Product feedback for Blendful Herbs & Spices
I recently launched a product focusing on the health benefits and therapeutic properties of herbs & spices. Just a warning this is a huge write up so if you're strapped for time you can just check out the site here: https://www.blendful.org/ (I'd appreciate any feedback)
Before I started working on this project I had definitely not considered herbs & spices to be superfoods by any stretch of the imagination, and I considered myself in-the-know with respect to health & nutrition.
What makes them superfoods? Antioxidants. What really got me interested was when I came across a study done on over 3100+ foods (https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3), measuring for antioxidant content. Ounce for ounce herbs & spices averaged the greatest antioxidant content— more than dark chocolate, red wine and blueberries (without any of the drawbacks of consuming sugar or alcohol).
So this peaked my interest a bit, but I wanted to know more...
I found entire books on herbal medicine, like this gold mine: Herbal Medicine, 2nd edition Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92773/) some of the implications are pretty eye -opening. It goes into mechanisms of how herbs & spices positively effect diseases of our time including cancer, cardiovascular disease, dermatologic disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes and more.
One of my favorite data-driven studies showed a stunning historical trend in the biomedical literature reporting spice-disease associations. There was an exponential increase in articles reporting the positive therapeutic effects of spices in last few decades. The number of articles reporting positive associations far out-numbered those reporting negative ones. Here’s a graph representing the data:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5973616/bin/pone.0198030.g002.jpg
Another study published in the Journal of Translational Medicine stated:
“Spice compounds interact with multiple targets and alter the dysregulated inflammatory pathways associated with chronic diseases. Hence, with the fatal side effects and inflating cost of modern therapeutics, spices and their active components hold a huge guarantee for the development of affordable, novel and safe drugs against chronic diseases.“
Beyond the grand implications on disease, being a ‘biohacker’ I wanted to know that if I was already a healthy human being how can I use herbs & spices to my advantage and optimize my health even further?
So I began to find studies (human and animal models) suggesting various therapeutic effects that could be attainable from herbs/spices. A few examples include:
Mixing rosemary, thyme and oregano together and applying it to meat before grilling reduces carcinogenic compounds (HCAs/PAHs) by anywhere up to 78-87%.
Cinnamon converted poor learning mice to good learners. Cinnamon is metabolized into sodium benzoate, a chemical used as a drug treatment for brain damage. Sodium benzoate is converted into BDNF which is thought of as miracle grow for the brain because it creates new brain cells, help maintain the integrity of neurons and synapses, in addition to learning and memory. Lower levels of BDNF are associated with cognitive decline.
In older adults with mild memory complaints, an equivalent of 1½ teaspoons of turmeric over a 18 month period showed a 28% improvement in memory and fewer plaques and tangles in the brain which are linked to Alzheimers.
Rosemary extract was also found to boost cognitive and memory performance by up to 15% in humans.
Piperine (black pepper's key compound) increases the bioavailability of curcumin (turmeric’s beneficial key compound) in rats by 154%, and in humans by 2,000%.
Admittedly at first I was mainly focused on the brain benefits, but eventually I found a whole host of other therapeutic effects.
With this in mind, I would go to the store and buy herbs & spices that were highest on the antioxidant list (cross-referencing a few other antioxidant assay tables as well), and the same ones also happened to have the most therapeutic potential. Most notably:
Clove
Cinnamon
Oregano
Rosemary
Thyme
Turmeric
I wanted to know more- and how to optimize further- so i began to wonder what was I missing? Here are some other things:
The species of herbs & spices is important too, for example: cassia cinnamon is high in a hepatotoxic compound (a liver damaging molecule), but Ceylon ‘True’ Cinnamon is lowest across all cinnamon species.
Herbs and spices are photosensitive, meaning they'll deteriorate & lose their potency if exposed to light. Almost all the spices at the store are in clear containers, what if I forget to store them in a dark place?
My solution for all of this was to make a product that I would use myself, something I’d actually be the customer for since nothing like this existed yet. I also I wanted maximum benefit from minimal effort— the path of least resistance. So I formulated complementary blends that shared common therapeutic effects and that would have a synergistic effect with each other. Using only the purest herb/spice species and last but not least all stored in amber glass which would block 99% UV-light, just in case I left my spices on the counter exposed to light.
So I created https://www.blendful.org/
Take a look and let me know what you think— any suggestions you may have are encouraged and I appreciate any feedback! I would really like to know: 1) Do I get the idea across well on the website, is it easy to understand the purpose of the product? 2) Is this something you would buy?
Hopefully this wasn’t too verbose, I really felt like I needed to bring more awareness around herbs and spices that they're not just for aromatic purposes with little to no nutritional value— quite the opposite. Hopefully I’ve accomplished that, even if just one person benefited.
Thanks for reading!
Javon
Sources:
https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-9-3
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92773/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5973616/
https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/21/5/559/pdf
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/grilled-meat-oregano-reduced-risks-of-cancer-foodborne-disease
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070627124111.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5097886/
https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/s-nrs101518.php
