Is "枇杷花蜜" syrup or honey?

I bought a bottle of "枇杷花蜜" in China town. Back home I saw "syrup" under the big Chinese label. The following is my email to New York State Department of Health and an abstract of their reply (with written permission).

Dear Sir/Madame,

A New York-based food company, S & M (U.S.A) ENTERPRISE CORP.,

http://www.wangpage.com/nyc/ypage_merch_detail.php?merch=1982

makes Grow Notes brand syrup with a Chinese name "枇杷花蜜" (pronounced "pipa huami"). I believe there's a mismatch between the two names. The Chinese name is literally "loquat honey". If the product is indeed honey, they may be missing out on some customers who only know English. If the product is syrup, they're misleading customers to buying something that they thought would be more healthful and valuable. The label has a big bright title of "枇杷花蜜" with a small dark "Syrup" under it.

Could you tell me where I should address this email? Thank you.

Their reply:

In NYS, the term “honey” is reserved, by law, to mean “the nectar of flowers that has been transformed by, and is the natural product of the honey-bee, taken from the honeycomb and marketed in a liquid, candied or granulated condition.” (NYS Agriculture and Markets Law §205).

Unless the item meets this definition, they would not be able to label it, in the English translation, as honey. If it contains added sugars/ other ingredients, it would need to be labeled as syrup, in English ...

My email again:

Thanks very much to you both. I don't have the knowledge and obviously no scientific instrument to tell whether this particular product is syrup or honey. I'll personally avoid it for now.

Cancer: disease after industrialization

If you search on Google using these keywords

"nature reviews cancer" cancer industrialized

(quotation marks as is), you'll find many reports on the research by Dr. Michael Zimmerman et al. of Manchester University. According to their study of Egyptian mummies, cancer is mainly a disease after industrialization due to pollution and unhealthy diet. If that's true, it explains why Traditional Chinese Medicine never made allusion to a disease similar to what modern medical science calls cancer. And search for a cure of cancer in TCM is probably bound to be a futile effort. Nevertheless, TCM is remarkably successful in improving the patient's general health after cancer treatment, as well as in keeping you fit as a healthy person.

Optimal heart rate when you exercise

Too low, your exercise is not intensive enough to stimulate your heart or tone up other parts of your body. Too high, that's not good to your heart either. According to the study published in a July 2010 issue of Circulation, on average, women's peak heart rate in exercise is 206 - (0.88 x age). Dr. Weil's recount of the study is more readable to non-medical-professionals. He also noted that the formula "that works for men is 220 minus age".

Herb Classification

In memorizing herb names and their functionalities, I find it easier to first classify or group, sometimes kind of arbitrarily, each herb into one single category. So I know the single major use of one herb before I memorize its other uses later when I have time. The following two links have fairly good classification of them.

單味藥 (single herb medicine): www.cmuh.org.tw/HTML/dept/1p10/china_pharm_first.htm
成方藥 (mixed herb medicine): www.cmuh.org.tw/HTML/dept/1p10/china_pharm_second.htm

As of this writing, their web pages still have problems displaying two symbols that mean something to them; both are shown as a question mark. According to their email to me, one is 飲片 and the other 濃縮藥.

Which sports have the highest exercise values?

The following is an English translation of my old note made almost 30 years ago of an article in Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (China Youth Newspaper), March 22, 1981, issue#3689. The article is titled "Which sports have the highest exercise values?". It has no information on what methods they used to create this table and what medical science research was behind the numbers. But for what it's worth, it looks interesting, and seems to be consistent with our common sense.

	jogging	bicycle	swim- ming	skating	hand- ball	basket- ball	tennis	gymnas -tics	walking	softball
heart/lung endurance	21	19	21	18	19	19	16	10	13	6
muscle endurance	20	18	20	17	18	17	16	13	14	8
muscle strength	17	16	14	15	15	15	14	16	11	7
flexibility	9	9	16	13	16	13	14	19	7	9
balance	17	18	12	20	17	16	16	15	8	7
weight control	21	20	15	17	19	19	16	12	13	7
muscle building	14	15	14	17	11	13	13	18	11	5
digestion	13	12	13	11	13	10	12	11	11	8
sleep	16	15	16	15	12	12	11	12	14	7
sum	148	142	140	140	140	134	128	126	102	64

The word "gymnastics" is actually "柔软体操" in Chinese, or "flexibility gymnastics" literally, and "walking" is "散步" or "slow walking", not vigorous walking as in modern day health advice. Needless to say, the sports in the table are to be treated as sports, not leisurely activities. For instance, swimming does not mean you immerse your body in the pool for a whole afternoon and swing your arms once every few minutes, and biking is not slowly cycling around a beautiful lake in a family outing. Have you heard of people say they gained weight by "swimming"? Now you know why.