This spice stabilizes blood sugar.

In a generation, the incidence of diabetes type 2 in the world has multiplied by five. This is a disaster.

While our contemporaries to imagine that they can "cure" by swallowing chemical pills, the truth is that diabetes is mostly a disease of lifestyle.

The main way to prevent diabetes is a low glycemic index diet, in other words to foods that not turn too quickly into glucose, and that therefore not sharp peak of insulin cause.

But consume more cinnamon may also reduce your risk of developing diabetes, helping to stabilize your blood sugar levels.

The ferrari of antioxidants

Cinnamon is one of the plants richest in antioxidants in the world with an ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbency Capacity, a measure of the antioxidant in vitro) of 267,536, which is huge (100 times more than the grenade!).

It has been the object of a quasi-veneration in most of the great civilizations for its warm, sweet taste, and its subtle aroma - which adds much to the pleasure of drinking.

Cinnamon helps to stabilize blood sugar by stimulating the receptors of insulin and by increasing their sensitivity to this hormone that reduces the blood glucose (blood sugar levels). In response, the body needs less produce insulin to cause the same effect. This relieves the pancreas, stimulates the metabolism and reduces inflammation.

Cinnamon contains 0.5 to 1% of powerful essential oils known for their antimicrobial factors, very effective for stopping the growth of bacteria and yeasts such as Candida albicans.

Cinnamon has three major oils that contain active compounds called cinnamaldehyde, cinnamyl acetate and cinnamyl alcohol. Cinnamic aldehyde has been studied by researchers for its ability to block the issuance of inflammatory agents by the cell membrane.

As if that were not enough, the only smell of cinnamon powerfully stimulates the regions of the brain of the concentration and memory.

Indulge your friends

Don't hesitate to sprinkle a large number of your dishes of cinnamon.

Is it is usual in Europe and North America, to use cinnamon for primers sweet (in the cookies on pies Apple, compotes, ice, chocolate desserts), unlike in North Africa and in the East, where it is in the dishes salty that she is the most used, especially with meat and poultry (think of the delicious Moroccan pastillas).

Cinnamon powder resents a too long cooking. It is therefore best to add it at the end of cooking, unlike rods that are more resistant to long cooking.

Put cinnamon in your dishes rejoice your guests, because it is a stimulant of the salivary glands and gastric mucosa. Your guests will also be happier after your meal since cinnamon promotes digestion, the expulsion of gases and calm the spasms of the stomach and intestines.

Cinnamon keeps cool, in the shelter of the light and hermetically closed to reduce the oxidation of its powerful nutrients. Cinnamon powder will keep for 6 months, the sticks of cinnamon about a year. If your cinnamon was more sweet smell, you unfortunately the discard and replace it.

How cinnamon choose?

Cinnamon, before be reduced to powder, presents in the form of rods rolled longitudinally and cigarette paper. Is in fact bits of dried bark of cinnamon, a tree from the tropical regions of Asia.

The most popular canneliers are those of Ceylon and China, which produce a different one to the other cinnamon.

Ceylon cinnamon is ochre in colour and the sticks are made of very fine layers. Cassia cinnamon is a darker red color and the rods are thicker. This last is also a taste more bitter, less sweet.

The main difference between the two is the coumarin content. Coumarin thinner blood and the cinnamon from China, also known as "Breaks", is much stronger in coumarin and should therefore be used sparingly to true Ceylon cinnamon.

Half a teaspoon per day of cinnamon is enough to draw all the benefits mentioned in this letter.

And to finish, a small anecdote...

"Take a good bloody sheep district...".

In theEncyclopedia Britannica, it is written that the cinnamon was more valuable than gold. It is true that Moses prescribed the use of cinnamon in the manufacture of Holy oil, and that King Solomon himself used it in his precious perfumes. The cinnamon was also the largest source of profit for the Dutch merchants of the Compagnie des Indes Orientales (which were familiar), but I doubt that this statement on gold and cinnamon to theEncyclopedia Britannica, which also cites no sources, is accurate.

Anyway, my anecdote comes not from there, but Herodotus, the Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (it was he who told how to urinate in his stories that the ancient Egyptians were all upside-down, and in particular: according to him, men urinaient sitting, women standing; it has nothing to do with cinnamon but it struck me when I had read it)(adolescent).

In ancient times, therefore, the cinnamon was imported by caravans coming from mysterious and remote Asian. Herodotus, who had never gone if why far and who questioned the cinnamon was so expensive, is was explain the thing by a practical Joker merchant:

According to him, no human knew whence came the cinnamon. However, large birds made their nests on the side of cliffs too to be attained by man.

The collection of this singular l'aromate required therefore to charge large neighborhoods of meat which, deposited at the foot of the mountain, were swept away by the major volatile until their nests. Too fragile to support this excess weight, they fell, finally delivering their precious materials to harvest!

Where the price, "more expensive than gold", required by the merchant...