Asparagus Week: Top 10 (ish) Facts (ish) About Asparagus

Fact: Asparagus is about 4 % sugar (sugar beets are 15-20%, sweet corn 3%, sweet potatoes a little over 4%); making it one of the sweeter vegetables available at the market. But the sugar content starts to diminish from the time it is picked, so buy fresh/use quickly.

Fact: Growers produce a little over a pound of fresh asparagus for each resident of the US, according to data from the Department of Agriculture. Our asparagus consumption has increased 25% since we were partying in and like it was 1999. We now eat more fresh and frozen asparagus, while the canned variety is on a slow decline – shame it is because pickled asparagus can be really good.

Fact: Pliny the Elder described asparagus as being 3 to the pound. Opinion: Even if they knew what pencils were, it is a safe guess that Romans would not have been aficionados of pencil thin asparagus.

Fact: The word asparagus evolved from a term meaning sprout. More directly the word emerged from the phrase sparrow's grass.

Fact: Asparagus makes urine smell. 80% of Americans but only 50% of Brits (Opinion: USA, USA, USA!) excrete the sulfurous compounds from asparagus. These people clinically and politely known as excreters, currently they are thought to inherit this ability/malady genetically.

Fact: There are about 6 compounds that cause the trademark asparagus pee smell. Methanethiol, that lovely, lovely smell associated with skunks and dimethyl sulfide appear to be the two main attractions while they other four are responsible for the ambient odors in the smell bouquet.

Fact: Asparagus grown in sulfur depleted soil has less of a urinary impact that high sulfur soils, meaning Walla-Walla, Maui and Vidalia should all market asparagus - Opinion .

Fact: The research is far from conclusive - other studies suggest everyone produces the asparagus pee smell, but only some can detect it. Depending on who you believe, as many as 50, 75 or 90 % of the world’s population cannot detect the sulfurous odor of asparagus in their urine or in the case of clinical studies, that odor in other people’s urine.

Opinion: The great thing about science is it never changes, so once something is decided, it is true forever (see below).

Opinion: Anything that smells that bad has to be good for you, or at least has medicinal value. Historically, the bad smell in urine was proof positive that asparagus was leeching toxins from the body. The second half of veg’s Latin name, asparagus officinalis, means from the dispensary; stalks have long been prescribed as a purgative, diuretic and deobstruent. Me, I like modern western medicine, and if I had kidney troubles, I’d start with a clinically tested, FDA approved drug (and start being nice to my brother as a back up plan) before I would attempt a self-cure with two pears and a pound of asparagus – although that prescription is 2/5 of the way to the possibility of a good meal.

Historical Belief: Besides opening up pores and ducts, asparagus also has a reputation as nature’s Viagra – and is constantly cited as an aphrodisiac. No one really says why, many surmise this is do to the phallic shape of the veg. There has to be another, less obvious reason for this.

Fact: Asparagus is a member of the lily family; Lily is the name of one of my dogs.

Fact: White asparagus is not a special cultivar, it is grown by depriving the asparagus of sunlight which would in turn produce the green tinted chlorophyll. Opinion: White asparagus tastes a little more bitter, is a little more expensive and is more revered in Northern Europe, Spain and Argentina.

Fact: Purple asparagus is tinted by Anthocyanins, a water volatile compound - Opinion: meaning good luck keeping that color during the cooking process.

Fact: Asparagus shoots/stalks emerge from an underground corm. Because a corm is round and stores energy to help a plant survive dormant periods, it is sometimes thought of as a bulb but this would be wrong. A corm is a stem made of solid material; while bulbs are mostly modified leaves. So, when a corm is cut in half it is solid, but when a true bulb is cut in half it is layered.