Spices to save your life. Modern science is beginning to uncover
the ultimate power of spices and herbs, as weapons against
illnesses from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease. “We’re now
starting to see a scientific basis for why people have been
using spices medicinally for thousands of years,” says Bharat
Aggarwal, Ph.D., professor at the University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and author of the upcoming
Healing Spices (Sterling, January 2011). Aggarwal notes that in
his native India, where spices tend to be used by the handful,
incidence of diet-related diseases like heart disease and cancer
have long been low. But when Indians move away and adopt more
Westernized eating patterns, their rates of those diseases rise.
While researchers usually blame the meatier, fattier nature of
Western diets, Aggarwal and other experts believe that herbs and
spices—or more precisely, the lack of them—are also an important
piece of the dietary puzzle. “When Indians eat more Westernized
foods, they’re getting mu