rickly pear cactus has been an interest of mine ever since I heard that many people in Mexico use it to prevent high blood glucose levels and that it has one of the lowest glycemic indexes, 7. When I was living in California where it is readily available in the markets, I bought it a few times, but really had no idea how to use it.
That’s one of the reasons why I was delighted to receive Ran Knishinsky’s book, Prickly Pear Cactus Medicine: Treatments for Diabetes, Cholesterol, and the Immune System. This book has many recipes for prickly pear, specifically its pads or joints, known as nopal (Spanish: nopales). The fruits, known as Indian fig or cactus pear (Spanish: tuna), and flowers have other (non-diabetic) medicinal uses.
There is a lot more that recipes here too. The core of the book is summaries of the research reports that you could have found yourself by searching MEDLINE through PubMed. Still, it’s handy to have them in one place.
Yet, it doesn’t persuade me to go back to the markets and look for it again. Prickly pear undoubtedly tastes okay, has a great GI, and will probably reduce your blood glucose. But unless it is already a part of your diet and you love the stuff, why bother?
One reason why I won’t bother is something that I learned from this book. There isn’t any way that I know of to tell the difference in the market between Opuntia streptacantha, which has been studied more for its glucose-lowering effect, and Opuntia ficus-indica, which tastes better. Because the latter species is more palatable, my guess is that this is what we would be most likely to find in the markets. I know that where I shop — the Wild Oat Natural Marketplace in Superior, Colorado — that even the produce manager told me he doesn’t know which species of Optunia it is that they sell. He says he would have to contact the distributor to get that information.
This is contrary to what the author, Ran Knishinsky, wrote me. “There is a way to tell the difference,” he wrote. “You will find the opuntia typically labelled on supplements and it will typically define the type of prickly pear inside. On most of the food items, this is also the case.” In my experience, it isn’t.
Besides this problem, I feel about prickly pear the same way that I feel about all the exotic herbs and spices that are purported to have a glucose-lowering effect. They may well work. But they haven’t been rigorously tested like our prescription medicine are and certainly aren’t standardized.
Healing Arts Press in Rochester, Vermont, published this 136-page softcover book in July 2004 for $9.95. You can order it at cactusmedicine.com. The ISBN is 089281149-8.
[As of 03Aug2005, this book is available at
Amazon
for $9.95.]
