Fox nuts have been a superfood and traditional medicine staple in Asia for thousands of yearsDepositphotos View gallery – 3 images

If you’ve never heard of fox nuts, you’d be forgiven for assuming that they don’t sound particularly palatable. But they’re actually starchy seeds harvested from an aquatic lily and are being hailed as a versatile superfood, with recent studies supporting why they’ve been a powerhouse in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine for 3,000 years, treating everything from obesity to high cholesterol and inflammation. And no foxes are harmed in the process.

Fox nuts are actually fleshy round kernels within the seeds of the Eurale ferox flower, an aquatic plant that belongs to the water lily family. Not surprisingly, it’s also more commonly known as the prickly water lily. It’s grown in shallow water in tropical regions across Asia, including India, where the nut is known as makhana and phool makhana. But here’s where it gets a little confusing: fox nuts are often called lotus seeds on grocery store shelves, however, lotus seeds actually come from a distant lotus cousin of the E. ferox plant, Nelumbo nucifera . The seeds from this plant are also a super food and have long been used in traditional medicine. While they look quite similar, seeds from the lotus are elongated with a distinct sprout opening at one end. The lotus seed from a lotus plant, often confused with the seeds from the water lily plant (aka fox nuts) While market forecasts for fox nuts vary, all predict growth of between 7% and 10% over the next decade, and price the global industry at around US$90 million by 2030. Several companies are now producing fox nuts ‘pops’ as popcorn alternatives, and most Chinese and Indian grocers stock a range of cooked, dried and roasted seeds (which are generally cheaper than other emerging health-food products on the market).

Because these small aquatic seeds have arrived on the world stage, we decided it’s time to dive into the research on this emerging superfood.

Their anti-aging properties have been of particular interest in the science world. Studies in 2012 , […]

Fox nuts are now a hit superfood – yes, you read that right