In recent studies, spices have proven to have an impact on the brain's mechanism for regulating appetite. It's in the brain's satiety center that sends out signals that you are full or you are hungry.One aspect of spices can impact your feeling full is the spice's aroma. Aroma is a crucial factor in stimulating the satiety center sending out 'full' signals. The more aromatic the food, the stronger the signal the brain sends out to stop eating. Bland, easy-to-eat starches and carbohydrates like bread or pasta don't trigger these stimulates as easily.
Spices add flavor, flavor may replace flavor provided by fat and sugar. Fat as well as sugar adds flavor to dishes, chef's in restaurant are known for their heavy handed use of butter and cream because of this. It's not the chef's arteries getting hardened.
Spice makes your food taste better, you feel fuller sooner and you'll probably eat less fat and fewer sugars.
Spices have been shown to disinfect harmful bacteria and destroy food-borne microorganisms that would otherwise cause food poisoning.
In India, where spices are ubiquitous, spices play a vital nutritional role. Spices are packed with trace elements -micro nutrients that, though present only in minute quantities, are nevertheless essential to health. Even in the poorest parts of India, spices bring balance and variety to a diet that would be otherwise deficient.
Cinnamon for example is laden with proanthocyanidins which are powerful antioxidants that help protect against the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries.
Spices have been shown to disinfect harmful bacteria and destroy food-borne microorganisms that would otherwise cause food poisoning.
In India, where spices are ubiquitous, spices play a vital nutritional role. Spices are packed with trace elements -micro nutrients that, though present only in minute quantities, are nevertheless essential to health. Even in the poorest parts of India, spices bring balance and variety to a diet that would be otherwise deficient.
Cinnamon for example is laden with proanthocyanidins which are powerful antioxidants that help protect against the buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries.
Other benefits of select seasonings include:
- Reducing the amount of fat we absorb: ginger, garlic, fenugreek
- Increasing metabolic rate, burning fat faster: chili
- Slowing the growth of amyloid plaques in the brain, the small knots responsible for Alzheimer's disease (a disease practically unknown in turmeric-addicted India)*: turmeric
- Killing ovarian cancer cells**: ginger
- Helping with ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, depression and multiple sclerosis: ginger, pepper, cumin, cinnamon
*Study by the University of California, Los Angeles
**Study by the University of Michigan
Source: The Spice of Life article in Bon Appetit 3/09 issue
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