Exotics have the same general nutrients as non-exotics. There's no real point to eating the world's charismatic megafauna to get a boner. It seems like they're obsessed with "energies" the foods give you, they take the "you are what you eat" way too seriously.
"You small sissy tic-tac dick asian man? Drink tiger blood, and you be fierce and strong like tiger."
From what I've read, rhino horns are just like giant overgrown fingernails. Of course, instead of eating powdered fingernail clippings, which have roughly the same nutrient value, they still choose the horn for it's magic spooky voodoo powers.
Shark fin soup, responsible for the utter devastation of the world's sharks, is just a wad of cartilage that tastes like nothing at all. You could get a better nutrient profile plus some collagen gelatin stuff from eating chicken feet, plus chicken feet do not have the potent neurotoxin BMAA that shark fin does. Of course the Chinese still demand shark fin to balance their yin and yang n' sheeeit.
And you don't need to torture asian black bears for bear bile, any other animal's bile will roughly do the same trick. I have a bottle of digestive enzymes behind me on the counter with ox bile in them, it's probably almost the exact same shizzle, my nizzle.
The only thing that seems a bit unique is their use of the stank-glands in endangered musk deer. There aren't really many good substitutes for it, but still, what kind of pathetic beta male needs to administer deer stank to have good health? There are less than 5,000 musk deer left in the world, they have disappeared from nearly their whole range except for parts of Nepal.
The most useful part of Chinese traditional medicine is probably their use of mushrooms and herbs, since they are loaded with whole spectrums of very unique chemicals.
Originally posted by Bradley
Some of it has to have some truth to it
The truth is that if you're a soy-sauce blooded asian sissy and 90% of your diet is white rice and bok choy , you will in fact get some dank boners after eating beef stew. Of course it is not "magic cow powers" that gave them the boners, it's simply the infusion of real nutrients, like zinc for example, into their bodies.
