhudda temple, some for sale at the local market, and the rest we kept. Moni moni ahjew-jo-sem-nida.....(very very good .....:)

I'd rather die.

Skybird, I had to laugh at the question 'how will you get the chickens to eat the stuff?' We have chickens. They will eat almost _anything_, and they particularly love cabbage products. Cabbage in the winter also helps them keep up their egg production on a small family homestead.
We feed just about everything that might go into a compost pile to our chickens instead. About the only thing they don't eat is banana peels, and the goats love those.

Don't know if it's relevant, but I latched on to the capsaicin comment above: whenever my wife or I feel unwell, we high-tail it to the Indian or Malaysian place, and ask for "spicy". I've "burned out" more gestating pre-illnesses than I care to count ;-)