Fennel Seeds

The Sweet, anise-flavored Fennel Seed together with thyme, nettle, mugwort, etc., has been revered as one of nine Anglo-Saxon sacred herbs for its health benefits. The spice is one of the most sought-after ingredients in many popular cuisines all over the Mediterranean regions. Health Benefits of Fennel Seeds

• Fennel symbolizes longevity, courage, and strength. In addition to its use as medicinal values, fennel has much health benefiting nutrients, essential compounds, anti-oxidants, dietary fiber, minerals, and vitamins.
• Fennel seeds indeed contain numerous flavonoid anti-oxidants like kaempferol and quercetin. These compounds function as powerful anti-oxidants by removing harmful free radicals from the body thus protect from cancers, infection, aging and degenerative neurological diseases.
• Like in caraway, fennel seeds too are rich source of dietary fiber. 100 g seeds provide 39.8 g of fiber. Much of this roughage is metabolically inert insoluble fiber, which helps increase bulk of the food by absorbing water throughout the digestive system and easing constipation condition.
• In addition, dietary fibers bind to bile salts (produced from cholesterol) and decrease their re-absorption in colon, thus help lower serum LDL cholesterol levels. Together with flavonoid anti-oxidants, fiber composition of fennel helps protect the colon mucus membrane from cancers.
• Fennel seeds compose of health benefiting volatile essential oil compounds such as anethole, limonene, anisic aldehyde, pinene, myrcene, fenchone, chavicol, and cineole. These active principles in the fennel are known to have antioxidant, digestive, carminative, and anti-flatulent properties.
• Fennel seeds are concentrated source of minerals likecopper, iron, calcium, potassium, manganese, selenium, zinc, and magnesium. Copper is required in the production of red blood cells. Iron is required for red blood cell formation. Zincis a co-factor in many enzymes that regulate growth and development, sperm generation, digestion and nucleic acid synthesis.Potassiumis an important component of cell and body fluids that helps controlling heart rate and blood pressure. Manganese is used by the body as a co-factor for the powerful anti-oxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase.
• Furthermore, the 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 are concentrated in these seeds.