Chicken Curry and Beyond - The CurryFocus Blog

We have spotted an Internet article that describes Chinese research into using common curry ingredients in the fight against prostate cancer and Kennedy’s disease, both diseases that affect only men.

One piece of research has found that eating pungent foods containing onions and garlic might reduce the risk of getting prostate cancer.

And another piece of research has found that curcumin, one of the wonder spices extensively used in curries, to be effective in the fight against Kennedy’s disease (also known as spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy).

Curcumin has featured in lots of medical research and looks to be an extremely useful compound that can battle numerous diseases – just check out the “Curcumin Kills Cancer Claim” and “Curcumin, Turmeric and Your Health. An Update” articles.

Yet more reasons for eating and enjoying curries.

You can see the full article here.

The Internet is buzzing with the latest medical application for one of the spices used in Indian cooking. The spice is saffron and saffron is often added to cooking rice, resulting in a yellow colour and delicate slightly bitter taste.

Scientists in Australia and Italy claim that saffron improves your eyesight and may be able to prevent blindness.

We recently published an article about saffron spice but had no idea that the wonderful spice could make you see better.

There are lots of articles about this recent research and one of the better ones is from the Hindustan Times.

As we all get older and more prone to failing eyesight, maybe all of us will be like Donovan and be wild about saffron.

This amazing claim has recently been made by Russian doctors. As well as preventing swine flu, curries could also prevent the common cold.

The doctors claim that curry spices, such as turmeric, zeera (cumin) and ginger are the key ingredients in fighting the diseases.

As well as eating curries, the Russian doctors recommend eating garlic and raw onions to fight the viruses.

You can read the story here.

Once again curcumin, one of the chemicals in turmeric, has been reported as being able to kill cancer cells.

This time a team at an Irish research centre makes the claim and it has been reported on the BBC News website.

This time it is gullet cancer that curcumin kills – gullet (or oesophageal) cancer accounts for about 5% of cancer deaths in the UK.

More research is being carried out and it is hoped that this will lead to new cancer treatments being developed from the natural curcumin chemical.

You can read the full story here.

Hot on the heels of the recent claims that eating a curry can help you lose weight (see Lose Weight Eating Curry) comes a theory that eating curry can help prevent Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

This theory was presented at the AGM of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Some UK experts are sceptical about the claim that highlights another health issue that may be treatable with curcumin, which is in turmeric (an often used ingredient in curries).

Professor Doraiswamy, who presented the theory, speculated that a curry pill might be developed from this research.

The premise that eating curries to treat Alzheimer’s and Dementia may be hard to swallow because an awful lot of curry would need to be eaten to provide the same 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 ready the story on the BBC news website.

The internet is abuzz with stories about the recent announcement that curcumin, a component of turmeric, had caused fat and weight loss in experiments with mice.

We wrote an article about this, called “Take Turmeric and Curcumin To Lose Weight�?, three weeks ago.

Since then, the story has been picked up by a lot of organisations, including the Times of India, the Marie-Claire magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

As you probably know, turmeric is an ingredient in lots of curries.

There’s a long way to go with more tests and experiments planned. Presumably testing on people will take place sometime soon and, if these tests are positive, you can expect a flurry of diet and weight loss products, based on curcumin, to hit 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.

Once again turmeric or, more precisely, the curcumin in turmeric has hit the health headlines.

We’ve previously written a couple of articles on the health benefits of turmeric and curcumin - “Is Turmeric a Spice or Medicine?�? and “Curcumin, Turmeric and Your Health. An Update�?.

Now curcumin is being heralded as a possible wonder weight loss aid.

Experiments have been taking place with mice by giving them doses of curcumin with their food.

And the mice that got the curcumin lost body fat and weight.

The treatment has not been done on people yet but we’re sure it won’t be too long before it does.

You can read about the research in lots of places on the internet. One of the easiest articles to read (some of the articles are quite technical) is on the Nutra Ingredients website.

Turmeric is a spice that is often used in curries, so does this mean that one day we’ll be encouraged to eat curries to lose weight?

Out of all of the cooking oils on the supermarket shelf, which one is best for cooking curries?

As you can imagine, there’s no easy answer to this question.

But I’ll lay out a few points for you to ponder – remember that I’m not a doctor, dietician, nutrition expert or the like.

There are 4 basic types of oil – polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated and trans fats – and, of these, saturated oils and trans fats are bad for you because they adversely affect your cholesterol levels.

So this leaves polyunsaturated and monounsaturated oils to choose from.

But an oil isn’t totally polyunsaturated or monounsaturated or even saturated free. Oil is a mixture of all of the 4 types.

So all you have to go on is the percentage of the types of fat in the oils.

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

The first thing to see from the above table is not to use the old favourite fats, no matter how good they taste.

We’ll drop the bad fats from the table and look at the split between the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated contents of the oils. Why does this matter? It matters because monounsaturated oil is better than polyunsaturated oil.

Going from the above table, it seems you need to decide between canola oil (which has only 6% of saturated fat) and olive oil (which has 73% of monounsaturated fat).

Personally, I use canola oil because, in my opinion, there is little to choose between the two oils and it is a lot cheaper than olive oil.

There is a lot of information on the Internet about cooking oils – probably more than you can handle.

Just make sure you enjoy cooking with whatever oil you choose to use.

Fenugreek is a spice that is widely used in curries, being an essential spice in five-spice powder and in curry powders.

But as well as adding flavour to curries, fenugreek also has medicinal applications.

A quick survey of the Internet finds that fenugreek is used to treat diabetes (type 2), high cholesterol, inflammation, indigestion, skin disorders, ulcers, menstrual aches, colds and sore throats.

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

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

As with all medicines, you should talk to your doctor before starting a new treatment. Fenugreek is definitely not recommended for pregnant women and your doctor should have the latest information available.

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

You can find out more about the health benefits of fenugreek from the Internet. The following are some links that you can start from.

Fenugreek

Therapeutic applications of Fenugreek

Fenugreek Seed

Fenugreek for Health

One of the main spices used in Indian cooking is turmeric. But more recently its medicinal uses and applications are being tested.

Earlier this month we wrote about how curcumin, one of the components of turmeric, was being investigated for its effectiveness in treating cancers. You can read the original article, titled “Is Turmeric a Spice or Medicine?�?.

The newswires are currently busy reporting more curcumin advances with the production of synthetic versions of curcumin.

Japanese scientists have been testing synthetic curcumin and have found the synthetic versions to be more effective than natural curcumin.

Natural curcumin quickly loses its cancer fighting potency when it is taken orally. But the synthetic versions do not have this problem.

The synthetic curcumin has been tested on mice with colorectal (bowel) cancer with good results.

There is speculation that the synthetic curcumin could also be effective in fighting other cancers, such as gastric cancer, breast cancer, pancreas cancer and lung cancer.

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

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

You can read some of the posts about synthetic curcumin by going to the following 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