Kitchen Herbs and Medicinal Uses - Turmeric

Adding something savory to your dishes keeps the appetite healthy but what about the body. This short series is about the herbs we cook with for meals and how they can help our health physically as well as mentally.

Turmeric -

The uses of turmeric dates back nearly 4000 years, mostly known in the India cultures where spices served for culinary uses and religious uses. Marco Polo describe turmeric as a vegetable with qualities similar to saffron. Turmeric is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant belonging to the ginger family and is a tropically native plant.  Turmeric grows to a height of about 3 ½ feet, with long, oblong leaves. Harvesting some rhizomes from the roots yearly, provides the tubers known as turmeric. The rhizomes have rough, segmented skin, and is yellowish brown with a dull orange interior. Once dried, the rhizome can be ground into the yellow powder that has a bitter, slightly acrid, sorta sweet taste.

The nutrient analysis of turmeric shows it to contain potassium, ascorbic acid, iron, sodium, niacin, thiamine, calcium, phophorous and riboflavin compounds. More than 100 components have been isolated from turmeric. The main one is turmerone but curcuminoids are plentiful and are natural antioxidants.

Culinary uses of turmeric include adding color to many foods such as  white rice, yellow cakes, orange juice, popcorn, sweets, cereals, sauces, etc.

Medicinal uses of turmeric include supplementation for chronic obstructive airway disease (COPD), asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis. Turmeric is known for its naturally anti-inflammatory and can be used from conjunctivitis, skin cancer, small pox, chicken pox, wound, healing, urinary tract infections, and liver ailments. Also can be used from digestive disorders to reduce flatus, jaundice, menstrual difficulties, and colic, abdominal pain and dissension, dyspeptic conditions, liver and gallbladder complaints. In addition to being an anti-inflammatory, is has choleric, antimicrobial, and carminative actions. Turmeric can simply be used for cuts, burns, and bruises and antibacterial agent. Turmeric can be used to cleanse wounds and stimulate recovery of wounds. Poultices for abdominal pain, sprains and swelling.