The power of Curry

I’m not talking about wind power, let’s get that straight from the start.

I have been a fan of curries in their various forms for many years, initially just because of the way they tasted. When I became more knowledgeable about nutrition and ingredients I was happy to learn that curries can be very beneficial to your health and can help you lose weight. What?! I hear you cry, eat curry to lose weight!? Yes, the reason is the ingredients involved.

A basic curry, if made from scratch, is made up several ingredients: Onions/shallots, Garlic, ginger, chillies/chilli powder, coriander, cumin, turmeric and sometimes other herbs and spices. Each one of these ingredients benefits your health in some way.

Onions:

contribute to healthy heart, reduce inflammation, improve blood sugar levels, aid digestion, reduce risk of cancer

Garlic:

Improve heart function, de-clog arteries, antibacterial, antimicrobial, improves blood pressure, reduces inflammation, reduce risk of cancer

Ginger:

Antimicrobial, can reduce high blood pressure, contributes to healthy heart, good for nausea and stomach pains, anti inflammatory

Chillies:

Good source of vitamins and minerals, helps burn fat and can reduce appetite

Turmeric:

Powerful anti inflammatory when taken with black pepper,

Cinnamon:

helps suppress appetite, assists weight loss through reducing blood sugar levels

 

The list above outlines some but not all of the health benefits of these ingredients. Most of them actually share the same health benefits so they compliment each other and work as a team to help fight most diseases and give you a real health boost as well as tasting amazing! A sure win win situation, but before you grab your phone and ring the local curry house, you should consider a few things:

• Portion size, eating too much of anything is not good, if you want to lose weight reduce your portion by at least half if not more, depending on how much you eat.
• How the restaurant cooks their food, fried mostly in butter or oil, if you can make curries yourself it’s always better, you know exactly what’s gone in there. It’s not that difficult to do and I have a recipe you can download if you send me an email

I have been making my own curries for several years and managed to perfect it, you only need these ingredients for your basic curry sauce:

• onions or shallots
• garlic (I prefer fresh but you can use powder or lazy garlic)
• Fresh ginger
• Birds eye chillies
• ground coriander or seeds
• ground cumin or seeds
• ground cinnamon
• ground turmeric
• ground black pepper
• garam masala (optional)
• tomato passata (sieved tomatoes)
• olive oil

I usually add flaked tuna or flaked mackerel, you may think fish has no place in a curry but I can assure you the flavour is amazing and the health benefits are immense. The fish with the curry packs a mighty antioxidant and anti inflammatory punch and also torches fat. Doing some form of training will also greatly compliment this.

So there you have it, if you are a Tikka massala, Jalfrezi, or a Korma fan you can enjoy them guilt free and happy in the knowledge they are actually doing you some good!