Kudzu Root

A natural history

In Asia, kudzu is an honored plant. For more than two thousand years its starchy root has been prized across China and Japan as both a food and a traditional medicine, valued for the wealth of beneficial compounds packed into it. Few would guess that this dignified old root belongs to the same vine that became a legend, of a very different kind, in the American South.

Introduced to the United States in the late nineteenth century and later planted widely to hold the soil, kudzu took to the Southern climate with astonishing vigor, growing as much as a foot a day until it draped whole fields and fences in green. It earned the affectionate nickname the vine that ate the South, a familiar sight across the region. For a Mississippi brand, it is a homegrown character with ancient roots.

What it does for your skin

Kudzu root is exceptionally rich in antioxidant isoflavones, chief among them puerarin. In laboratory study on human skin cells, puerarin from kudzu supported the cells' own antioxidant defenses and helped reduce ultraviolet driven oxidative stress.^[1] In further cell research, puerarin influenced skin genes tied to hydration and resilience.^[2] In a formula kudzu works as an antioxidant, isoflavone rich botanical that helps dull, uneven skin look defended and revived. That antioxidant, reviving action is documented in laboratory skin-cell studies of its puerarin.

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