5 Health-boosting Spices You Should Already Have in Your Pantry

In the battle to find a balance between healthy eating and food that tastes great, your kitchen pantry or spice rack can already give you an advantage against the temptation to consume something that’s loaded with sugars, salt, and/or fats. Why is this such a big deal? Because giving in to that temptation for something less-than-healthy isn’t just about the pounds on your stomach – it can also lead to serious health problems down the line.

Here are five spices you should already have as part of your kitchen’s arsenal as a means to not just enjoy healthy food with great taste, but to help your body function at a higher level:

Cinnamon

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One of the most famous spices, this one is especially popular as part of a sugar-coated pastry. Desserts aside, cinnamon may actually offer several health benefits. While more research needs to be done, here are just some of the perks that studies have uncovered thus far:

  • Reduction of inflammation – a recent study tested 115 foods, and the lab discovered that cinnamon was a top fighter against inflammation. By upping your cinnamon intake (in your tea or to sweeten your coffee, for example), you could potentially be helping fight off diseases that tend to affect people later in life, like rheumatoid arthritis.
  • Likely lowers cholesterol – A small study tested 60 adults by having them ingest ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon for 40 days, and the result was a lower LDL (“bad”) cholesterol number. Other studies have shown that an 18-week regimen of cinnamon not only lowered LDL but also lowered total cholesterol and raised HDL (“good”) for those studied.
  • No friend of bacteria – Cinnamon has been studied and shown to fight multiple kinds of bacteria that can be harmful to people, like salmonella, E. coli, and even staph. More research is needed to see just how much cinnamon can aid in fighting infections, however.

Cocoa

Another spice known primarily for its use in sweet treats, cocoa is more than just a main ingredient in candy. In its powder form, people have been using cocoa for medicinal reasons farther back than even the 16th century, thanks to what modern science now calls flavanols (of which cocoa has plenty). Some of the health impacts you might get from cocoa are:

  • Lowering your blood pressure – In its powder form or even in a dark chocolate bar, cocoa has been observed to improve nitric oxide levels in the blood and, as a result, reduce blood pressure due to a better functioning level of your blood vessels. However, cocoa loses a significant amount of flavanols when it is processed, which lowers the health benefits (which is why dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate, for example).
  • Protecting your heart – Because of the impact that it has on the circulatory system and its assistance with lowering blood pressure, flavanol-rich cocoa also may be able to lower your risk for heart disease, heart attacks, or stroke.
  • Protecting your brain – Those same flavanols that may improve the flow of blood through your body (and, as a result, lower blood pressure and ease the strain on your heart) also help with the amount of pressure and the quality of blood flow around your brain. Studies have found that a daily intake of a quality cocoa source can even improve brain function in the elderly.

Garlic

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While technically part of the onion family, the white, blub-shaped vegetable known as garlic is much more than a means for warding off vampires (although the smell when you cut, crush or peel one of the cloves might also repel any help in the kitchen). It is one of the earliest domesticated crops (evidence of it goes back to ancient Egypt) and has been associated with keeping disease at bay for most of human history.

  • A combination of factors – From the allicin (the antibacterial oil that gives garlic that strong, sulfur-like smell) to the 40-plus other compounds (including arginine, oligosaccharides, selenium, and flavonoids) that are all in this particular spice, garlic is packed with things to help promote good health.
  • Helps to combat illness – Supplements featuring garlic are known to help boost the body’s immune system, and a study concluded that even the common cold was reduced by 63% to a control group that used a daily garlic supplement (versus a group using just placebo).

Ginger

You might be surprised to know that ginger is good at doing more than just calming an upset stomach or battling nausea. As a versatile spice (made from a root), it can be added to almost anything to provide other health benefits:

  • Compounds that confound bacteria – Besides the bacteria in your digestive system that ginger can help target, the gingerol compounds that you ingest will also go to work against many kinds bacteria in your mouth – helping fight gum diseases and even bad breath.
  • Effective against menstrual pain – In a 2009 study, 150 women were instructed to take 1 gram of ginger powder per day for the first 3 days of their menstrual period. The research found that the pain those 150 women felt was reduced as effectively as over-the-counter drugs.

Curcumin (turmeric)

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If you’re familiar with curry, then you may also know that the thing that gives it a yellow color is turmeric, a spice that has been used in India in cooking and in medicine for thousands of years. Modern scientists have analyzed turmeric and realized that the main, active compound within it is curcumin – which can be a strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.

  • Add a dash of pepper– Curcumin only has a 3% content level in turmeric and also is not absorbed all that well by the human body. But to combat that, if you eat regular black pepper with curcumin, that rate of absorption goes all the way up to 2,000% (yes, two thousand) thanks to the existence of piperine in the pepper.

Curcumin (and, by extension, turmeric) has a long list of health benefits and is considered one of the best anti-inflammatory supplements.

It’s about more than making your food taste better

By increasing your use of these five spices in your everyday life – be it through supplements or by adding them to the food and drinks you prepare for yourself – you can fight back against all kinds of threats to your health. From simple stomach aches to the lethal potential of heart disease or stroke – there are spices available in your favorite grocery store that contain the compounds to help you not only treat what you might be facing today, but also prevent a health scare in the future.