[Sca-cooks] OOP Question -Sassafras

[Johnna Holloway]

http://www.foodreference.com/html/artsassafras.html has something
about its history and mentions it's been banned.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/top_articles/1983_July_August/Mother_s_Herb_Garden__Sassafras
carries more about the ban.

Sassafras ---Contains safrole, a carcinogen. Safrole is not permitted in
licensed medicines and it is controlled in food additives.
The oil should never be taken internally as it can cause
liver and kidney damage. Aromatic sassafras tea,
once popular as a stimulant and blood thinner and as
a reputed cure for rheumatism causes cancer in rats when taken in large 
amounts.
Oil of sassafras and safrole, major chemical components
of the aromatic oil in sassafras root bark,
were taken out of root beer more than 30 years ago.
And sassafras bark was banned from use in all food.

http://www.nhsc.com.au/consumer/safesearch/toxins.html


John Frampton's immensly popular 1596 translation of Spanish botanist 
Nicolas Monardes' work, titled in English Joyfull newes out of the 
new-found world, reported of sassafras that among Spanish soldiers “…it 
did in them great effectes, that it is almost incredible: for with the 
naughtiye [rotten] meates and drinkyng of the rawe waters, and sleeping 
in the dewes, the moste parte of them came to fall in cuntinuall Auges….”
http://www.wku.edu/kentuckyfolkweb/KYFolklife_Medicine.html

Johnnae

Nancy Kiel wrote:

>Sassafras might not be OOP---when they settled Jamestown in 1607, sassafras was one of the things they were looking for, which implies there was already a market for it.  I believe it was used medicinally.
>
>Nancy Kiel
>
>
>  Does anyone have a local source for sassafras root and bark?  I have a
>  friend who would like to experiment with the real thing (not the extract)
>  to make root beer.It is not something we have out here on the west coast (if I were in the
>  town I grew up in I could go out and dig some up!)
>
>  Maeva in An Tir
>  
>