Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

Another Internet article has been brought to our attention about some Chinese research into the health benefits of some of the common ingredients in curries.

One item of research has uncovered the fact that eating pungent foods (such as curries) could reduce the risk of getting prostate cancer, a disease that only affects men.

And once again, curcumin has been highlighted as possibly being effective in treating Kennedy’s disease, also known as spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy, that is another disease that only affects men.

Curcumin has often been attributed with being able to combat a wide range of diseases. You can read more about curcumin’s powers by reading the “Claim that Curcumin Kills Cancer” and “An Update on Curcumin, Turmeric and Your Health” blog articles.

You can see the full Chinese research article here.

The Internet news feeds are alive with a potential new health use for one of the spices used in Indian cooking. The spice in question is saffron, which is often added to rice to give it a slightly bitter taste and a golden yellow color.

Australian and Italian scientists say that saffron improves eyesight and may prevent blindness.

A recent Curry Focus article described the saffron spice but, at the time, there was no indication that saffron could improve your vision.

There are a lot of Internet articles about this new research with a good one being on the Hindustan Times website.

We are all getting older so maybe this latest research will be of increasing interest to us all.

Russian doctors have made the amazing claim that eating curries will prevent the onset of swine flu and the common cold.

The curry spices, such as ginger, zeera (cumin) and turmeric are credited with being the main virus fighting ingredients.

You can also eat garlic and raw onions to combat the viruses.

You can read the story here.

Curcumin, a natural chemical in turmeric, has again been reported as having cancer killing abilities.

An Irish research center team has made the claim that appears on the BBC News website.

The team has discovered that curcumin kills gullet, or oesophageal, cancer which is instrumental in 5% of UK cancer deaths.

Research is continuing in the hope that new cancer treatments will be developed from the natural curcumin chemical.

The full story can be read here.

Not long after the latest excitement about being able to lose weight by eating a curry (see Try To Lose Weight By Eating Curry), along comes a new theory that you can prevent Alzheimer’s and Dementia by eating curry.

Professor Doraiswamy presented this theory at the Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Some experts are sceptical about the claim that puts forward another health application for curcumin, which is in turmeric (an often used ingredient in curries).

Professor Doraiswamy has speculated that a curry pill might be developed from this research.

The idea Alzheimer’s and Dementia can be prevented by eating curry may be a bit hard to swallow, if only because you would need to eat a very large amount of curry in order take the amount of curcumin that was used in the research.

Even so, I think that I would prefer to eat great curries than to pop a pill.

You can see this amazing story on the BBC news website.

The internet is buzzing with stories about the recent announcement of the result of experiments where mice were fed with curcumin and the mice lost fat and weight.

Three weeks ago we wrote an article about this, called “Lose Weight with Turmeric and Curcumin”.

This exciting development has been picked up by lots of organizations, including the Times of India, the Marie-Claire magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

As you no doubt know, turmeric is an ingredient in lots of different curries.

More tests and experiments are planned and, no doubt, testing on people will take place sometime soon. If the results of the tests are positive, you can be sure to see a new range of curcumin-based weight loss and diet products arriving in the market.

Until then, you can eat a good curry with the thought that maybe you can lose a bit of weight in the process.

Curcumin, found in turmeric, has again reached the health news headlines.

A couple of articles about turmeric and curcumin have already appeared on the Curry Focus website - “Turmeric is it Spice or Medicine?” and “An Update on Curcumin Turmeric and Your Health”.

This time curcumin has been found to be a potential wonder weight loss aid.

Mice have been given doses of curcumin with their food.

And the mice that were given curcumin lost body fat and weight.

The experiment has not yet been tried with people but we’re sure that it won’t be too long before it does.

The research is well documented on the internet, such as on the Nutra Ingredients website.

Seeing that turmeric is an often used spice in curries, will we one day see weight loss diets that advocate eating a curry in order to lose weight?

Of all the cooking oils in the supermarket, which is the best for cooking curries?

You can probably guess that there is no “correct” answer.

I’ll give you a few basic details for you to think about but you should remember that I’m not a doctor, nutritionist or chemist – I just make curries.

There are 4 main types of oil – polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated and trans fats. Of these types, saturated oils and trans fats are bad for you because they have a bad effect your cholesterol levels (either raising your LDL levels or lowering your HDL levels).

Ignoring saturated and trans fat oils leaves polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils to choose from.

One problem is that a cooking oil is not completely polyunsaturated or monounsaturated or even saturated free. Oil is a mixture of all of the types of fat.

You need to look at the percentage of the good types in cooking oils.

The following table shows the 5 oils with the least amount of bad fat, along with old favorites such as butter, ghee and lard.

The first thing to notice from the table is that the old favorites (butter, lard, ghee and margarine) are to be avoided, no matter how good they taste.

So I’ll drop the bad fats from the table and show the amount of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat in the oils. Why do you need to know this? Generally speaking, monounsaturated oil is better than polyunsaturated oil.

Looking at the above table, it appears that you need to decide between canola oil (which has only 6% of saturated fat) and olive oil (which has 73% of monounsaturated fat).

I use canola oil because, in my opinion, there is little to choose between canola oil and olive oil and also because canola oil is a lot cheaper than olive oil.

There is a lot of information on the Internet about cooking oils and some are easier to understand than others.

But whatever oil you choose to use, make sure you continue to enjoy cooking.

Fenugreek is a spice that is used a lot when making curries and is basic ingredient of five-spice powder and curry powders.

But, as well as adding flavor to curries, fenugreek also has a variety of medicinal applications.

A quick search of the Internet shows that fenugreek is used to treat high cholesterol, diabetes, indigestion, inflammation, skin disorders, menstrual aches and pains, ulcers, colds and sore throats.

In addition, fenugreek has been used to induce labour and stimulate breast milk production.

Other, non-medicinal, uses of fenugreek include its use for weight control and for breast enlargements.

You should always talk to your doctor before starting to use a new medicine and taking fenugreek is no exception. There are warnings that pregnant women should not use fenugreek. Your doctor will have the latest information available.

But using fenugreek in your curries is probably OK, as well as being tasty.

You can find out more about the health benefits of fenugreek by searching the Internet. The following links are some that may be of interest to you.

Fenugreek

Therapeutic applications of Fenugreek

Fenugreek Seed

Fenugreek for Health

One of the main spices used in Indian cooking is turmeric – you’ll find it being added to most curries. More recently its medicinal applications are being investigated.

Earlier this month we wrote about how one of the compounds in turmeric, called curcumin, is being tested for its effectiveness in fighting several types of cancer. The original article is called “Turmeric. Is It a Spice or Medicine?”.

The medical news is currently very active in telling us about more advances with using new synthetic curcumins.

Some Japanese scientists have created synthetic curcumins and have found them to be more effective at treating cancers than the natural curcumin.

One problem with natural curcumin is that it loses its effectiveness when taken orally. But it appears that the synthetic curcumins do not have this problem.

The synthetic curcumins have been tested on mice with colorectal (bowel) cancer with results that are better than with using natural curcumin.

There is an expectation that the synthetic curcumins will also be effective in treating other cancers (such as gastric, breast, pancreas and lung cancers).

Natural curcumin is effective in treating Alheimer’s and it will be interesting to see if the synthetic product also has similar results with this other terrible disease.

These are exciting developments and we will be keeping an eye open to see how they develop.

You can read some of the posts about the new synthetic curcumins by following these links.

New versions of curry ingredient to fight cancer

Curry Offers Hope for Cancer and Alzheimer’s Victims

Curry-derived molecules may help stave off colorectal cancers