These four amazing spices are used all times of the year, but you’ll find that the healing powers of fall spices work especially well when your immune system has a chance of being compromised with seasonal cold and flu.
Spices aren’t just for taste. Many of them also have excellent health benefits for you all throughout the year. Here are some popular fall spices and the different ways they can benefit you.
Cinnamon
Who doesn’t love cinnamon? It is probably one of the most popular fall spices, often combined with sweet flavors for a nice treat. During the fall, cinnamon is frequently used to top lattes, made into cookies like gingerbread or snickerdoodle, and is a frequent spice to use in baked goods with pumpkin, nutmeg, and other fall flavors. It also happens to have health benefits, including protecting your heart and helping to prevent diabetes. Cinnamon has a lot of antioxidants, which is always important for general wellness and can help to reduce inflammation in the body.
Cinnamon isn’t just delicious, but it also has some exceptional health benefits. Here are some reasons to use cinnamon.
It Contains Antioxidants
Like many spices and herbs, cinnamon has natural antioxidants, which are what your body needs to help fight off bacteria and different types of infections. While your body naturally has germ-fighting properties, it always helps to have a nice natural boost to stave off illness and infections. Using just a little bit of cinnamon every day can help you with this.
This Fall Spice is Excellent at Freshening Your Breath
If you are concerned about breath that isn’t as fresh as you would like it, consider adding some cinnamon to your breakfast or your coffee. It can help cut down on the breath odor from the coffee itself or freshen your breath during other times of the day. This combined with good oral hygiene is a great way to have fresh breath all day long.
Cinnamon Has Been Known to Help With Cardiovascular Health
Another health benefit of cinnamon is that it may help with your cardiovascular health. If you are concerned about your heart health, the natural properties in cinnamon might give it a nice, natural boost. Aside from cinnamon, your heart health is improved by eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise, focusing on gentle cardio like walking or doing aerobic activity.
Cinnamon Reduces Inflammation in the Body
Lastly, cinnamon is known as a natural anti-inflammatory spice. This means when you consume it, it can help reduce the inflammation in your body. This is great if you have trouble with your joints and conditions like arthritis, which is worsened by that extra inflammation. Try using cinnamon more often and see if you notice any improvement.
Fall Spice Powerhouse: Cloves
This is a spice you probably use often in the fall when combined with some of these other fall flavors, but don’t realize all of the reasons to use it more often. Cloves can be found in many forms, but getting ground cloves in the spice section of your grocery store, to using clove oil as an essential oil. Cloves are also anti-inflammatory, similar to cinnamon, so they help with conditions like arthritis. It also works as a natural antiseptic and can even provide mild numbing. Many people use clove oil on a toothache.
Holistic Benefits of Clove
Clove is a great spice to use during the fall season, but you can find it year-round. It is amazing when added to a cider, baking pumpkin pie, and of course making any variation of chili or soups. Not only is it a versatile spice, but it also happens to have a lot of health benefits. Take a look at the different ways you can use clove for health purposes.
Cloves Are Loaded With Nutrients
Before talking about the individual health benefits of cloves, let’s look at the types of nutrients they contain. You may occasionally add cloves or clove oil to your dishes, especially in the fall when you want to add spices to soups and baked goods. However, you may not realize just how many nutrients cloves contain. A single serving of cloves has up to 6 grams of protein and 33 grams of fiber. It also contains potassium, sodium, zinc, calcium, iron, and many vitamins including D, K, B12, B6, A, and E.
Get a Natural Immune System Boost with Cloves
It is always good to boost your immune system whenever possible, especially when you can do so naturally. Cloves provide these benefits thanks to all the antioxidants and various nutrients found in the spice. When you start adding more cloves to your dishes during the fall and year-round, you have the ability to boost your immune system naturally. This is done by improving your white blood cell count to decrease your body’s sensitivity to different bacteria.
Cloves Help Protect Your Liver
Your liver is a vital organ you might not think too much about, but it needs protection just like the rest of your body. With cloves, you are getting a lot of antioxidants, which can help protect your liver and other vital organs from free radicals. This is going to help to naturally clean out your liver and keep it from being damaged from anything you consume. While you should still look for other ways to protect your liver, this definitely doesn’t hurt.
Cloves Can Improve Your Digestion
Your digestive system is a lot more sensitive than you might imagine. This is why just eating too much of something or the wrong thing can cause stomach cramps, nausea, and vomiting. To balance out your digestive system, you need to stimulate your digestive enzymes, which is what cloves can do for you. This is going to help with nausea, reducing gas, and improving your stomach’s digestion overall.
Nutmeg
Another fall spice you should know about is nutmeg. Like cinnamon, it is a frequent spice to be used in fall dishes, especially the baked goods and coffee drinks. This has a taste similar to cinnamon, so there is a lot of versatility when using it. It has been linked to various health benefits, including improving your cognitive function, helping to provide natural pain relief, and reducing indigestion. Some people have also noted its ability to help with insomnia.
Ways to Use Nutmeg in the Fall
When you think of the flavors of fall, nutmeg is bound to come up. It goes perfectly with other fall spices like allspice, cinnamon, and ginger, and there are loads of ways to use it. It also happens to be good for you, with a long list of health benefits. Here are some different ways to use nutmeg during the fall season.
Make Baked Dishes with Nutmeg
Nutmeg is commonly used in sweet and savory dishes, often with your baked goods. This spice is used alongside other spices when making baked goods in the fall, such as cupcakes, cookies, cakes, and pies. The fall is the perfect season for making all your spiced baked goods, from pumpkin spice cupcakes to apple pie and snickerdoodle cookies. Nutmeg is wonderful next to other spices like cinnamon, cloves, and even cardamom. Allspice is often used alongside nutmeg in these baked dishes as well.
Add Nutmeg Spice to Savory Dishes
While these spices are often used for baked goods, which tend to be on the sweeter side, you can definitely use nutmeg for your savory dishes as well. Try tasting nutmeg on its own, which has more of a nutty flavor than the other fall spices, which gives you a good idea of what dishes it would go perfect with. Try adding a little nutmeg to your soup, stew or chili to warm you up on a chilly night, or try adding it to dishes like lasagna or spaghetti. Some Mexican cuisine can also use a little nutmeg as you experiment with the various flavors you use in the kitchen. Nutmeg also happens to go great with many different vegetable dishes.
Make Sweet and Spiced Morning Drinks
You can try making some fall drinks for the morning or cold evenings by adding spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. These spices are wonderful when added to your coffee or tea, chai latte, and even your spiced hot chocolate. If you want something cold, you can also use nutmeg and other spices to make a spiced apple cider.
Health Benefits of Nutmeg
Nutmeg isn’t just delicious and easy to add to your foods and drinks, but it is good for you. Nutmeg has many health benefits from helping to reduce pain in your body to improving your digestive system. It also helps with detoxifying your body and improving your oral health. As you can see, there are many reasons to use nutmeg during the fall!
Allspice
What is Allspice? When you begin gathering spices and seasonings to use in your fall dishes, you might come across a powdered herb called allspice. While at first it seems like a combination of spices together, that is not what this is. Allspice is actually a type of berry that is often used in fall flavors like cider. Here is what you should know about allspice.
Ways to Use Allspice
First of all, you should know how to use allspice so you can get all the different health benefits. The flavor of allspice is similar to other fall spices you are accustomed to using, such as nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. In fact, when you can’t get your hands on actual allspice, people often recommend using equal parts of these three spices, mixing them together, and making your very own allspice alternative. Therefore, anything you use these spices for, you can use allspice for. It is great when making a spiced apple cider, baked goods like cookies and cupcakes for the fall, and some savory dishes as well.
Now that you know some different ways you can use allspice during the fall and year-round, here are some health benefits of this spice to know about:
Allspice Reduces Inflammation
First of all, allspice, like many other spices, has natural properties that allow it to reduce inflammation in the body. If you have arthritis or gout, you probably experience more pain and discomfort when your joints have inflammation. You can start reducing it naturally by using allspice more often.
Helps to Improve Immunity
To boost your immunes system, start incorporating more herbs, fruits, veggies, and spices into your diet. Allspice is a great way to start improving your immune system, as it is a natural antifungal and antibacterial spice.
Allspice for Antioxidants
Everyone wants more antioxidants, and spices like allspice can start adding more into your system. Some antioxidants that allspice has include tannins, eugenol, and quercetin. These are compounds that make it a good antioxidant spice for preventing illness and infections.
Helps with circulation
Allspice is also great for improving circulation in your system, thanks to minerals like iron and copper. With good circulation, you are promoting good red blood cell growth, which gives you more energy and helps with your health overall.
Even if allspice is unfamiliar to you, there are many reasons to use it. Start incorporating it into your dishes.
Make sure that cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and allspice are part of your fall spice cooking routine. You’ll enjoy their healing benefits as much as their excellent taste.
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