Caraway seed nutrition facts

Caraway grows extensively all over the Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor regions. It is biennial, herbaceous plant which blooms once in every two years to creamy flowers appearing in umbels. It grows to about two feet in height and bears small feathery leaves. Caraway seeds, having similar in appearance as that of cumin, are crescent in shape, dark brown, with up to five stripes (ribs) running lengthwise on their surface.

Caraway generally harvested during early hours of the day to avoid spilliing of its seeds in th field. They are then staked in bundles and left to dry under sunlight. The seeds extracted by threshing, either mannually or using machines.

Health benefits of caraway seeds

• In addition to their utility in traditional medicines, caraway seeds have their own food value, and indeed, have several health benefiting nutrients, minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants.
• Caraway seeds are rich source of dietary fiber. 100 g seeds provide 38 g of fiber, 100% of daily recommended intake of fiber. Soluble as well as insoluble dietary fiber increase bulk of the food and help prevent constipation by speeding up its movement through the gut. In fact, gastro-intestinal transit time of food is greatly decreased.
• Fiber also binds to toxins in the food and helps protect the colon mucusa from cancers. Further, dietary fibers bind to bile salts (produced from cholesterol) and decrease their re-absorption in colon, and thus help in reducing serum LDL cholesterol levels.
• Caraway contains several health benefiting essential oils. Principle volatile compounds are carvone, limonene, carveol, pinen, cumuninic aldehyde, furfurol, and thujone. These active principles in the caraway seeds known to have antioxidant, digestive, carminative, and anti-flatulent properties.
• Caraway has several health benefiting flavonoid antioxidnats such as lutein, carotene, crypto-xanthin and zea-xanthin. These compounds are indeed work as powerful anti-oxidants by removing harmful free radicals from the body and thus protect from cancers, infection, aging and degenerative neurological diseases.
• Caraway spice is an excellent source of minerals like iron, copper, calcium, potassium, manganese, selenium, zinc and magnesium. Copper required for the production of red blood cells. Iron required for red blood cell formation. Zinc is a co-factor in many enzymes that regulate growth and development, sperm generation, digestion and nucleic acid synthesis. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps regulate heart rate and blood pressure. Manganese used by the body as a co-factor for the powerful anti-oxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase.
• The caraway seeds indeed are the storehouse for many vital vitamins. Vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin C as well as many B-complex vitamins like thiamin, pyridoxine, riboflavin, and niacin particularly concentrated in the seeds.