Westernisation Of Turmeric
The haldi fad has been raging
in the West for a while, but the only person who really benefits from that
turmeric latte is the guy who makes money selling it to you
Who would have thought
that, one day, haldi would rule the Western world? It is much more now than
just the yellow stuff we use to add colour and flavour to our food. It is a
global craze, much sought after because of haldi’s alleged properties as a
superfood or miracle spice.
So you have turmeric lattes,
turmeric teas, turmeric cookies, turmeric cold-pressed juices, turmeric shakes,
turmeric spreads and God alone knows what else. And what is turmeric supposed
to do? Well, it will improve your memory. It will lighten your mood. It will
make your skin glow. It will help you live longer. It fights arthritis. It can
delay the onset of diabetes. It can protect you from cancer. It will detoxify
your liver.
The list goes on and on.
About the only claim not made for turmeric so far is that it will improve your
sex life. But I am sure that is coming too.
The turmeric fad has been
raging in the West for about four years now and I reckon it has spread to the
rest of the world in the course of this year. As is true of all such fads, it
is hard to tell where it began or how. But it follows the standard pattern of
all health fads.
1) Somebody starts
throwing health data around and quoting so-called scientific studies to ‘prove’
that a particular food has miraculous properties.
2) Health freaks and what
I call the ‘goji-berry set’– people who like to think they have discovered
ancient remedies that modern medicine has suppressed – start talking to each
other about the miracle ingredient.
3) The fad spreads from
those who stock their larders with chia seeds and other such nonsense to the
general public. Suddenly, everyone begins serving some kind of product based on
the alleged superfood.
4) The ordinary person,
outside of the goji-berry set, hears about the so-called miracle
herb/food/spices and starts subscribing to the fad. By this stage, it is no
longer necessary to explain why the superfood is so super. A herd mentality
takes over. If everybody says it is so wonderful then, well, it must be!
5) The fad fades. A new
superfood is discovered and a new fad begins.
At present, we are at
stage four where the herd mentality has set in. The advocates of turmeric no
longer need to explain why it is supposed to be so good for you. All they have
to do is to invoke the Mystic East, talk about Ayurveda and the Indian
connection.
This approach works less
well in the actual Mystic East because we don’t regard haldi as a strange and
formerly unknown magic ingredient. We have grown up eating it. We know that it
is often used in Ayurveda. But Indians recognise that Ayurveda makes use of
most herbs and spices in one way or the other. So we don’t treat any one spice
as a superfood.
Moreover, the Indian
ayurvedic tradition is more scientific than the American fad tradition. So, we
know that certain herbs are used to treat specific ailments or conditions.
There are no works-for-everything superfoods or magic spices.
As Marryam Reshii tells
us in her definitive guide to Indian spices (The Flavour of Spice), turmeric is
the most elemental of Indian spices – and yes, it is truly Indian, being native
to South India. It has now spread all over the world but India is the main
producer, growing 80 per cent of the world’s turmeric. Not only is it used in
Ayurveda (it is believed to have antiseptic properties) it is also regarded as
auspicious by Hindus.
Oddly enough, Muslims in
North India use much less turmeric. Reshii points out that turmeric hardly
turns up in Avadhi cooking and when it does, it is used mainly for its
colour. Kashmiri Muslims, on the other hand, use a lot of turmeric both for reasons
of taste and health.
Indians
value haldi, but we don’t ascribe miraculous properties to it. Haldi is good
for you, but it ’ s not an all-purpose superfood
Our view of haldi’s
benefits differs from the West’s and is more limited. We value it but we do not
ascribe miraculous properties to it. The American turmeric fad is based around
scientific research allegedly carried out on turmeric. This can sound
convincing till you realise that the scientists were not really testing
turmeric. They were testing and researching curcumin, a compound found in
turmeric.
Many of the claims made
for curcumin are not without foundation. It does contain antioxidant and
anti-inflammatory properties. And there is some research that suggests that
people with Alzheimer’s can benefit from curcumin.
But there are many
problems with the ‘‘curcumin is good for you so you must have a turmeric
latte’’ school of fad medicine.
First of all, curcumin is
remarkably hard for our bodies to absorb. We can use only 25 per cent of what
we consume.
Secondly, turmeric is not
the same as curcumin. Yes, it is does contain curcumin. But only three per cent
of turmeric is curcumin. Ninety-seven per cent is composed of other things.
When you consider that
only three per cent of turmeric is curcumin and that you will only absorb about
25 per cent of the curcumin you consume, you begin to wonder about the logic
behind this fad.
How much haldi do you
need to eat to get the benefit of curcumin? And aren’t there more efficient
ways of finding the antioxidants you need?
These are questions that
are never asked – let alone answered – by health faddists.
Basically, Ayurveda had
it right. Haldi is good for you. But no, it is by no means an all-purpose
superfood.
The only person who
really benefits from that turmeric latte is the guy who makes money selling it
to you.
The curcumin fallacy
should remind us of the dangers of believing all the fad health reporting you
may read. Faddists will nearly always lie (or not know the truth) about the
food they are promoting. They will pretend that turmeric was unknown in America
till they discovered it. In fact, the food industry there has long used
turmeric as a colourant. The colour you see on hot dog mustard comes from
turmeric. But nobody who eats a lot of hot dogs has felt healthier because of
all that turmeric!
And then there is the
quantity con. Faddists will deliberately confuse a small amount of a beneficial
ingredient found in a food with the food itself. Let’s take chocolate for
example. I like dark chocolate and I eat a little nearly every single day. But
I eat it because I like the taste, not because it is good for my health.
However, over the last
two decades, we have been bombarded with reporting that tells us how chocolate
is good for our bodies. Eat some chocolate, we are told, and you will avoid
getting a heart attack.
The
chocolate-is-good-for-you campaign is based on the effects of chemicals called
flavanols. Research suggests that flavanols are linked to reductions in blood
pressure. Other research suggests that flavanols may possibly improve insulin
sensitivity and help with your lipid profile.
There are problems with
some of the studies from which this research derives – they may have been
funded by the chocolate industry – but all the reporting misses out on one
vital distinction. These health benefits don’t come from chocolate. Even
assuming that the studies are right, what is being studied is flavanol. Not
chocolate.
And yes, flavanol may
indeed help with blood circulation. Except that chocolate is not all flavanol.
In fact, flavanol is not even the main constituent of chocolate.
The Observer (London)
looked at the studies and discovered that the amount of chocolate you would
have to consume to get the benefits of flavanol are massive. “For example, the
blood pressure study involved participants getting an average of 670 mg of
flavanols. Some one would need to consume about 12 standard bars of dark
chocolate or about 50 bars of milk chocolate every day to get that much,” the
paper reported.
It is the same curcumin
fallacy at work again. Yes, there are many compounds that may be good for us –
curcumin and flavanols are examples – but we should never be misled into
confusing them with actual foods because mostly, these foods contain too little
of the beneficial compounds to make any difference.
One study, for instance,
showed that there may even be more flavanols in salami than in chocolate. But
you don’t see anyone advising you to eat salami to live longer.
Whenever people talk
about superfoods, just use common sense. Do you know any particularly healthy
people who subsist on a diet of chocolate cake? Are Indians, who have grown up
on turmeric, the healthiest people in the world?
The answers are
self-evident. So throw out those goji berries, chia seeds and all the other
so-called superfoods. And get a life.
HTBR 29JUL18
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