Are there potential non-medicinal uses for cow cockle?
We’re not excluding production of industrial chemicals from cow cockle. We have some entrepreneurs who are interested in looking at this plant because it also produces a fine-grained starch that has specialty uses in the paper-sizing business or as a low-fat substitute – small grained starches have similar organoleptic properties as fats, but not the calories. We see these as things that we also want to develop. As well, saponins similar to ours are currently marketed industrially as surfactants and in the food area. They are used as foaming agents in certain soft drinks, for example, and in foods where you need to blend of oil and water, such as salad dressings or chocolate milk. So we’re trying to develop those applications as well. Ask another question Might we one day see a fizzier soft drink that prevents cancer? That is a bit of a stretch. But some dietary saponins have been shown to lead to a reduced incidence of colon cancer in people and it may not be a stretch that some of th
