EAT KUNYIT FOR HEALTH!

Health alert!

Just sharing with you something that the WARIS (people of negeri sembilan) has always known without help from science... kunyit@curcumin is very good for you!

Don't believe me?

We eat masak kuning every day, even if you have curry (well, the names is a different story) on the table. Since science here has said it all, i just want to share with you some of the more interesting masak kuning combi...



Duck eggs with unripe mango..
smoked beef with young kapas banana
young kapas banana with anchovies and black pepper
game meat with unripe mango
french beans and fish/ anchovies
pucuk ubi and fish/anchovies
smoked ikan semilang with daun assam
the 1001 sambal tempoyak (100 kinds of vege in it inc petai)
chicken & potato
pucuk paku with anchovies
young jackfruit (nangka) & chicken

**The right way to cook the yellow curry is of course without onion - just pure chili padi (the small fire chili) with turmeric (blend or better still pounded roughly(tumbuk). Put sufficient santan (coconut milk - betcha one of these days they'll say it's actually good for ya..) and cook on small fire. Ooh, small now, if it's too hot, the milk will 'break - cuddled' (pecah minyak) and your lauk is spoilt. So on small fire, make sure your ladle is moving all the time until it boils slowly. Put in your meat first, until cooked then put in a small portion of concentrated coconut milk. Put in your vege last. Heavenly!

Oops, for chicken, it's best to saute' the meat with the ingredients above first for a short while, + a couple of lemongrass. No lemongrass, you fail. Lemongrass adds Ummph to all your meat dishes.

Ok, once you are done, please invite me to try your dish! ha, ha.

HAPPY TRYING!

A weekly diet of curry may help prevent dementia
Posted in Longevity and Age Management, Alzheimer's Disease, Functional Foods on Mon June 15, 2009

Scientists believe that amyloid plaques, which are found in the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers, contribute to the degradation of the wiring in brain cells, eventually causing such symptoms of dementia as memory loss and mental impairment.

Now researchers from Duke University of North Carolina say that a key ingredient in curry -- curcumin, which is a component of the spice turmeric --� binds to those plaques, preventing their harmful spread and helping prevent the onset of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

They suggest that eating curry two or three times a week can lower the risk of dementia, and point out that Indian communities with a diet rich in curcumin have a low incidence of Alzheimer's. The researchers are currently testing the impact of higher dose of curry to see if they can maximize its preventive effect.

"There is very solid evidence that curcumin binds to plaques, and basic research on animals engineered to produce human amyloid plaques has shown benefits," says Professor Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University. "You can modify a mouse so that at about 12 months its brain is riddled with plaques. If you feed this rat a curcumin-rich diet it dissolves these plaques. The same diet prevented younger mice from forming new plaques," he explains. There are plans to take the research to the next step in order to test curcumin on human amyloid plaque formation using newer brain scans. And in fact, Professor Doraiswamy notes that a clinical trial is now underway at the University of California, Los Angeles, to test curcumin's effects in Alzheimer's patients.

Professor Doraiswamy says it may be possible to develop a curry pill that offers the same health benefits as making curry a regular part of the diet. However, Rebecca Wood from the Alzheimer's Research Trust emphasizes that people would need to eat a lot of curry -- over 100g of turmeric curry powder� -- to get a clinical dose of curcumin.

"Professor Doraiswamy's unpublished research applies only to animal models; his hypothesis has not been confirmed in human clinical trials," she says and adds, "We look forward to the results of the human curcumin trial at UCLA."