Thursday, December 01, 2005

Gingerbread

As a follow-up to my post on resistant starch, with its possible unpleasant side effects, let me offer ginger.

Among its many attributes, ginger (Zingiber officinale) has been shown to:
  • Improve digestion. (A great gas-expeller.)
  • Reduce nausea. Great for motion sickness, pregnancy, or the queasiness associated with flu.
  • Relieve pain (anti-inflammatory). It has a analgesic effect; like Merck's recently recalled VioxxTM it can inhibit the COX-2 enzyme.1
  • Reduce fever.
  • Quench free radicals (antioxidant).
  • And best of all, make great gingerbread!
I used my recipe for Squash Squares, substituting canned pumpkin for the squash and increasing the amount of freshly grated ginger root to 3 tablespoons. (You can't beat a microplane rasp for grating ginger.)

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1 Biological Basis for the Use of Botanicals in Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Review

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