Spice – Reason For Better Health From Indian Kitchen

Incredible things can happen with simple ingredients from the kitchen. Do you know every Indian kitchen have a secret ingredient — which is also known as spice?

Indian recipes are filled with different spices. These spices help to stay healthy, lose weight and even maintain weight. Although it helps indirectly. Just because it can make any boring recipe an unforgettable experience.

Eating healthy foods isn’t boring, it’s just the right combination of spice aren’t used. You won’t quit healthy food when you get enough flavor.

Whatever may be your goal — whether you want to improve health, lose or manage weight — you’ll get better results.

So, Let’s start with the first ingredient…

1. Turmeric

Turmeric has been used in curries to improve color. While turmeric are also used for cold, cough, boost recovery and also for skin care.

It wasn’t popular. But in few years, turmeric started to trend worldwide.

What made a simple turmeric a trendsetter?

More than 6000+ studies claimed turmeric is one of the healthiest spice.
Turmeric contains a wide range of compounds. But curcumin is in focus because of its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and healing properties.

It also contains phytosterol which provides turmeric antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and sedative properties.

Human studies have found to reduce the risk of stomach, breast, lung and ovarian cancer.

Studies also show that Alzheimer’s and Cancer rate in India are 10 to 20% less than that of America. Although turmeric isn’t the only reason but it gives a huge advantage.

And one final tip — You don’t need turmeric extract, just buy turmeric power.

Let’s look at next ingredient which is also known to increase the benefit of turmeric.

2. Black pepper

Black pepper is another spice which is worth mentioning. It has its own set of benefits and even it increases the effectiveness of turmeric.

The credit goes to piperine. Piperine protects from free radicals. Free radicals are linked to inflammation, premature aging, heart disease and many types of cancer. Free radicals can be found with exposure to things like pollution, cigarette smoke and sun rays.

Benefits you get from black pepper.

1. Animals studies has found that black pepper extract has improved symptoms of degenerative brain disease like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson.
2. It improves insulin sensitivity — that means it improve blood sugar metabolism.
3. Can lower cholesterol level.
4. Lowers cancer risk by balancing free radicals and inflammation.
5. Boost absorption of calcium and selenium.
6. Can increase good bacteria in the gut.
7. It is a natural pain reliever.
8. In the Indian kitchen, it’s good medicine for cough, cold, and flu.

And the most important one. Black pepper’s pipeline content can increase curcumin absorption by up to 2000%. And in Indian kitchen — both spices are used in combination.

Pro tip — fatty meal, chili pepper, coconut, ginger also improves curcumin absorption.

3. Ginger

For long time, ginger have been used in cooking and also as an alternate medicine. Both fresh or dry ginger are equally beneficial.

Gingerol is the main ingredient provides ginger powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effect

Looking at its benefit

1. It’s good for morning sickness
2. Can reduce muscle pain and soreness due to its anti-inflammatory property. It’s good for muscle pain due to exercise.
3. found to reduce pain and stiffness in osteoarthritis patients when applied externally.
4. Shown to lower blood sugar levels and improve various heart disease risk factors in patients with type 2 diabetes.
5. Beneficial for people with indigestion and other stomach discomfort.
6. Human and animals studies show that ginger can reduce LDL cholesterol and blood triglyceride levels.
7. 6-gingerol may have protective effect against cancer. More studies are required to know it’s effectivity.
8. Improves brain health and protect against Alzheimers disease
9. Can inhibit the growth of many types of bacteria.
10. Protect against respiratory infection

4. Garlic

Next spice in the list is garlic. It give a great flavor to meal. And even prescribed for variety of medical conditions.

Looking at its benefits…

1. It boost immune system. 2.56 g per day can reduce the number of days sick with cold and flu by 61%.
2. Its found to lower blood pressure in people with high blood pressure
   Reduce risk of common brain diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia
3. Help to detoxify heavy metals like lead from the body
4. Have beneficial effects on bone in women

5. Other Spices

Let’s look at the next one. Actually, I won’t be considering one or two but a wide range because the Indian kitchen has a huge variety of spices.
Earlier I focused only on turmeric, black pepper, ginger and garlic. But the Indian kitchen doesn’t stay limited to 4 spices.

There are a lot more and each holds a set of phytonutrients that give unique flavor and benefits.

No matter what types of phytonutrients they contain they are efficient in protecting from free radical damage. It also protects from human’s worst problem — uncontrolled inflammation.

The main benefit of these spices are

1. They promote digestion and reduce the risk of gastrointestinal disease
2. Lowers LDL cholesterol which is also known as low-density lipoprotein or bad cholesterol. Thereby they lower the risk of cardiovascular disease
3. Most of these spices have anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-microbial properties that protect from numerous infections.
4. They are anti-inflammatory and antiseptic in nature
5. Protect from cold, flu, fever and also relieves sore throat

These spices include

1. Allspice
2. Anise seed
3. Bay leaf
4. Caraway seed
5. Cardamon
6. Carmon seed (ajwain)
7. Cayenne pepper
8. Chilli pepper
9. Cinnamon
10. Cloves
11. Coriander seeds
12. Cumin
13. Fennel seed
14. Fenugreek seed
15. Mustard/ sesame seed
16. Saffron
17. Tamarind
18. Nutmeg

If you’re Indian, then you should be eager to add varieties of these spices and depends on what you’re cooking.

While if you aren’t aware of Indian Cuisine — you can try different Indian recipes.

You don’t need to add each and every spice. Just start with a few recipes and spices.

If you’re experimenting with spices — you can also add some herbs like Basil, coriander (cilantro), peppermint, curry leaves.

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So, by far you got to know about secret ingredients in Indian Kitchen
Many western countries complain that Indian recipes are hot and spicy.
But it’s all about taste preference.

In Indian some like hot and spicy. But many prefer the mild flavor. We customize food depending on our taste preferences.

While adding spices give our meal better antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, anti-fungal, and a huge list of benefits.

These spices make even vegetarian food a daily treat. Boring food is a myth with the proper combination of these spices. You don’t need a huge quantity of oil, butter, salt, or sugar which is not good for your health.

And if you enjoy a healthy meal there is a high possibility that you’ll follow it for a lifetime. And it’s the end goal of a healthy lifestyle. You enjoy your food while your body enjoys the nutrients.