Kimchi: Korea’s Affordable Health Care

Washington Post ^ | September 18 | Tim Carman

[nickcarraway]

Best I can tell, the former South Korean minister of food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries is trying to convince me that fermented cabbage could be sold at Sephora as a regenerative skin-care product.

“I’m 73 years old,” says Sung-Hoon Kim, standing under the Gwangju World Kimchi Culture Festival tent in Bull Run Regional Park last Friday in Centreville. “Do you see any wrinkles on me?”

As I inspect his round, friendly, bespectacled face, I have to admit that I don’t. Well into his eighth decade on Earth, Kim has no crow’s feet around his eyes and no apparent worry lines across his forehead — although his brow is semi-concealed by a ball cap, so the jury’s still out there. Kim comes right out and calls kimchi an “anti-aging” food, then points to three nearby women in colorful hanbok dresses. He says they’re all kimchi masters. Their skin is flawlessly smooth.

“Don’t ask their ages,” Kim warns me.

Kim’s skin-care pitch is part of his mission here in Northern Virginia. He’s the chairman of the 19th annual Gwangju World Kimchi Culture Festival, which made its first-ever foray outside of South Korea over the weekend to promote the country’s national dish of spicy fermented vegetables (there are hundreds of varieties) as part of the larger, 10th annual Korus Festival, organized by the Korean American Association of the Metropolitan Washington Area.

No doubt indulging America’s nearly neurotic desire to outrun death — and look good while doing so — Kim arrived here to sell us on kimchi’s health benefits. Its high-fiber, low-fat properties. Its good bacteria to help with digestion. Its vitamins A, B and C. Frankly, all of this is gravy to me. Kimchi had me at spicy fermented cabbage.

[NoCmpromiz]

scrapple

I remember the first time I ran into scrapple. I was traveling across PA and stopped at a truck stop for breakfast. Waitress said the platter came with scrapple or ham or bacon. I asked 'what's scrapple'? She said 'if you have to ask maybe you don't want to know.' Another patron said 'it's made from everything left from the pig but the oink...' So I got the scrapple with my breakfast platter.