mirabilis.ca
From the Globe and Mail, Soup good, bad for you.
Bird’s nest soup — maybe that should be bird spit soup — seems to be both unexpectedly healthy and potentially harmful for those who relish its exotic taste.
A chemical analysis by Massimo Marcone of the University of Guelph of several edible nests made by the swiftlet, a small swallow native to East Asia, turned up a protein similar to that found in eggs. The protein is in the nest because the swiftlets weave a new home yearly, not out of sticks or straw but their own saliva.
Marcone argues that the existence of an egg-like protein would explain the mysterious occurrence of a severe allergy attack among some who dine on bird’s nest soup. Indeed, surveys in Singapore have found that the soup is the leading food allergy there.
However, the positive news for the non-allergic is that the same egg protein has been shown to have antibiotic properties. This would account for the legendary health properties of bird’s nest soup, if not quite medicinally justify its price of upwards of $10,000 a kilogram.
