[Search for antidiabetic constituents of medicinal food].

Many foods are known to have not only nutritive and taste values but also medicinal effects. In Chinese traditional medicine, the treatment using medicinal foods has been recommended highly. Recently, we examined the effects of the extract and constituents of several medicinal foods on experimental models of diabetes. In this paper, we focus on the bioactive constituents of four medicinal foods, namely the antidiabetic constituents from 1) the roots, stems and leaves of Salacia plants, 2) the male flowers of Borassus flabellifer, 3) the flower buds of Camellia sinensis, 4) the processed leaves of Hydrangea macrophylla var. thunbergii (Hydrangeae Dulcis Folium).