You might do better to eat an Indian curry today than you would those chicken nuggets…and not for the obvious reasons.
Researchers at Penn State have reported in the Journal of Nutrition that including turmeric, cinnamon, rosemary, oregano, garlic powder, and
paprika to meals may reduce postprandial insulin
and triglyceride levels.
]
In an experiment, they gave six overweight men, who were otherwise
healthy, a bland meal. Then, a week later they fed the same men the same
exact meal except amped up with spices. Test results taken after both meals
showed the reduced levels in the men when they ate the spicier food.
But before you go out and gorge on
chicken tikka masala tonight, the study still has a ways to go. The
limited sample size is far from conclusive and the researchers add that
they'll need to look at individual spices to determine its individual
effects.
Mmmm…chicken tikka masala.
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.