Ethnopharmacological relevance: Bangladesh has a rich traditional plant-medicine use, drawing on\nAyurveda and Unami medicine. How these practices translate into people's homes and lives vary.\nFurthermore, the overlap between food and medicine is blurred and context-specific. This paper explores\nthe foodââ?¬â??medicine interface as experienced by Bengali women in their homes, in the context of\ntransnational and generational changes.\nAim and objectives: The aim is to explore the overlap of food and medicines in homes of Bengali women\nin Sylhet. The objectives are to explore the influences on medicinal plant practice and to scrutinise how\ncatagories of food and medicine are decided.\nMaterial and methods: The paper draws on in-depth ethnographic research conducted in Sylhet, Northeast\nBangladesh as part of a wider project looking at food and medicine use among Bengali women in\nboth the UK and Bangladesh. Methods included participant observation, unstructured interviews and\nsemi-structured interviews with a total of thirty women.\nResults: The study indicates that the use of plants as food and medicine is common among Bengali\nwomen in Sylhet. What is consumed as a food and/or a medicine varies between individuals, generations\nand families. The use and perceptions of foodââ?¬â??medicines is also dependent on multiple factors such as\nage, education and availability of both plants and biomedicine. Where a plant may fall on the foodââ?¬â??\nmedicine spectrum depends on a range of factors including its purpose, consistency and taste.\nConclusions: Previous academic research has concentrated on the nutritional and pharmacological\nproperties of culturally constructed foodââ?¬â??medicines (Etkin and Ross, 1982; Owen and Johns, 2002,\nPieroni and Quave, 2006). However, our findings indicate a contextualisation of the food-plant spectrum\nbased on both local beliefs and wider structural factors, and thus not necessarily characteristics intrinsic\nto the products' pharmacological or nutritional properties. The implications of this research are of both\nacademic relevance and practical importance to informing health services.
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