Fox Nut

TCM benefits of Fox Nut

芡實 · qiàn shí

How fox nut is seen in traditional Chinese food therapy. Traditional context, not medical advice.

• Classed as sweet, astringent and neutral, and associated with the Spleen and the Kidney. The astringent note is why it is thought of as a steadying, binding seed.
• The Bencao Qiuzhen reads the flavours separately: the sweetness is tied to the Spleen, the astringency to holding things in at the Kidney.
• Wang Shixiong's 1861 handbook advises against it around the start of a cold, in dysentery or constipation, and after childbirth, so it is traditionally eaten sparingly then.
• In Cantonese kitchens it goes with Chinese yam, lotus seed and poria into a long-simmered pork-bone soup; the seeds stay pleasantly chewy rather than falling apart.

Sources: Chinese Pharmacopoeia 2020, 芡实 monograph; 本草求真 (Bencao Qiuzhen), 芡實 entry; Ethnopharmacological review of Euryale ferox: a Chinese medicine food homology (PMC); Chinese Pharmacopoeia, 芡实 (Euryales Semen)