Be Happy! Eat Sea Buckthorn

Be Happy, Eat Sea Buckthon, Russian Scientists Say

Russian chemists have developed a method for extracting high concentrations of the "happiness hormone" serotonin from the sea buckthorn plant, the tranches of which are usually discarded debris during its harvest.

"The bark of sea buckthorn contains lots of serotonin--a thousand times more than bananas or chocolate--but the problem is that sea buckthorn bark is not as much fun to chew as a banana or chocolate." said Oleg Lomovsky, the deputy research director at the Institute of Solid State and Mechanical Chemistry in Novosibirsk.

While serotonin is popularly known as a "happiness hormone", it can also be used as a natural preservative to keep flowers or leafy vegetables fresh for up to three to five times longer, Lomovsky said.

Artificially produced serotonin is too expensive to be used to keep salad greens fresh, but its natural counterpart derived from sea buckthorn would be cheaper and safer for human health.

Interesting?  Yes.  I couldn't verify the specific researcher or study but here is a very interesting one done in Romania in 2007.  http://www.bioaliment.ugal.ro/revista/1/Paper3pp.pdf

---Tom