ABSTRACT
Food and beverages play a vital role in the lives of men and women, as they reflect people’s ethnic, historical, and cultural heri tage. They represent a link between the material and spiritual: on the one hand satisfying hunger, thirst, and basic health necessities and on the other contributing to human social relations by generating tradi tions and customs. In certain circumstances, foods and beverages are consumed for medicinal purposes. Although foods and medicines are often approached as two separate fields of study, the nutritional and pharmacological properties of plants are often not easily distinguish able (Johns, 1990, 1996; Johns and Chapman, 1995). Thus, many plants generally considered as foods have important therapeutic roles and are used in different contexts (Etkin and Ross, 1982), according to socioeconomic and cultural factors.
