Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. After pulling the plant's root out of the ground, island girls worked it over in their mouths, reducing it to a pulp, then spit the whole mess into coconut milk. The mixture was then strained through fibers, collected in a bowl and consumed by the tribe at large. Kava, after all, had been a popular tonic in the South Seas for as long as anyone could remember.
Critics are uneasy.
Kava, they fear, will turn out to be merely herbal medicine's root du jour, a scientifically unproven preparation that is at best useless and at worst dangerous. But doctors and consumers are two different groups, and even as concerns are raised, kava's popularity continues to grow. It's a sleeper. For all its alleged powers, kava is a pretty pedestrian plant. One of 2,000 members of the extended pepper family, it grows principally in the South Pacific, where it is harvested like any other cash crop.