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by Michael Backman

The market for betel nut is largely dead, a bygone habit once prevalent among South-East Asians and Indians.

At least, that's the conventional wisdom. But nothing could be further from the truth. Young people in South-East Asia don't use it much now but plenty of others still do. And, like much else, betel nuts are now traded online, on portals such as India's Trade.india.mart.com and China's Alibaba.com, by companies from Singapore to India.

One such company is Erastimix Co, owned by Indonesian Chinese businessman Anthony Setiono. It's based in the Perth suburb of Currambine and offers to ship 200 tonnes of betel nut to anywhere in the world. (The internationally traded price of betel nuts is now about $US800 a tonne). Betel chewing is a habit that unites South-East Asia with the Indian subcontinent, parts of southern China and the western Pacific.

Whereas alcohol was associated with feasting, betel was the everyday social lubricant-it was offered to visitors to one's home. And, just as the English developed elaborate tea sets, Indians and South-East Asians developed elaborate betel nut sets.

Betel took on symbolic meaning, too, and was a central element of traditional marriage ceremonies. Among Malays, betel would be sent to the parents of a prospective bride and, if they accepted it, it meant they consented to the marriage. And, whereas the regalia of Europe's monarchs included sceptres and orbs, that of Asia's kings and sultans included golden betel nut sets, often set with diamonds.

The actual nut comes from the areca palm tree. Typically, it is sliced, mixed with lime (usually obtained from crushed seashells), then wrapped in a betel creeper leaf and chewed. The lime reacts with compounds in the nut to produce alkaloids for a mild narcotic effect. Large amounts of red saliva are also produced, which chewers spit out.

The nuts were imported into Victorian England in large quantities to make toothpaste, which was sold in small porcelain tubs. The nuts were believed to aid with tooth cleaning. Now they are suspected of being linked to mouth and throat cancer.

But the habit persists across Asia. In Taiwan, scantily clad women (binlang xishi or betel nut girls) sell betel quids to passers-by in the same way that similarly dressed women sell cigarettes at Thai boxing matches in Bangkok. In Papua New Guinea, usage is so widespread that betel nuts are part of the basket of goods and services that the central bank uses to calculate the consumer price index.

The central bank governor in his monetary policy statement to Parliament in January last year even explicitly pointed to an unexpected fall in local betel nut prices as part of the reason for the downwards revision in the anticipated headline inflation rate for the year.

Betel nut usage is spreading into the Himalayas, too, as roads are constructed. And in Bhutan, the habit has received a kick-along thanks to a blanket ban on cigarette and tobacco sales imposed last year by the King.

Betel nuts have even been the subject of recent trade disputes in Asia. Pakistan's betel market is especially big: an estimated 50,000 tonnes of betel nuts-$US 40 million ($A56 million) worth-are consumed each year. Accordingly, its neighbours want a piece of the action; much to the chagrin of local producers.

In 2004, Pakistan held up more than 1000 containers of imported betel nuts, mostly from Bangladesh. Pakistan cited concerns about disease under WTO rules for its actions.

Sri Lanka is an important producer of fresh betel leaf. The free trade agreement between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which came into effect last year, explicitly gives Sri Lanka a 35 per cent preferential concession on the duty that applies to betel leaves imported into Pakistan.

Migration has spread the betel habit to the West. Go to any Bangladeshi-run small grocer in London and you will find betel nuts and fresh betel leaves, imported from Bangladesh for local Bangladeshi migrants to use.

Betel chewing occurs in Australia, too. A paper to be presented to the 13th International Congress on Oral Pathology and Medicine in Brisbane in June finds that about 20 per cent of a sample drawn from Australia's Asian/Indian population chews betel nut.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.