What is betel nut?
Betel nut is the stuff that turns teeth and gums bright red, and is responsible for the blood-like splashes on the pavements across India and Southeast Asia. Calling it ‘betel nut’ is somewhat misleading. The leaf that wraps around the nut is betel leaf, but the nut itself is areca nut, which, to confuse matters further, isn’t actually a nut but a drupe (a type of fruit with the flesh surrounding a shell containing the seed). Betel nut was first offered to me after a meal with a family in the Tai Phakial village, 80km from Dibrugarh in Assam, Northeast India. The village is a small community of about 700 people; their ancestors emigrated from Thailand via Burma during the Ahom period (about 150 years ago) and today’s population still has more in common with Southeast Asia than the rest of India. Why is betel nut so popular? Betel nut is used as a digestive and plays a major role in social situations across Asia and the South Pacific. It’s also a psychoactive drug. It acts as a mild sti
