Kadsu Good to Eat?

The US government introduced kudzu into the South in the 1930s for erosion control and paid for fields of it to be planted. Kudzu goes dormant in the winter in its native Japan, but the South's heat and humidity proved to be ideal year-round growing conditions making this already naturally fast-growing plant spread so rapidly that it begun to smother crops, bridges, houses, powerlines—anything that stood in its way.

Almost 80 years later, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year trying to destroy it, but Tanya Bricking Leach of the AP has found people who've decided to just eat the vine that's eating the South:

"It is perfectly valid as a food source," says Regina Hines, a fiber artist in Ball Ground, Ga. "In the springtime, I like to gather the little shoots, and I will saute them with onions and mushrooms. They taste almost like snow peas."

Those who eat kudzu leaves - which are high in fiber and protein - liken the taste to tofu, which takes on the flavor of whatever it is cooked with.

But James Miller, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., doesn't see kudzu elbowing out spinach or cornstarch any time soon. It's just too hard to harvest the thick vines and heavy roots, he says.