In the Shah household, turmeric is a religion. It is to Indians what Windex is to the big, fat Greeks, and as far as my mother is concerned, there is nothing a tablespoon of turmeric in half a cup of hot milk can’t fix. Sore throat? Drink turmeric before bed. Runny nose? Two glasses a day. Fever? If you drank turmeric and milk preventatively every day like she had suggested, you wouldn’t have caught a fever, now would you? Despite her persistence, her parenting via fearmongering was one of the reasons turmeric didn’t originally gain much traction in our household; was it really turmeric milk that prevented me from getting the flu for over a decade, or a hypochondriac’s adherence to an annual flu shot schedule?
Imagine my surprise, then, to see that after decades of futile resistance, 2016 has become the year of turmeric. You can’t throw a rock in Los Angeles without hitting a minimalistic juice bar selling turmeric vitality shots, each claiming more tenuous health benefits than a Nutrispa infomercial. But wellness is often a commodity these days, more than it is an actual health benefit, so just how accurate are the claims that turmeric is a super-spice, capable of anti-inflammation for everything from aches to arthritis, glowing skin, boosted immunity, improved digestion, and even a cure for depression and cancer? And perhaps more importantly, does this mean my mother was right all along?
The Guardian declared golden milk—a frothy, creamy, and incredibly Westernized variant on traditional Indian haldi doodh, or turmeric milk—the drink of 2016. Blog after blog touts golden milk as an ancient Indian remedy. It is not. Traditional haldi doodh is simple: half a cup or less of piping hot milk, with a tablespoon of ground turmeric dissolved into it until the entire mixture is a bright yellow. Milk is just the medium for the turmeric; blending it into hot tea, honey, or in a pinch, even hot water to dissolve the turmeric are all common variants. While turmeric has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries, almond milk, coconut butter, even cashews are all Western additions intended to make it taste more like a Starbucks holiday special and less like medicinal herbs.
That being said, golden milk is delicious. You know what would have made haldi doodh less of a fight in the Shah household? Having it boiled up with a little cardamom, honey, and saffron, and served to me with a pistachio sprinkle in a ceramic mug. Instead, mine came in an old plastic tumbler my mom made me drink over the sink to avoid spills.
I heard the phrase “turmeric is an antiseptic” growing up so often, the word antiseptic has lost all meaning to me. (If we’re being honest, I’m not entirely sure I know what antiseptic actually means, but I assume it loosely translates to “magic pill” in Sanskrit.)
While curcumin, the active ingredient in the bright yellow spice, has been touted for its health benefits in boosting vitality—an admittedly vague umbrella intended to represent turmeric’s alleged health benefits—so much so that juice brand Kor Shots is able to sell two dozen one-ounce turmeric shots for just under $100), it hasn’t been proven to slow the growth of bacteria and viruses. However, curcumin has been shown to reduce inflammation, per a study conducted by cancer researchers at the University of Texas in Houston; so much so that athletes use it to aid muscle and broken bone recovery. It’s also been linked to alleviating gastric issues by slowing bile production. Was my mom right about turmeric being a good tonic to take when under the weather? Debatable. Did she miss an opportunity in her own Los Angeles backyard to cash in on being a turmeric early adopter? Definitely.
Turmeric’s alleged ability to ward off multiple cancers and stave off depression are the two big claims that get people talking. Turmeric virgins will whisper breathy claims like, “My mom said Dr. Oz said turmeric cures cancer…you know, way before his senate hearings.” It’s also the claim that makes Indian mothers the smuggest while pointing back and forth between you and the turmeric smoothie segment Hoda and Kathie are drinking their way through on the Today Show.
While curcumin has been shown to prevent depression, reverse liver damage, and prevent and treat Alzheimer’s, my mom can go ahead and unarch that eyebrow—the majority of the studies showing the dramatic results have only been done on mice and rats.
Just because LA’s trendy Punchbowl will sell you a mango, turmeric, and coconut butter blend for $10, doesn’t mean that one a day will keep the doctor away. While curcumin is turmeric’s active ingredient, there’s significantly more curcumin in supplement form than the average person would get from ground turmeric itself. All of which is to say that if you want to get the health benefits of turmeric, queuing up at your local juice bar may not be quite enough (though there’s no evidence that drinking turmeric isn’t helpful, for the optimists out there).
Does that mean that my mom was more wrong than right all those years she kept pushing ground turmeric on us like a miracle drug? Possibly. But when I recently found myself in the throes of a head cold that no amount of medication was able to treat, it wasn’t mom guilt from 2,000 miles away forcing me to my spice cabinet in the middle of the night. And while the chances are significantly higher that my cold simply ran its course by the time I went to my spice rack, I can at least tell my mom: I feel much better now.