This Most Nutrient Dense Food Group that Everyone Agrees On Should Be Prioritized in All Diets

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Spices have fueled empires, started wars, made millionaires, and at many periods were more valuable than gold. But before they began filling up kitchen pantries, they were used as medicine.

Today, the Ayurvedic outpatient system in India sees millions of visitors who have conditions like respiratory infections and fever treated with mixtures of herbs and spices—but not special mythical ones growing in sheltered caves in the Himalayas—rather they use many things we recognize from our own pantries like ginger, turmeric, cumin, and cloves.

We cook with such ingredients every day, and as debates between whether national dietary guidelines should include red meat, eggs, dairy, grains, various combinations of these, or be entirely plant-based, there is very little ever said about the importance of herbs and spices.

In the most recent USDA Dietary Guidelines, a control-F search for the word “spice” yields two hits, both of which discuss spices and herbs as flavoring agents, but say nothing of their nutrient density.

Why is this important? Meat contains far more key vitamins and minerals like vitamin A, iron, zinc, and B vitamins than plants, but nutritionists advise the consumption of fruits and vegetables primarily for two reasons: fiber, and phytonutrients.

Phytonutrients are a class of micronutrients found exclusively in plants. They include the likes of peperine, curcumin, gingerol, cinnamic acid, rosemarinic acid, and literally thousands more. Other bywords for phytonutrients that have made it into the vernacular are polyphenols carotenoids, and turpines.

These compounds are responsible for everything good in plants along with fiber, and have dozens of medicinal and fitness-enhancing effects, some researched, some not. However, a recent educational pamphlet from the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt compiling the value of spices and herbs says that you can’t get phytonutrients solely from vegetables.

PICTURED: This simple and inexpensive herb is one of the most powerful antioxidants on Earth when dried.

ORAC and Roll

To get some sense of the medicinal power of these plants, one can look at the antioxidant values of foods. These are quantified in research as ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) units, a unit of measurement for antioxidant content that was originally developed by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Among the less-than-exotic names on the top of the NIH’s list are ground clove, dried oregano, raw sumac, dried rosemary, dried peppermint, dried thyme, and so on.

In fact, the drying of herbs increases their ORAC score—tenfold or more in some cases. The ORAC score directly refers to how many reactive oxygen species (free radicals) these herbs and spices neutralize. The first commonly-eaten whole fruit or vegetable on that list is blackberries at 68th position and a score of 19,220, while cinnamon is 16th with 131,420.

Antioxidants are critical to prevent age-related declines, for every time the billions of mitochondria in our bodies respirate—take in oxygen—it creates these free radicals, aka reactive oxygen species, which steal electrons from other molecules, dismantling us continually at a molecular level in an overly-simplified sense.

Antioxidants get their name from their function of providing that spare electron to cancel out the free radical’s harmful effect.

The Vanderbilt piece lists 6 must-have herbs and spices for the kitchen based on their ORAC scores and the published scientific literature on their effectiveness. These are cinnamon, ginger, and turmeric, garlic, basil, and rosemary.

Cinnamon has been found to slow gastric emptying, reducing the rise in post-prandial blood glucose. The volatile oils in cinnamon show antifungal and antibacterial effects, and it can even help with type 2 diabetes patients after being shown to cause a .83% decrease in hemoglobin A1C levels. Cinnamon is a key ingredient in what is known in America as spicy chai tea, and makes for a perfect after-dinner drink for these reasons.

Garlic lowers triglycerides and total cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, and decreases atherosclerosis risk, while a meta-analysis showed those with the highest consumption of garlic had a 41% lower risk of colon cancer compared to those with the lowest intake. It has anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-inflammatory properties and can basically be put in or on anything while cooking.

1,000 studies support turmeric as an anti-cancer herb through multiple mechanisms. It is beneficial in osteoarthritis, while current studies are looking at its use in Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s, IBD, and depression.

Ground cloves are one of the most important Ayurvedic spices, and just a tiny amount of the oils contained within have been shown to kill B tuberculosis. The oils have been investigated for the potential similarities to the common drug paracetamol—to reduce inflammation via Cox-2. Clove also acts as an iron chelator and is effective at clearing hydroxy radicals. It’s been theorized as a treatment for breast cancer and prevents the breakdown in the eye’s retina.

Beyond all that, it works as a medicine to cure all kinds of simple imbalances, from dental pain to pharyngitis to nausea.

These are just some common cooking spices that there’s no particular reason not to have in the house.

The Vanderbilt piece also contains cooking tips and spice mixtures to ensure it’s easy to get all these thousands of phytonutrients without having to think too much.

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