Part of the book: Alternative Medicine
Licorice is the root and stolon of the genus Glycyrrhiza plants. Licorice has a long and storied history of use in both Eastern and Western cultures for over 4000 years. Licorice extracts and its principal component, glycyrrhizin, have been used extensively in foods, tobacco, and cosmetics and in both traditional and herbal medicines. Since its start-up in 1938, our company has been working on extracting and purifying the flavoring, sweetening, cosmetic, and medicinal constituents from licorice. At first, we were manufacturing licorice extracts for soy sauce. Recently, our company has developed new licorice products, such as antioxidative and antimicrobial products for foods from hydrophobic licorice extracts; whitening, antioxidative, and antityrosinase products for cosmetics from hydrophobic licorice extracts; antiaging products for cosmetics from licorice leaves; and some disease-suppression products for agriculture and fishery by water-soluble licorice flavonoids. This chapter presents the history of several kinds of food and cosmetic applications from many extracts and purified constituents from licorice plants in our company.
Part of the book: Licorice Ingredients