Ruislip: What is it good for ......?

I've pondered adding this to the annals, partly because there are no pictures,
and.
partly because of the moral quandary, on several levels it poses me.

Wandering through the Glory of the Ruislip Woods National Nature Reserve last week,
I walked up the slope, southwards from the Lido through Park Wood,
the most visited of the four woods, as it has residential housing around three sides of it.

Emerging from the woodland onto the east-west bridlepath,
which is wider than the others,
as this was also the route of a line of electricity pylons that were removed in the '80s,
I came across an extended family of south east Asian origin.
In the sunlit grassy edge of the bridlepath the older members of the family were bent double and picking the topmost shoots of Bracken!

The Countryside & Wildlife Act chimed in my head, along with the old adage
of 'take nothing but memories & photos'. Taking anything from an NNR is an offence,
but this was nothing like the family seen taking logs recently.

We have to try and manage the bracken to prevent it crowding out other shorter plants,
so in a way this family were helping us meet the Management Plan.

Fortunately a younger member of the family, who was not stressing his back by bending double,
answered my question. Yep they were Chinese, and yes the 'older generation' remembered eating bracken in China. I enquired as to whether they knew that bracken, not just UK bracken is a known carcinogen, especially the young shoots known as 'fiddleheads'?
Yep, it was not eaten raw and had to be cooked for a long time to make it palatable.
The Young man was not certain if the bracken shoots would be cooked with salt, or bicarb or some other readily available kitchen chemical.
Satisfied I had met any implied Duty of Care, I bade them a safe journey home and continued towards my own.

I can remember reading an article many years ago about a region of Japan, that had abnormal levels of mouth, toungue, and oesophogeal cancers, but hardly any incidence of smoking. Researchers finally tracked it down to the local habit of pickling bracken fiddleheads as a 'green vegetable'!
Here's the wiki for bracken
Here's what the Hong Kong authorities say,
Here's the isolated carcinogen,
and here's a Dane who thinks they taste of 'asparagus with almonds' and is finding the carcinogen above in the water supply.

Please don't take anything from a National Nature Reserve,
and,
please don't eat any bracken.