Friday, May 25, 2012

How eating Indian dishes with Curry help in “innate” our immune system

What is curry?


Noun: A dish of meat, vegetables, etc., cooked in an Indian-style spicy sauce and served with rice.




Verb: 1.Prepare or flavor with a sauce of hot-tasting spices.



2. Groom (a horse) with a rubber or plastic curry-comb.



Why North American should use Indian Spices in food- Part 3
Curry is a very flavorful and aromatic blend of spices. The spiced that normally can be found in curry are cumin, coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, as well as Tamil. Curry is well used in South Asian cuisine, but is loved worldwide and can be found in the United States.

Curry is a broad word used to describe a variety of dishes flavored with different spices. Although the concept of curry originated from India, curries exist throughout the world, and can be found in Japanese, Ethiopian, Thai, Caribbean, and German cuisines, among others. Virtually any spiced, sauce-based dish with vegetables and/or meat can be call a curry, but the popular variety we think of contains curry powder with high proportions of turmeric, cumin, and coriander seed. The other familiar term, masala is simply a spice mix; curry powder is in fact a masala. In countries like Pakistan that have numerous curry dishes, however, each has a specific name, and might include a range of spices such as fenugreek.




What is Turmeric (yellow spice)?
The golden spice of life” is one of most essential spice used as an important ingredient in culinary all over the world. Turmeric is a tropical plant perennial herbs, curcuma domestically cultivated in India since ancient time. As early as 3000 B.C., the turmeric plants were cultivated by Harappan civilization. Turmeric belongs to ginger family Zingiberaceae.



Turmeric Powder
This yellow spice with subtle flavor is called turmeric powder obtained from dried grounded underground stem “rhizome”. The rhizome of the turmeric is yellowish orange tuberous juicy stem. The outer part of rhizome is covered with segmented yellowish brown color. Turmeric is a strong dyeing agent creating permanent stain on cloths with just drop of turmeric juice from rhizome.



Turmeric medicinal use
Turmeric usage dates back from 3000 B.C. in India. From a significant part in daily cuisine to treating diseases like cancer, turmeric is beneficial to mankind. It is impossible to think of Indian food without turmeric. Today, turmeric has found application all over the world in various purposes such as medicinal purpose, cosmetic purpose, dyeing and coloring purpose. Woman in India apply turmeric before taking bath as its antibacterial property protects the skin from infects and protects it from harsh sunlight.



Nutritional information
1 tbsp. of curry powder contains the following nutritional information according to the USDA

Calories: 20

Fat: 0.87

Carbohydrates: 3.66

Fibers: 2.1

Protein: 0.8



All Indian people know this before but this new research has confirmed this that how curry powder help us in enhancing our immune system.

New Research- How eating Indian dishes with Curry help in “innate” our immune system

Scientists have just identified a new reason why some curry dishes, made with spices humans have used for thousands of years, might be good for you. New research at Oregon State University has discovered that curcumin, a compound found in the cooking spice turmeric, can cause a modest but measurable increase in levels of a protein that’s known to be important in the “innate” immune system, helping to prevent infection in humans and other animals. This cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, or CAMP, is part of what helps our immune system fight off various bacteria, viruses or fungi even though they hadn’t been encountered before. Prior to this, it was known that CAMP levels were increased by vitamin D. Discovery of an alternative mechanism to influence or raise CAMP levels is of scientific interest and could open new research avenues in nutrition and pharmacology, scientists said.




Turmeric is a flavorful, orange-yellow spice and an important ingredient in many curries, commonly found in Indian, South Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine. It has also been used for 2,500 years as a medicinal compound in the Ayurvedic system of medicine in India – not to mention being part of some religious and wedding ceremonies. In India, turmeric is treated with reverence. The newest findings were made by researchers in the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU and published today in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.“This research points to a new avenue for regulating CAMP gene expression,” said Adrian Gombart, an associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the Linus Pauling Institute. “It’s interesting and somewhat surprising that curcumin can do that, and could provide another tool to develop medical therapies.





The impact of curcumin in this role is not nearly as potent as that of vitamin D, Gombart said, but could nonetheless have physiologic value. Curcumin has also been studied for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. “Curcumin, as part of turmeric, is generally consumed in the diet at fairly low levels,” Gombart said. “However, it’s possible that sustained consumption over time may be




healthy and help protect against infection, especially in the stomach and intestinal tract.”In this study, Chunxiao Guo, a graduate student, and Gombart looked at the potential of both curcumin and omega-3 fatty acids to increase expression of the CAMP gene. They found no particular value with the omega-3 fatty acids for this purpose, but curcumin did have a clear effect. It caused levels of CAMP to almost triple.There has been intense scientific interest in the vitamin D receptor in recent years because of potential therapeutic benefits in treating infection, cancer, psoriasis and other diseases, the researchers noted in their report. An alternative way to elicit a related biological response could be significant and merits additional research, they said. The CAMP peptide is the only known antimicrobial peptide of its type in humans, researchers said. It appears to have the ability to kill a broad range of bacteria, including those that cause tuberculosis and protect against the development of sepsis.

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