Cinnamon – Health Benefits And Serving Ideas
Posted by Kayla Phillips on
What is cinnamon?
Cinnamon is a favourite household spice, and has been used around the world for centuries. Once traded as currency, this spice has a pleasant flavour and warm smell that has made it popular in cooking, particularly in baking and curries.
The spice comes from the inner bark of a small evergreen tree. The bark is peeled and laid in the sun to dry, where it curls up into rolls known as cinnamon sticks. Cinnamon is also available in powdered form.
If you don’t yet have cinnamon in your diet plan, now is the time to start. Cinnamon is a great spice for those who have diabetes because it’s been proven to help you better control your blood glucose levels, especially when you are adding carbohydrates into the picture.
Furthermore, as cinnamon gives off a slightly sweet taste, this also makes it ideal for helping you reduce the sugar content of any meal you’re preparing, enabling you to better control your condition.
Those aren’t the only health benefits that cinnamon brings, however. There are many additional benefits to eating cinnamon, which is why it’s so important to get this great spice into your diet plan.
Some of these health benefits include:
- Antioxidant power
Cinnamon will help combat free-radical damage and may also decrease the signs of aging. It contains a high dose of potent polyphenols.
- Reduced inflammation
Inflammation is at the heart of many different diseases, and cinnamon may actually help combat this. This also makes it helpful for potentially reducing symptoms associated with chronic pain.
- Reduced risk for heart disease
Cinnamon may help to lower the levels of bad cholesterol in the body while increasing the levels of good cholesterol, therefore giving your heart health a solid boost.
- Improved insulin sensitivity
By adding cinnamon to your diet plan, you may boost your insulin sensitivity, which means your body is better prepared to handle the carbohydrates you eat.
Clearly cinnamon is something you want to get into your day. Best of all, it’s totally calorie free so it’s something anyone can add to their diet without worry.
Struggling for ideas on how you can incorporate cinnamon into your plan?
Most people think that cinnamon is only used for sprinkling over oatmeal or adding to baked goods, but there so many more possibilities. Some of these include:
- Sprinkling some in a cup of coffee or hot tea
- Using it to make Indian Butter Chicken (most recipes will call for it)
- Adding it to protein smoothies you may be preparing
- Stirring it into a bowl of Greek yogurt and topping with some pecans and sliced apples
- Sprinkling it over apples or peaches and then baking them a short while
- Using it over a cinnamon raisin bagel with some low-fat cream cheese
- Making it into a marinade for your main protein source
So, get busy in the kitchen and see what uses for cinnamon you can come up with!
After 40 days, everyone taking cinnamon had lower glucose, triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad”) cholesterol and total cholesterol levels. The placebo group saw no change.
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