Fresh lemon grass fields in Israel become mecca for cancer patients
By Allison Kaplan Sommer April 02, 2006

At first, Benny Zabidov, an Israeli agriculturalist who grows greenhouses full of lush spices on a pastoral farm in Kfar Yedidya in the Sharon region, couldn’t understand why so many cancer patients from around the country were showing up on his doorstep asking for fresh lemon grass.

It turned out that their doctors had sent them.

“They had been told to drink eight glasses of hot water with fresh lemon grass steeped in it on the days that they went for their radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” Zabidov told ISRAEL21c. “And this is the place you go to in Israel for fresh lemon grass.”

… Researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev discovered last year that the lemon aroma in herbs like lemon grass kills cancer cells in vitro, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
More: Full story by Allison Kaplan Sommer April 02, 2006, at Israel 21c