Superfoods are beloved by health enthusiasts because they’re tasty and good for you. If you want to incorporate more disease-fighting foods into your regular diet, check what’s in your kitchen.
Improving your eating habits won’t just improve your overall health, it can also help promote weight loss and prevent diseases, especially if you cut out junk food and processed foods with added salt and sugar from your diet altogether.
The superfoods detailed below can help strengthen your immune system and boost your intake of essential vitamins and nutrients that you need to fight off common illnesses like a cold or the flu.
Beans
Beans are a staple superfood because they’ve very affordable and full of nutrients. Beans are full of protein yet low in fat.
Beans offer many health benefits and they’re naturally rich in isoflavone, which helps boost prostate and bone health. Isoflavone also helps lower heart disease risk and ease the symptoms of menopause.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a spice that can help lower your blood sugar and blood pressure. The spice also helps strengthen your immune system.
Cinnamon is rich in antioxidants that can activate insulin sensors in cells and prevent free radical damage. Additionally, cinnamon has anti-inflammatory properties and helps lower heart disease risk.
Studies suggest that cinnamon can help kill E. coli bacteria that grow in some foods.
Governor Brown has indicated that Oregon businesses may continue to ask all employees and customers to wear masks, if they’d rather not ask for papers
by Dorothy Cummings McLean
SALEM, Oregon, May 20, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Willing to share your private medical information with the butcher, the baker, and the ushers at your church?
According to the New York Times, the state of Oregon has ordered “businesses, workplaces and houses of worship” to make sure anyone who comes indoors without wearing a mask has been vaccinated. Maskless people who wish to enter will have to show a “proof of vaccination” card or a photo of such a card.
The New York Times says that the mandate is “one of the first of its kind in the country,” and that it has “raised concerns” that “the procedure of verifying vaccinations could be too cumbersome for workers.”
The Gray Lady neglected to mention that many Americans will object to saying “Your papers, please” in the Land of the Free, not because it is “too cumbersome,” but because they will find asking their neighbors about their private medical information shameful. The paper also neglected to mention that many Americans will balk at sharing their private medical information with their church or grocery store.
Some states that have loosened their mask mandates have been relying on an “honor system,” apparently “trusting” that those who dare to show their faces indoors have been vaccinated. Former Planned Parenthood CEO Dr. Leana Wen gave the new “papers, please” mandate her approval in a recent tweet.
“Oregon has it right–honor system can’t be trusted,” Wen tweeted to Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown, and quoted the New York Times article:
…[B]usinesses that do not want to implement vaccine verification can keep current health & safety measures in place, which includes masks & physical distancing for all individuals.
The New York Times stressed the idea that it could be “dangerous” for employees to ask people for their proof of vaccination, and it cited the concerns of Oregon Business and Industry’s Nathaniel Brown that the state was demanding too much from “frontline workers.”
“We have serious concerns about the practicality of requiring business owners and workers to be the enforcer,” Brown said.
“We are hearing from retailers and small businesses who are concerned about putting their frontline workers in a potentially untenable position when dealing with customers.”
For her part, Governor Brown has indicated that Oregon businesses may continue to ask all employees and customers to wear masks, if they’d rather not ask for papers.
“Some businesses may prefer to simply continue operating under the current guidance for now rather than worrying about vaccination status, and that’s fine,” Brown said last week.
Lead company says Mexican courts provided ‘little to no legal movement’
by Mexico News Daily
A United States oil services group has filed a US $100-million legal claim against Mexico with the World Bank, arguing that the government has breached investor protections enshrined in the now-defunct North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
According to a report by the news agency Reuters, a group led by Texas-based oil and gas company Finley Resources Inc. presented a claim to the bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on May 12. The Fort Worth-based company, which was awarded two oil tenders in Mexico and negotiated a third drilling service contract with the state oil company Pemex, alleges that Mexico failed to honor NAFTA agreements.
NAFTA was replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in July.
MWS Management Inc. and Prize Permanent Holdings are also part of the group that initiated the legal action.
Andrew Melsheimer, a lawyer for Finley, said the company turned to the arbitration court because efforts in Mexican courts to enforce its contracts had stalled.
Reuters, which noted that cases filed with ICSID can drag on for years, reported that Finley’s claim is the first by a U.S. oil services company against Mexico since NAFTA was replaced by USMCA.
Melsheimer asserted that Mexico promised that Finley’s investments would be protected but Mexican courts provided “little to no movement” when the company launched legal action. In contrast, Mexican oil services companies received more favorable treatment when they filed similar claims, the attorney said.
Reuters said neither Pemex nor Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to requests for comment.
Melsheimer said Pemex failed to pay for services provided by the companies in the group led by Finley Resources. He also said that Mexico didn’t honor some of the contracts awarded to them.
Finley and dozens of other companies entered Mexico’s gas and oil sector after the previous federal government’s 2013–2014 energy reform opened it up to foreign and private companies for the first time in almost 80 years.
President López Obrador is now determined to “rescue” Pemex and the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission from what he describes as years of neglect before he came to office in late 2018. He has threatened to seek constitutional change to ensure that his policies and legislation to boost the two companies remain in effect.
Finley’s claim is one of 13 against Mexico at ICSID, 10 of which have been filed since 2018.
Mexico’s treatment of private petroleum companies has also upset the top oil lobby in the United States. The American Petroleum Institute has sent at least two letters to the U.S. government asking it to urge the Mexican government to uphold its trade agreement commitments to treat American petroleum sector investors and exporters fairly.
Beginning Friday, May 21, visitors to Yosemite National Park will need a day-use reservation to enter the park. The temporary day-use reservation system will allow the park to manage visitation levels to reduce the risks associated with exposure to COVID-19.
Day use permit will be required for all users, including those with annual and lifetime passes. Each reservation is valid for three days.
Visitors can make reservations through the Online Ticket Portal. Beginning May 14, additional reservations are available daily at 8 am Pacific time, seven days prior to your arrival date. Each day use reservation valid for one vehicle and the occupants of that vehicle. For more detailed information, visit: https://www.nps.gov/yose/espanol/covid19.htm.
Day-use reservations are included for all visitors who spend the night in the park. This includes reservations for the Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite Valley Lodge, Curry Village, Wawona Hotel, Housekeeping Camp, NPS managed camps. Day use reservations are also included for all visitors with Nature and Half Dome permits and visitors entering the park via YARTS buses and for permitted business visits. The reservation system will be in effect until September 30, 2021.
The health and safety of park visitors, employees and partners continues to be our number one priority. If assistance is needed in making a reservation, a video tutorial “How to Make a Reservation” will be available in Spanish on the NPS Reservations Page. For more information about Yosemite National Park, visit www.nps.gov/yose.
Visitors can make reservations through the ticketed entry online portal: https://www.recreation.gov/timed-entry/10086745
WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 27: The United States Supreme Court announced a ruling in the case Hall v. Florida, finding that the state had adopted too rigid a cutoff in deciding who is eligible to be spared the death penalty because of intellectual disabilities, May 27, 2014 in Washington, DC. There are 10 major case decisions yet to be announced by the Supreme Court, including a ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, and just five announcement days on the court's calendar. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Supreme Court rejected the federal government’s effort to move forward with the deportation of a failed refugee claimant who argued he shouldn’t be removed from the United States because official paperwork was incomplete.
The Trump administration, in office when the case was argued Nov. 9, 2020, favored deportation in this instance. Up to 4,000 immigrants every year are reportedly eligible to receive what the government calls “cancellation of removal” to avoid splitting up families. The government’s loss may make it more difficult to deport certain categories of undocumented migrants.
The 6-3 vote in the case, Niz-Chavez v. Barr, court file 19-863, evenly divided the 6-member conservative bloc on the court.
Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the court’s opinion, in which conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, joined, along with liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Agusto Niz-Chavez is anundocumented migrant from Guatemala who was born in 1990. He entered the United States in 2005 and has misdemeanor convictions for driving without a license. He has three young children, all of whom are U.S. citizens.
Niz-Chavez was served with two government documents that together established the time and date of his deportation hearing.
But the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) mandates that the government must serve “a notice to appear” on individuals it wishes to remove from the country.
Gorsuch’s opinion centers on the indefinite article “a” in the noun phrase “a notice to appear.” The use of “a” implies a single document containing all of the relevant information, the court held.
“At one level, today’s dispute may seem semantic, focused on a single word, a small one at that,” Gorsuch wrote.
“But words are how the law constrains power. In this case, the law’s terms ensure that, when the federal government seeks a procedural advantage against an individual, it will at least supply him with a single and reasonably comprehensive statement of the nature of the proceedings against him.”
If people “must turn square corners when they deal with the government, it cannot be too much to expect the government to turn square corners when it deals with them.”
In his dissent, Kavanaugh wrote that Niz-Chavez “received written notice of the charges and all the required information, including the time and place of his hearing.”
Despite this, the majority interpreted “a notice to appear” in a way that “spawns a litany of absurdities” that “will impose substantial costs and burdens on the immigration system.”
Cases of abuse skyrocketed during the pandemic. According to experts, prevention and reconciliation programs should engage abusers as well as survivors
by Jenny Manrique
Ethnic Media Services
As a child, Tina Rodríguez was a victim of domestic violence and sexual abuse and repeatedly called 911 to report mistreatment by her father against her mother and siblings. His attacks not only caused her serious eating disorders but also a deep trauma only healed after years of family therapy. This healing path however, led to an unexpected outcome: over time, Rodríguez reconciled with the man who destroyed her childhood.
As part of her work with survivors of sexual assault, Rodríguez has invited her father to share his experience with other abusers on what punishment means in the criminal justice system. But what he considers more hurtful than prison is dealing with the harm done to his own family.
“There is a gap in cultural accountability for both those that have been impacted with anger issues or violent impulses and the inability to control them, and those that have been victims of domestic violence,” Rodríguez said during a conference organized by Ethnic Media Services .
“We rely on education for prevention and intervention from (criminal) systems that have helped create pain, and then want to keep us trapped in that pain … We need to hold ourselves culturally accountable for educating our youth about domestic violence and prevention,” added the advocate, who today serves as the California manager for Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice.
Executive Director of the Atlanta-based Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-based Violence, who has represented hundreds of domestic violence clients. “It is important to reconcile using social services, rather than criminally endorsed systems in place.”
However, these resources are less accessible to immigrants due to language barriers or cultural nuances that sometimes force victims to stay in situations of violence to avoid “shaming the family”. The loss of jobs during the pandemic has also increased the financial dependence of the abusive partner, in situations where immigrant survivors are ineligible for unemployment benefits.
A societal problem
Rodríguez’s father paid a prison sentence for the abuse inflicted on her family, after which he agreed to participate in a restorative justice process that she described as “brutal”, full of “candid and vulnerable” discussions.
“I learned that, like me, he also struggled with suicidal ideation,” said Rodríguez, for whom these encounters not only helped her to heal but also inspired her to lead a domestic violence prevention program at Valley State Prison.
“Society has gender assignments, and assumes men are expected to be the provider of the household,” Rodríguez observed. “Nobody talks about the type of pressure for a black man who, whether he is college educated and highly skilled, is screened out of about five interviews because of his skin color… the anger comes from that trauma of being oppressed and screened out of opportunities to be a provider”, she added.
Among Latinos, the multigenerational expectation of being the provider of a family that migrates in search of a better future, can also generate the fear of failure and end in violent impulses.
“We see domestic violence as a result of personal experience, but it’s really a societal and cultural problem,” said Reverend Aleese Moore-Orbih, Executive Director of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.
“It speaks to the health of our society, to the brokenness of our society. The trauma one experiences in domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, child abuse, any of those has a lifetime impact.”
In her work of more than 20 years with these victims, Moore-Orbih has observed how post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is transferred from generation to generation, which hasn’t allowed them to “live into the fullness of their capacities as human beings.”
“Women, girls, and those who identify with the feminine energy are always the most vulnerable,” said Moore-Orbih. “But if we talk about healthy masculinity, how about a healthy femininity as well? We all need to be healthy individuals… How do we shift the paradigm? When we stop worshiping control and power as a glorified way to be, when we stop encouraging our children to seek to have power and control, then we can start to see the change that happens in our intimate relationships.”
For Jerry Tello, Founder and Director of Training and Capacity Building at Compadres Network, it is impossible to talk about domestic violence without talking about oppression, racism, white supremacy, and generational trauma. “Where are the programs that understand this? There are none!”
Raised alongside seven siblings in a neighborhood of black and brown families in Compton, California, Tello lost his father -an immigrant from Chihuahua- when he was very young. Because of a strong macho culture, he did not mourn his death.
“I kept the grief inside me. I learned that in order to survive I couldn’t feel. Feeling was going to make me vulnerable,” he said. Tello also did not know how to express his pain when seeing many parents of his friends get locked up and sent away, or even get shot. “I couldn’t cry.”
Thirty-two years ago, together with another psychologist colleague, he created the Compadres Network to develop healing circles, and curriculum for rites of passage for young orphans, for teen fathers and for bringing families together.
“We made the decision that the first step of healing is healing ourselves, we have to reclaim the sacredness of ourselves as men. We have the medicine within us and our neighborhoods,” he said. “Lifting us up is an important aspect of this transformation,” he concluded.
It cited issues with illegal wages, poor Covid safety, lack of collective bargaining
by the El Reportero‘s wire services
The federal government responded to the United States’ request that it review alleged union abuses at a General Motors plant in Guanajuato by accusing its neighbor of not protecting migrants’ labor rights.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) said in a statement Wednesday that Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Esteban Moctezuma, has written to U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to raise concerns about the “lack of application” of labor laws in the U.S. agriculture and meatpacking industries.
Mexico’s criticism of labor conditions in the United States came just after the U.S. government announced that it had asked Mexico to examine alleged union abuses at the GM factory in Silao, Guanajuato, such as denying workers the right of free association and collective bargaining.
The SRE noted that labor rights in the U.S. protect all workers regardless of their migration situation, but in practice factors such as “lack of awareness, fear and abuse on the part of some employers prevent migrant workers from fully exercising their labor rights in some industries and states,” the SRE said.
The ministry said Moctezuma’s letter set out a range of failures on the part of some employers.
They include the failure to pay overtime and in some cases the minimum wage, to allow workers to organize and negotiate in a collective way, to give workers sufficient breaks, to follow Covid-19 health protocols and to attend to cases of violence and sexual harassment in agriculture and meatpacking.
The federal government proposed cooperation with the United States within the framework of the new North American free-trade agreement, the USMCA, in order to “fully guarantee the labor rights provided for in federal United States legislation and Chapter 23 of the USMCA,” the SRE said.
President López Obrador said Thursday that provisions in the three-way trade pact are “reciprocal,” explaining that “just as they can present complaints about the situation in which employees work in our country, we too can present complaints if there are violations of rights of workers in the United States.”
Mónica Martínez never thought that what started as a small farm design project to raise edible insects in home kitchens would grow into ‘Don Bugito’, a fast growing business in the San Francisco Bay area.
Don Bugito specializes in preparing snacks made from crickets and mealworms, inspired by pre-Columbian Mexican cuisine.
In January, Don Bugito got a strong boost when ICA, an Oakland-based nonprofit venture capital fund, invested $200,000 in equity to make it grow and expand.
Don Bugito’s story began approximately 10 years ago, when Mónica, who had come to Boston to study industrial design, never imagined becoming a business owner, an opportunity that she had not sought.
“I wanted to introduce edible insects to the food market. I featured the project to raise mealworms at a gallery in New York that appeared on the cover of the food section of the New York Times, and I haven’t stopped since. I had a lot of press and a television station that does food shows came to my house and they filmed me while I was cooking.”
And when she was asked what she was going to do next, she replied that she would open a food truck. “But I didn’t even have the capital for this. So, I became an edible insects taco street vendor for four years or more.”
Mónica believes that she was very fortunate because in 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations launched a publication that spoke of the importance of Western countries starting to include insects in their diet.
“It was then that people started buying their products. But she wasn’t making a lot of money. She worked from 5 a.m. until midnight. She was making $100 a day or less and had a baby.”
She says it was in 2014 when she pivoted the company to become an edible insects snack company.
Mónica brought her passion for consuming insects from Mexico where she was born and raised. “In Mexico, eating insects is a pre-Columbian tradition for hundreds of years. Don Bugito seeks to introduce edible insects in the United States.”
The insects that Mónica uses for Don Bugito’s snacks are crickets and mealworms raised on her own farm for human consumption. “Starting in 2017, we opened our urban farm in Oakland where we raise insects without hormones and without GMO food. They eat organic vegetables.”
Currently, Bugito snacks are sold online and in more than 75 stores nationwide.
“We have had to educate the public a lot about the benefits of eating insects, the nutritional aspect and sustainability. We have probably not done as well as a potato chip company, but we are still in business and growing little by little.”
Monica says that Don Bugito’s name is a play on words between Spanish and English. Don in Spanish means a great guy, bug in English is an insect. So it would be Don Bugito, which means something like the ‘Little Big Guy.’
Who buys the most insect snacks?
“We have different groups, one of them is people who want to eat healthy. We are very transparent about the ingredients we use. We do not grind our insects, so they can be seen in the snacks. We do not use any artificial flavors or preservatives and our processing is minimal.”
She adds that they also have a group of educated consumers and Hispanic people who want to rescue their own traditions, as well as young people concerned about global warming and taking care of the planet.
“Farming insects takes up a minimal amount of water. You don’t have to give them antibiotics or hormones to make them grow faster and they offer greater amounts of protein in comparison to convectional proteins, such as cattle, poultry and such.”
Generally people consume them as a snack, in salads or tacos.
“We have sweet and spicy snacks,” she explains. But they also offer cricket flour , chile-lime crickets, granola bites with cricket flour and a coconut brittle with mealworms, .
Monica explains that every two weeks they have a harvest of insects, which is greater during the summer. “In one month we harvest an average of 100lbs.”
Currently Don Bugito has 5 workers. They have the farm in Oakland and the kitchen where they prepare the snacks and pack them is in San Mateo.
In January, Mónica, through Don Bugito, was a recipient of the Entrepreneur of Color Fund, which meant an investment of $200,000 through the ICA organization in Oakland, California that supports small businesses with training and capital.
ICA’s investment is part of the San Francisco Entrepreneurs of Color Fund (EOCF), a collaborative investment fund spearheaded by JPMorgan Chase and associated with community development finance institutions that deploys capital to minority entrepreneurs, with an emphasis on Latino and Black businesses.
First piloted in Detroit, the EOCF expanded to San Francisco in 2018 with a $3.1 philanthropic investment from JPMorgan Chase to help underserved entrepreneurs access the capital they need to grow.
“This money is critical for the business to continue to grow, especially the farm operations, and we are building a sales team. It also helped me to hire two full-time employees. Before we were all part-time, now there are three of us working full-time,” explains Mónica.
And she believes that she got the equity investment because her business has matured after facing serious challenges in raising capital, growing, and attracting clients. “This investment definitely gives me a bit of room to breathe and build a stronger strategy.”
The COVID-19 pandemic shut her down for three months last year, but then starting in December she had a spike in her sales that kept her exhausted but happy. “In January when we received this investment, it was like saying my God, there is a future outside. It helped us a lot especially with COVID.”
It was through ICA that Mónica submitted the request for the capital investment for Don Bugito. ICA’s mission is to accelerate the growth of small big businesses to close the racial and gender wealth gap.
“ICA is excited to invest in super entrepreneur Mónica Martínez to finance the development and expansion of Don Bugito, with support from JPMorgan Chase through the Entrepreneurs of Color Fund,” said John Gough, ICA’s chief investment officer. “When they get the capital and training they need, small businesses like Monica’s add new jobs and create wealth for owners and workers.”
You can buy Don Bugito’s snacks online at donbugito.com. To learn more about ICA, visit www.ica.fund.
Visit JPMorganChase.com/Pathforward to learn more about their efforts to advance racial equity, which include affordable housing, minority-owned businesses, financial health, workforce diversity and more.
It was after midnight on Jan. 21 when Tulare County sheriffs walked into the encampment of unhoused people on the levee of the Tule River. “They parked on the highway,” remembers Rosendo “Chendo” Hernández, who shares a small trailer parked under a tree with his partner Josefina. “I heard them walking around in front, and then they called out to me to open my door. They said we were trespassing on private property and we had to leave.”
Sheriffs made him sign a notice, Hernández says, giving him a week to remove his possessions and find another place to live. Deputies then went to other levee residents who have set up shacks or impromptu shelters along the river. Mari Pérez, co-director of the Larry Itliong Resource Center in nearby Poplar, estimates that includes about 150 people.
“They said they’d arrest us if we didn’t sign,” Hernández recalls, and one officer, he charges, drew his gun.
“People are on edge, especially because of what happened on the St. John’s River.”
The sheriff’s warning to the Tule River residents came 10 days after police in neighboring Visalia, Tulare County’s largest city, evicted another group of people on the St. John’s River levee. Residents there were forced to take what possessions they could carry, while heavy construction equipment piled up what was left. A fire later broke out in which those possessions were incinerated.
Tulare County is not unique. Similar situations face unhoused people across the state. Here they are unfolding along rivers in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, the country’s richest and most productive agricultural region. That wealth, however, does not produce housing for the valley’s impoverished residents, who instead face the use of law enforcement to remove them and render them invisible.
The use of police to get rid of the encampments of people living outdoors is hardly new, whether in the San Joaquin Valley or the rest of California. In 2009 a sweep by Visalia police of St. John’s River camps was witnessed by Bill Simon, then chair of the Fresno chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Afterwards, “The river was as empty as the dreams of the homeless who were being evicted,” he observed. “Some people [had] lived there for as long as seven to 14 years.”
Fresno, the valley’s biggest city, not only has the largest number of residents living on the street, but a long history of efforts to make them leave. The city passed a “ban on camping” on the streets in August 2017. In 2018 police had 9,000 “contacts” with people sleeping on sidewalks, yet their numbers continued to swell.
Jerry Dyer, former Fresno chief of police, was elected mayor last year, and he announced a new initiative on Jan. 22, “Project Offramp,” to force homeless people to leave camps set up on the property of Caltrans. “Even though it’s not our jurisdiction,” Dyer admitted, he will send police and city workers to tell the people sleeping near freeways to leave. “We can’t get used to homeless people living in our neighborhoods… It’s time we reclaim our neighborhoods and reclaim our freeways,” Mayor Dyer earlier told the local Fox affiliate.
The Offramp project will supposedly find housing for the 250 people which Dyer estimates live near freeways. But they are only some of the 2,386 people living out of doors in Fresno city and county in 2020, an increase of 598 just from the previous year.
Nevertheless, in 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court backed a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals holding that “people experiencing homelessness cannot be criminally punished for sleeping outside on public property if there are no available alterna
tives,” according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. NLIHC president and CEO Diane Yentel explained, “Cities must stop attempting to criminalize and hide their communities’ homeless people and instead work toward providing real solutions, starting with the only thing that truly ends homelessness: access to safe, affordable, accessible homes.”
(Due to lack of space, this article was cut. You can see the full version at http:// elreporterosf.com/sin-alojamiento-arrojado-del-dique/)
5.8.21 – Asafoetida (Ferula assa-foetida) may be more familiar to you through unsavory names such as devil’s dung and stinking gum. It merited these names because of the fetid, pungent odor it emits. But despite this reputation, F. assa-foetida sees wide use in India for both medicinal and culinary purposes.
Asafoetida is used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat stomach illnesses, headaches, asthma and menstrual pain. Ayurvedic medicine also acknowledged asafoetida’s anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antibacterial properties that make it a perfect healing herb.
But did you know that this strong-smelling herb also boasts of potent anti-cancer effects? A 2017 study by a group of Iranian scientists looked at how F. assa-foetida affected breast cancer cells in mice. One group of mice received an asafoetida treatment while the other did not. Here are three reasons they found in the study that make asafoetida an effective herb against the big C.
Asafoetida shrank tumors in affected mice
The scientists found that asafoetida shrank tumor size in the treated mice by more than 60 percent. The treated mice also saw their tumor weight dwindle by almost half. Mice who received asafoetida also started gaining weight, which suggested that the strong-smelling herb helped undo metabolic damage caused by cancer.
Asafoetida caused cancer cells in the mice to die out
The scientists also noticed that a large amount of cancer cells in mice treated with the herb died out. Despite the presence of tumors in some areas, they had sections where the cells were already killed off. This suggested that asafoetida played an active role in speeding up the death of cancer cells.
Asafoetida stopped cancer cells from spreading throughout the body
Finally, the researchers looked at other organs in the asafoetida-treated mice. They detected fewer living cancer cells in the lungs of these mice, while they detected dead cancer cells in their livers. Based on this, the researchers noted that asafoetida prevented cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body and causing further harm.
Cooking with asafoetida
Asafoetida is used as a culinary spice in India, where the country’s different languages have different names for it. Despite the different monikers for asafoetida, many people agree that just a small amount of it is enough to brighten up a myriad of Indian dishes. Indian cooks would usually add in asafoetida alongside other spices when they fry these in oil or ghee (clarified butter). The offensive smell of asafoetida then mellows down to a scent similar to onions or leeks.
Because of this quality, asafoetida is used to enhance the savory taste of curry dishes. You can add it to curries made of lentil, chickpea and other vegetables. If you are cooking mutton curry, a few pinches of asafoetida will help bring out its taste. Asafoetida also imparts an onion-like flavor to certain dishes, making it suitable for followers of certain religions who are not allowed to consume strong-smelling foods.
Pure asafoetida is sold as resin chunks, processed from the dried sap extracted from F. assa-foetida stems and roots. The dark amber asafoetida resin is difficult to grate, so it is traditionally crushed between stones or with a hammer. If you opt to use asafoetida resin chunks for your dishes, you should scrape off small quantities as the strong smell can be overwhelming.
Also, you should put asafoetida in an airtight container and keep it away from other spices. The smell of pure asafoetida is strong that it can contaminate other spices nearby.
Alternatively, you can choose compound asafoetida to use in your food – which is easier to use when cooking. It usually consists of 30 percent pure asafoetida resin combined with rice or wheat flour and gum arabic. These additional ingredients temper the strong odor of asafoetida and make it easier to store.
Don’t let the strong odor of asafoetida intimidate you, as this herb is a very strong ally against cancer!
