Bharat B. Aggarwal PhD - Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease

HEALING
Spices

HEALING
Spices

How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices
to Boost Health and Beat Disease

Bharat B. Aggarwal, PhD
with
Debora Yost

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Published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016
2011 by Bharat B. Aggarwal
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Edited and Packaged by Bill Gottlieb, Good For You Books

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Sterling ISBN 978-1-4027-7663-2

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DEDICATED TO

the Sages, Rishis, Scientists, Gurus, Acharyas, and my parents
whose wisdom continues to inspire me!

Acknowledgments

From Bharat Aggarwal, PhD:

I would like to thank Dr. Chitra Sundaram for her assistance in researching the medical literature on spices; Ms. Alamelu Vairavan, the co-author of Healthy South Indian Cooking, for her encouragement and for educating me how to cook with spices; my wife, Uma Aggarwal, for Adding Spice to my Life; and my two sons, Rishi and Manoj Aggarwal, for being supportive and team players. I would also like to thank my sister, Kamlesh Goyal, who is always adding new dimension to my thinking about spices and their benefits. Above all, I would like to thank the thousands of patients suffering from various chronic diseases who have expressed curiosity about the uses of spices. I would also like to thank McCormick Spices in the United States and Ottogi Corporation in Korea, two of the worlds biggest suppliers of spices, for contributing more to my knowledge of spices.

From Debora Yost:

With Dr. Aggarwal, I would like also like to thank Dr. Chitra Sundaram and Alamelu Vairavan. Also, thanks to my dear friends and superb cooks Nancy Wilson, Sharon Esterly, and John Lehman, for assisting us with some of the more challenging recipe creations. I offer a special thanks to friend and cook extraordinaire Susan Banfield, for taking me on fun-filled culinary adventures through the Indian and Asian marketplaces of North Jersey. I am forever grateful to my husband, Nick Yost, the spice of my life, for his patience during long hours of writing and for helping me explore the world of spice almost nightly as we taste-tested the recipes in this book. And last, but not least, I want to thank my former colleague at Rodale Books and longtime and cherished friend Bill Gottlieb, for his superb editing and his encouraging support. Thanks for bringing me into this book. As always, we made a great team.

From Bill Gottlieb:

Thanks to all the superb professionals who joined with Good For You Books in creating this book: Bharat Aggarwal, PhD, a world-class scientist devoted to the health and well-being of humankind; Dr. Aggarwals co-author, Debora Yost; the designer, Peter Holm, of Sterling Hill Productions; the illustrator, Michael Gallatly; the project manager and proofreader, Rose Young; the copyeditor, Megan Anderson; the photography editor, illustration researcher, and indexer, Denise Getz; and the literary agent, Chris Tomasino, of Tomasino Literary Agency. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have worked with such skilled individuals whowithout ever meeting together face-to-faceformed such a creative and productive team. Thank you!

CONTENTS

Ancient Medicines, New Discoveries:
The Proof Is PositiveSpices Can Heal

The Healing Spice Cabinet: From Mysterious to Mainstream
How to Buy and Store the Healing Spices

Spice Mixes and Rubs from Around the World:
Easy Combos to Create Delicious Healing Dishes

From Arthritis to Ulcers, an A-to-Z Guide to the
Therapeutic Potential of the Healing Spices

Spices have been in my lifein my diet, in my medicine cabinet, and in my thinkingsince I was a youth growing up in Punjab in northern India. And nowas Professor of the Department of Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Centerspices are the subject of many experiments in my laboratory, where my colleagues and I are discovering the molecular and biochemical secrets behind the therapeutic power of these ancient medicines, and conducting human studies to put those secrets to use in the battle against cancer.

When I was growing up in India, spices were the main medicines my family used for everyday healing, in keeping with the tradition of Ayurveda, Indias system of natural healing, which employs spices, herbs, and healthful lifestyle to prevent and treat disease.

But more than medicine, spices were, well, spices. Knowing how to creatively combine and cook with spices is part of family culture in India, a domestic art that comes naturally to us, as if it were a part of our DNA. It is a great honor in India to cook for guestsand it is a delight for the guests, since the best food in India is found in homes, not restaurants.

So you can imagine my culinary misery when, in 1973, after earning my masters of science in biochemistry in India, I traveled to the University of Louisville to earn my PhD in biochemistry. It was impossible to find restaurants that served spicy vegetarian foods or markets that sold the spices I craved! Well, a professor had told me about Berkeley, California, a much more liberal environment where one could find just about anythingincluding other vegetarians and exotic spices. In no time, I was on a Greyhound bus heading to California and enrollment at the University of California, Berkeley, where I eventually earned my PhD. And, indeed, Berkeley was Americas promised land of spices: I was able to find the foods and spices to recreate the vegetarian way of life I had always known and loved.

My first real job after graduating from Berkeley was a gem. I was hired by Genentechone of the first companies specializing in genetic engineeringto find gene-based treatments for cancer. During my nine fascinating years at Genentech, I made some important scientific discoveries, including isolating tumor necrosis factor (TNF), a Jeckyl-and-Hyde protein that is critical for regulating the immune system but also plays a role in triggering the inflammation underlying cancer and many other chronic diseases.

And as I worked at Genentecha pharmaceutical company where there wasnt any interest in investigating spices as a treatment for diseasemy fragrant friends were never far from my mind (or my meals!).

I recalled the brilliant yellow powder called turmeric that my mother used daily in virtually every meal. Shed also sprinkle it on a cut when I fell and hurt myself. Or put it on my forehead when I had a fever. If I was nauseous, she gave me ginger to make me feel better. If I couldnt sleep, she gave me coriander in warm milk. On sweltering summer days, she made our family a refreshing drink out of kokum, an Indian spice that would cool us off as instantly and magically as if we were all standing under a waterfall. (Youll find the recipe .) It seemed like almost every spice in our giant spice cabinet was a food