“Tasty curry might have a fringe benefit,” headlines USA Today… today. The article is more specifically about the reported health benefits of turmeric. It’s not exactly a scoop, as a scientific paper on the topic was published two years ago and picked up by Manish in this January 1, 2005 post. Still, given the attention span of the typical USA Today reader (and who is that reader, anyway, other than the nameless masses of khaki-panted, cellphone belt-clipped, laptop warriors waking up each morning in the Marriotts of the land?), I suppose it’s information worth recycling from time to time. Plus we get a heart warming story to go with it:
Then Jayne took an Indian cooking class that emphasized fresh vegetables and curry spices.
She began to whip up an Indian dinner once or twice a week — and soon she noticed she wasn’t always looking for a late-night snack. And the curry in the food offered her a bonus: It seemed to ease the pain and swelling in her joints.
“I have arthritis,” says Jayne, 55. “But I’m moving better now.”
Preliminary research suggests Jayne may be right. A study in the November issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism suggests turmeric, one component of curry spice, almost completely prevented joint swelling in rats with arthritis. Other studies have suggested that the spice could protect against diseases such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s…
Tipster Adi points us to the article as picked up on the news aggregator site RedOrbit.com, where we get the benefit of reader comments. Made-up Indian names, comparisons of desi food to the excrement of various animals, and discussions of desi body odor and penis size are all on the menu. I won’t reprint any of it here but those of you who think racism against desis is no big deal might find it instructive to take a look.
Meantime, pass the lime pickle.
it’s sad that so many people i know are in denial. on the one hand, it can be so subtle it’s quite easy to miss, and on the other, i guess ignorance is bliss…
Oh God. Just what I need.
Now I have to make sure Mrs Kobayashi doesn’t see this story, else I’d never hear the end of “turmeric cures everything” (not to mention “I told you so”). We already consume vast quantities of the stuff as it is. I’m starting to yellow around the extremities.
As for that website with the racist comments, man, it’s a surreal scene over there. Not only are you getting all the “Indians smell” and “Indian chefs wipe their asses with their bare hands” ad infinitum…but the spam blocker on the site won’t even let people type in the word “spice” because, apparently, it’s too close to “spic” which is derogatory. So, it’s a discussion thread about turmeric and curry, and no one is allowed to type in spice. But the vilest sort of racism? Please, go right ahead.
Twilight zone.
Oh, I just saw that you can’t type Scunthorpe either. Turns it into “the Gourmet Indian Restaurant, Ashby High Street, S****horpe, South Humberside.”
It would be hilarious if it weren’t so grim.
“Made-up Indian names, comparisons of desi food to the excrement of various animals, and discussions of desi body odor and penis size are all on the menu.”
well, at least now we know that generations of eating food so bland it neither has an aroma nor excites a single tastebud produces certified ignoramuses. on the bright side, one or two of them have volunteered to live shorter lives instead of eating turmeric, despite the health benefits. hooray for our side and for mankind!
Changed my name coz I just started a mostly raw foods regimine. And I can assure you that tasting the real flavour of fruits and veggies, as they are in nature, is neither bland nor does it fail to excite my tastebuds. I love Indian food, mildly or wildly spiced, but I love raw foods as they were meant to be digested by nature also. Most of us on a processed and cooked food diet lack digestive enzymes which results in alot of health problems (also an ayurvedic concept). What is the surest way of creating enzymes in your system? Eat raw foods, preferably organic. You can still have your turmeric and other spices, they count as raw, but better to get them at a health food store that ensures they are uncontaminated — organicly grown and processed.
hey hey hey siddharta, what’s wrong with a USA Today reader? huh? i’m an editor of a gannett publication too.
you telling me you don’t have a pair of khaki pants?
😉
Regarding the “desi smell” – you are what you eat holds true even today. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that our bodily odors; stool, farts and aromas wafting from our breath and pores, do indeed smell like the foods we eat. Naturally if one is daily partaking of pungent spices, one’s body will smell pungent. After only 2 days of eating heavy chounks, chaunces of ghee and chillies, I start smelling like what? Ghee and chillies. To counteract that I usually go primarily raw for a few days, or make kitchri or subjis without ghee and chillie.
Thanks, now I shall have that song stuck in my head for the remainder of the evening!
I don’t think anyone thinks its not a big deal. Its just a fact of life and we have to deal with it. I don’t think there is any community that doesn’t practice racism in one form or another. Its part of human frailty, our need to feel better than the next person. What you focus on expands. I choose to acknowledge that it exists and then move my focus elsewhere.
Turmeric rocks! BTW did anyone else have to drink raw turmeric juice in warm milk as an adolecent? It was bad going down but my skin was flawless! Raw veggies though, I’m not so sure. Are you sure you can eat any veg raw?
to #5: clearly my comment wasn’t aimed at someone like you 😉 and i am not averse to eating raw fruits and vegetables on a daily basis (but cooking some of them does release other benefits as well). i don’t consider them bland food, i was referring to other types of really bland, processed foods. it’s aimed at people who make precisely the type of derogatory comment one reads after that story, who are probably wholly unacquainted with a lot of fruits or vegetables, raw or otherwise, and for whom black pepper and salt is “exotic” and too spicy, and more familiar with bland, overly processed foods or meat swimming in blood (the smell of cooking meat isn’t that pleasant either, especially without any spices to mask it.) i’ve seen these types in action – cringing at a spinach calzone or thinking one piece of meat and a side of potatoes is the be all and end all of cuisine and proud of the fact that their plate lacks any colour whatsoever, except for maybe some overboiled vegetables. they tend to pour scorn on anything remotely “foreign” (whatever that means).
ooh, thanks for the tip! very bloggable!
i am telling you exactly that.
you’re most welcome, brimful!
yup. i second this, it’s as bad as abhi’s crazytown ‘butterfly’ post.. aarrrrghhh….
a quick question:
do different races have different smelling power? how do these people have such well-developed olfactory nerves like dogs?
OMG I sent this article to my mother a physician who stuck haldi on everything everywhere everytime we had a booboo rather than give us real meds when we were young. One day I came home from work and found my cat with yellow all over his face. Apparently he had had a mishap, cut himself and my mother had generously rubbed haldi all over his face! He didn’t even midn it. He’s pure white. It took nearly a month before I saw the stain from his fur disappear!! But I’m a sucker for haldi. I’m sick as a dog and religiously drink my haldi milk with gur everyday and know it’s going to make me feel better faster than any cold and flu medicine. Oh another variation of the haldi milk is one part haldi one part salt boiled in a cup of water down to half a cup. You can kiss your flu goodbye.
my folks drink this anytime they have a cold… i on the other hand, swear by the airborne tablets…
Some of the comments on that site were just so weird. I can’t understand where it came from–Indians wipe their hands on their heads? What?
I wish I could share with them my strict “eat with right hand only” rule I grew up with in my house, despite not using my left hand to wash with ever. Oh well, not like an internet flame war would solve anything anyways.
Come on, Ms Pea….whats that they used to teach in med school? you treat a cold , it goes away in a week, or else it lasts for seven days! The haldi milk with lots of sugar really helps…..
Honestly, Siddhartha, you are the man. you’re so often delivering stories with the angle firmly titled towards uplifting our (and generally all) community(s). In this age of cyncism, that might sound ironic, but its said with utmost sincerity. thanks brother
Clearly, there are now two human species. One that believes in reasoned debate and respects the other, and another that is neanderthal armed with an iPod and a keyboard. Prosperity is clearly not a great indicator of sophistication. Reading through the comments on that linked post helps me understand why I’m drawn to blogs/sites like SM.
Btw, I remember a Time magazine article last year that also mentioned the linkage between turmeric and prevention of Alzheimers. Also, a majority of the Western world thinks Indian cuisine is all about curry. All those Indian restaurants out there have helped reinforce this myth.
Not to say I don’t think the same about all the SM crew, even the more, um, right among you. Its just Siddhartha’s post got to me, as I’m sure to many
The BBC had an article 5 years ago on turmeric’s medicinal properties.
Now I’m curious about the haldi milk thing…what’s the recipe?
Razor Ramon said that you should ignore the comments on the redorbit.com website. Razor Ramon thinks that there many great things about curry.
It is hilarious, in a grim sort of way. It actually was so absurd that it cheered me up until I started thinking about how many of the patients I saw tonight were thinking that I smelled like curry (Which I very likely do. I usually shower after I cook if I’m going to work after cooking Indian food, or anything that involves frying).
I have learned to embrace my occasional curry smell. As my Italian roommate in college pointed out, Italians sometimes smell like garlic. There are worse things to smell like than food, and I smell them on other people on a daily basis. And American houses are not well ventilated enough for people who cook food with an aroma. So there.
A question that needs to be asked is this: if indian food is so healthy for you, why the heck are indians the unhealthiest people on earth? It cant all be blamed on malnutrition, for even well-fed indians are generally unhealthy looking.
I suspect that it is the excessive use of oil, the overcooking that “kills” all the healthy ingredients, and the lack of exercise.
I don’t know that desis are considered the unhealthiest people on earth, but a combination of genetic propensity to heart disease + distinct lack of Anglo-Saxon outdoorsy culture + lack of a wine-drinking tradition may have something to do with it.
JOAT – too funny about your haldi-smeared kitty! We were subjected to haldi vatna as kids, though it didn’t do much to keep the body hair down like it was supposed to…I still giggle at the haldi vatna on brides and grooms.
May I propose a campaign for Mutineers – can we please fight to remove the term “curry” (when used generically) as in “curry spices” from American discourse?
feed a fever starve a cold? i dunno.. all i know and swear by are airborne tablets.. they worked in india in november when my parents got sick and i got away free from anything…
semidesi: don’t know the recipe, but will ask momma bean tonight when i talk to her..i never drink it.. it just looks vile.. but i’m sure it works..
heck if this haldi thing takes over the world…
i will be outta a job.. 🙂
Dearest Pea, if those particular circumstances ever happened, I would not mourn your unemployement. 😉
sriram: i would rejoice… that would be the greatest moment in the world… i hate cancer.. hence the cure of it would be fantastic…
(as i wait in the unemployment line…) 🙂
Racist comments in the USA? Shocking.
For an 8 oz glass of milk. 1 teaspoon (not heaping) of haldi, 1 teaspoon (heaping) of brown sugar or honey or I actually prefer jaggery (gur). You have to let the milk boil well with the haldi and sweetner. The haldi really does a number on colds especially on your throat and certainly helps.
I hate hate hate the word curry. I’m tired of explaining to people that it’s simply the generic term for ‘sauce’. What kind of curry? There are 100s of curries out of India depending on where you go. It gets on my nerves so bad when people throw it around like that’s the main dish. Then yesterday I was in Waldbaums and I noticed they added an entire section of Indian foods to the International aisle. I was excited because I saw a ton of Patak’s jars and lo and behold there it was “Mild Curry” “Medium Curry” “Hot Curry” made by an Indian company!!! What kind of curry? Who the hell knows…it was just curry!
My mom has told me how when she first came to the U.S. everyone smelled like meat to her, and how repulsive she found this omnipresent essence du bologna.
I didn’t understand what she meant until my undergrad years, when I took part in an annual campus perambulation sans clothing (not so uncommon in northeastern colleges) – there at the ‘starting gate’ (which was the basement of a dorm), surrounded by fifty or so nekkid peers, I was assaulted by an odor that I had known only once, while passing a row of Armenian Quarter butcher stalls in Old Jerusalem on a hot day. Ay yay yay!
The smell was enough to keep me a strict vegetarian for several years thereafter. And that much nakedness would make anyone a Never Nude.
yo, i like to juice fresh turmeric with carrots and ginger, it wails! btw, what are the best ways to remove turmeric stains?
See Chris Rock on Robitussin. For a lot of us growing up in Desh haldi was our Robitussin. Farmers even use it to seal minor leaks in water pipes.
JOATÂ’s recipe @31 is the real thing. If it works for Lata Mangeshkar, it should be fine for us plebs.
Jack Kerouac wore khakis. I mention this for no particular reason 🙂
We just ran a short story writing contest at Kahani where the kids were asked to pen a story that had to include the words cousin, river, and — you guessed it — turmeric. Talk about imaginative! We got everything from yellow crocodiles to Fighting Yellow Warrior Bird!
Curry is great. But tea with milk is not. Black tea for me from now on.
You have my support on that one.
Curcumin, found in tumeric, is also implicated as a possible therapy for Cystic Fibrosis. Here’s the article in PDF form for all you med geeks out there (holla back!)It’s thought to open CFTR channels in a non-ATP dependent manner, but does require phosphorylation by protein kinase A (you can’t fight city hall or thermodynamics).
Hey Siddharth, Anna already used that reference to title one of her posts sometime back: “Pore some thekalikya on me…”
Is this the end of postmodernism? Have we run out of fairly novel references to make?
Good catch, Deepa. The reference must have lodged itself in my brain. If you’d like to suggest a new title for this post, I’m all ears.
Oops! Sorry, Siddhartha.
Don’t everyone become too sensitive about your possible smell. People from all different cultures smell like the food they eat. They just don’t notice their own smell.
My dad was once on a business trip in Germany and had to listen to his German colleague’s confidences about the real problems Turks have. “They smell terrible. Must be their food.”
Through all of this Dad was trying not to retch from the horrible smell of sauerkraut on the guy’s breath!
So wear your Desi food smell proudly. As kavita points out above, there are worse food and non-food things to smell like!
Hee! You’re so efficient, Siddhartha. Already changed the title.
But here’s my suggestion: “Eat the Yellow Snow.”
Soon it will rival Melange in its near mythical properties.
JOAT,
Thanks for the recipe…I’m actually coming down with cold so I’m going to try it.
In England the smell issue has been overcome by conquering the cuisine. With Indian food now being a daily staple for most British diets, no one notices the smell, just like you can’t smell garlic on other people if you eat it yourself. What is needed here is a “curry” crusade (I use curry in the common local parlance).
Growing up in the UK, my mom once sent me to school with Jabakushum (indian hair oil) on my hair, to condition my hair. It really does stink. Man, did I get a beating that day.
I have no problem smelling like Indian food. I Cook, therefore I Am.
Nooooo….I’ll just have to risk my heart. I am not switching to black tea!
Turmeric is a great cure for zits when freshly ground and applied directly to the face. You have to use the root version, though, not the powder you cook with.
Aren’t there some styles of cooking in India that use ‘wet spices’ (the root itself, more or less mashed into a paste) rather than the dry, powdered versions that most of us are familiar with?
Up until recently most people in India cooked with fresh spices ground up daily from roots and seeds. That’s why the same recipes taste so much better over there. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anyone who will come to my home every day to grind up spices on a stone slab so I have to make do with the dried stuff. I wonder if the fresh stuff makes BO stronger or fainter. Anyone know?
Anyone eat at The Stinking Rose in LA/SF? The food is great and entirely Western. Everything is made with garlic. I mean everything from appetizer to ice-cream. Then you sweat garlicky (not to mention other bodily functions) for three days. Just make sure all members of the household go together. Else it’s clear who the smell is coming from 🙂
For a lifelong vegetarain like me, it was a hard time adjusting to the meat/bbq smell that was present everywhere in US. No matter what the restaurants served, they all smelled like
to me..and there were times when I had to hold my breath to avoid puking! The same smell used to linger around whenever I was amidst a group of people (even with no food in sight). I’m aware of the “curry” smell that other people associate with desis..and make it a point to take a shower after I cook. I don’t care/complain how others smell…but would love to point it out if someone confronts me with this “Indians smell like curry” stuff. Having spent a fair bit of time here, I’m now used to the meat/bbq smell on a day-to-day basis.