What do you know about spices. What benefits do they have?

[RAINRA]

List any good sources where you can learn more about real evidence of benefits of spices.

[MartinVegartin]

Some info here about turmeric. Full free article available:

http://www.cmjournal.org/content/3/1/11

 

For curry lovers:

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/164/9/898

 

The potential of various spices to kill the bacteria that cause most gastric ulcers:

http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/11/7499.asp

 

Black Pepper. The full version is available on pdf there, with the references:

http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bpb/25/9/25_1203/_article/-char/en

 

Cinnamon is supposed to be useful for diabetes, Type-2 at least. Here is a study using an extract on pre-diabetic people:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=18500972

 

There are many studies and articles on pubmed. You can search for individual spices. Mostly abstracts come up but those that have green or orange have links to the free full study or article.

 

This is a useful site for links to articles on herbs and spices used as medicine:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FDN

 

This is an interesting site:

http://www.healthy.net/scr/MMList.asp?MTId=1

 

And you can find recent news about herbs/spices here:

http://www.herbs.org/current/topnews.html

[Im Your Man]

spices are poisons that provide no energy or nutrients useful to the body. Vinegar and other fermented alcohols cause fermentation in the body, like eating too much starches may become alcohol too. Pepper, mustard, hot peppers that irritates the mouth, throat, stomach, intestines, as they go along with the rest of the meal they irritate the whole digestive tract, causing small injuries on the walls of the organs, finally it irritates and burns the rectum. The body always want to get rid as fast as he can of all those useless substances. That's why we use them to help vomit or to flush the content of the body.

[RAINRA]

K. Uma Pradeep1, P. Geervani1 Contact Information and B. O. Eggum1, 2

(1) Foods and Nutrition Department, Postgraduate & Research Centre (Home Science) A.P., Agricultural University, 500 030 Hyderabad, India

(2) Department of Animal Physiology and Biochemistry, Forsogsanlaeg, National Institute of Animal Science, Foulum, Post Box 39, DK 8833 Orum Sdnl, Denmark

 

Received: 2 December 1991 Accepted: 30 June 1992

Abstract Nutrient composition of eight commonly consumed spices of South India was analysed. Spices analysed were red chillies (Capsicum annum), black pepper (Piper nigrum), coriander seeds (Coriandrum sativum), cumin seeds (Cuminum cyminum), garlic (Allium sativum), asafoetida (Ferula foetida), dry ginger (Zingiber officinale) and ajowan (Carum copticum). The nutrients analysed were proximate principles, minerals, starch, sugars, dietary fibre components, tannins, phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors and amino acids. Dry ginger, ajowan and asafoetida had high calcium (1.0–1.5%) and iron (54–62 mg/100 g) levels. The tannin content of spices was also high (0.9–1.3% DM). Dietary fibre ranged from 14–53%. Spices had appreciable amounts of essential amino acids like lysine and threonine. A survey revealed the average per capita consumption of spices to be 9.54 g and at that level, the nutrient contribution from spices ranged from 1.2 to 7.9% of an average adult Indian male's requirement for different nutrients.

[RAINRA]

I also found this

spice nutrient list

http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-herbs-spices_c-Y2lkPTcyJnBhcj0.html

 

although it only shows

calcium and potassium listed only under nutrients

[sydneyvegan]

Don't be a boring, bland food eating freak - Spice up your life, I say.

 

MartinVegartin posted some good links, here are a few more

 

Chilli

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8849

 

Ginger

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jmf.2005.8.125?cookieSet=1&journalCode=jmf

 

Cloves

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/patient-clove.html

 

I eat spices because they taste good, if you get the burning ring of fire from eating too much chilli every now and then, get over it, and harden the f*ck up.

[sosso]

All I know about spices is they make my food taste good!

 

I'm a big fan of cumin and garam masala.

[Im Your Man]

foods don't taste anything ...