Adaptogenic pies often contain herbal medicine believed to help balance cortisol levels. Photo / 123rf
Since becoming a mum, I find myself bouncing along with all the hot nutritional super trends. But does any of this stuff actually work?
I’ve just sat down after putting my toddler down for the night, and my eye is caught by a mesmerising video clip on Instagram from an account called Anima Mundi Herbals, a hip Brooklyn “apothecary” founded by chic Costa Rican herbalist, Adriana Ayales, which stocks “indigenous” potions and powders from “healing” plants.
Soothing instrumental music plays while a beautiful female hand delicately pours and mixes and decorates, and the words “adaptogenic” and “silky” float across the screen. I am watching a recipe for an adaptogenic pie that is promised to be a “nourishing treat your nervous system will love”. I am suddenly overcome by the urge to make it; my nervous system has been tightly wound for months thanks to a particularly stressful time in my life. Could this be what it needs?
But what is an adaptogen? Up until a few months ago, I’d never have even looked it up. I’d just have scoffed, dismissing it as the latest absurdity in the woo-woo world dominated by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.
Now I find myself eagerly googling it. An adaptogen is a term for a herbal medicine that is believed to help the body adapt to stress by balancing levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It is, unsurprisingly, a firm favourite of Paltrow; Goop has sold jars of adaptogenic products for years.
The suddenly-alluring pie is adaptogenic because it includes reishi powder, from the reishi mushroom, which is both an adaptogen and a staple of Japanese herbal medicine; and ashwagandha, also an adaptogen, and an ayurvedic plant that grows like a weed in India. After a quick browse of scientific literature on these plants (of which more later), I ordered both immediately. Adaptogens are easily attainable, by the way.
Friends can’t believe I am now into this stuff. How, they ask, did I go from “wellness” industry sceptic, rigid Western medicine rationalist and despiser of all things woo-woo, to someone keenly searching out ancient herbal remedies?
It began about a year ago. Exhausted with a small baby who wasn’t sleeping, my usual distraction – Chess.com – ceased to be realistic. Instagram’s algorithm seemed to know exactly what I needed, however, and began feeding me a non-stop stream of food reels. There was crafting of butterfly-shaped purple sourdough loaves. There were physics-defying makers of brightly coloured cream-stuffed pastries at scale. And there were endless recipes involving more ordinary foods – vegetables, chicken breast, nuts, yoghurt – rendered gripping, soothing and beautiful all at once by gorgeous kitchen accessories, next-gen phone cameras and editing tools.
I hadn’t cooked much in years because before having my baby I was always out, and when I was in I just kept things basic so I could flop in front of the TV. But life changed and I am in most nights. At 42, you could say I am finally nesting, about a decade after most women.
As I started trying out Instagram recipes, I discovered that whereas before it was a chore, cooking, ideally when my family is in town, has become nourishing for my soul and body; restful yet tiring.
My journey into the bowels of lifestyle Instagram was fast. I now follow close to a hundred food accounts, and have made my kitchen a much-used, functional haven for the first time in my life. I make things from scratch, every week, dusted with things like coconut, chia seeds and hemp powder. I even watch and cook a lot of vegan recipes, largely as they’re pretty and easy.
Before I knew it, I found myself bouncing along with all the hot nutritional super trends, from the ubiquitous protein craze (cottage cheese appears in almost everything, even ice cream), to the smaller-scale battle waged by the fibre pushers (beans galore), to the endless recipes for “green goddess” sauce (blended herbs and avocado), to date-and-peanut butter-based sweet treats, to high protein carb-swaps, like the viral courgette and parmesan baked into a wrap (yummy). My kitchen is full of ground almonds, Medjool dates, garlic, sesame oil and Greek yoghurt. I know how to pickle red onions, make a basic peanut-noodle sauce, and regularly roast chickpeas and tofu.
So it wasn’t a huge leap to the moment I found myself in the kitchen baking the “keto adaptogenic pie” from Anima Mundi Herbals’ recipe. And you know what? It was lovely: a little salty, rich and satisfying with the warm nuttiness of the coconut, and a depth of butteriness, like a digestive biscuit but without the sugar. A slice of my adaptogenic pie did indeed leave me feeling “nourished”.
I’ve also ordered butterfly pea flower, vanilla powder and rose powder, which I plan to mix with frothed milk for a beautiful bright blue adaptogenic beverage: another Anima Mundi recipe. I browse expensive jars of botanical, herbal lotions and potions, lavender sleep ointment and mushroom gummies.
But does any of this stuff work, or is it just marketing? Is the life full of cottage cheese and adaptogens really the one we ought to be living for a long and balanced life? Possibly. The NHS says there’s not enough evidence, and to approach with caution, but adaptogens are starting to be noticed in clinical medicine, with studies of the molecular properties that act on stress reactions, reducing fatigue, and with possible benefits of age-related disorders.
The benefits of reishi mushrooms are attracting attention among researchers. A study of 1374 people with cancer, published in the peer-reviewed journal Integrative Medicine Research, found improvements in nausea, mood and sleep after using reishi for a year. Other studies point to possible benefits to heart health, immune function, depression and a possible mechanism that kills cancer cells.
But how persuasive is the clinical work on adaptogens? I spoke to professor Tim Spector, Britain’s No 1 authority on the biochemistry of nutrition, digestion and the relationship of these to long-term health. Given how famously anti-fad Spector is, I was surprised to hear him praise adaptogens and mushrooms in particular. “Adaptogens are here to stay,” he says, acknowledging that, in this case, despite the fact that they are a heavily-marketed fad, they can be a positive addition to a healthy diet. “The key thing to bear in mind with any new fad is: is it looking after gut health? If you give your microbes diverse food, you will be will giving it diverse chemicals to dampen inflammation.”
When I tell Spector of my morning reishi coffee habit, he is particularly positive. “Mushrooms are great,” he says. “There is quite a lot of good evidence that mushrooms are good for your immune system, helping people on chemo and immunotherapy. We should all be eating regular mushrooms, whichever way you get them in. Nobody knows the right doses and types yet, but they are in theory an adaptogen. It’s not scientifically accepted yet, that plant-based chemicals work on a certain part of your brain. If there’s way of selling it, then that’s good.”
Spector’s key takeaway is not to get “obsessed with one item”. Just add it in. “Don’t forget all the other legumes,” he says. And above all: “Don’t forget fermented food, which should be part of people’s diet.”
I ask professor Spector about some of the other trends I’ve seen online, especially protein vs fibre. As I suspected, protein, he says, “is a massive marketing hype… a modern buzz word.” What I didn’t know was that the “average person is getting twice as much as we need”, and that as we can’t store protein, all that excess “goes into urine or fat”. Spector says the elderly or unwell
often don’t get enough protein. But almost everyone else has plenty, as it is in all foods, even pasta. Fibre is where the real need is, since, as Spector says, “90-95% of us are fibre deficient. Just one in ten are getting enough fibre to satisfy the gut microbes.”
In future, I will continue with my adaptogenic drinks and powders – they’re fun, and they make me feel cared for more than any more obvious effect. But I won’t be using them as a substitute for a well-balanced kitchen, with plenty of fibre. I’ve seen lots of lovely bean recipes on Instagram, so it shouldn’t be too hard.
Ingredients
For the crust:
For the filling:
Method
Mix the ingredients for the crust together and press into pie pan, bake 350F for 10-12 min. Cool.
Heat milk, whisk in gelatin. Then add powders, sweetener, stir for 5-7 mins.
Pour your filling mixture into the crust. Chill for a minimum of 4 hours.
Top it off with coconut, cacao nibs, berries, nut butter – go wild!