“Saffron should be widely grown because of the health benefits it offers to both man and animal,” says Alain Bournoue, author of Savory Saffron , the world’s first cookbook about the dish. Indeed, it’s one of our most powerful natural treatments for arthritis and heart disease. While saffron is naturally grown in the West, the Middle East is growing its own – but the yield of saffron is very low, at less than 1% by weight. Bournoue and his co-author, Jean-Philippe Bussard, have spent three years travelling the world to trace the source of each part of the dish. “There is very little in North America,” he says.
Saffron is also the key ingredient in a wide range of traditional Indian dishes. “It’s so much used in India that there is a whole industry that focuses on it,” Bournoue says. “It’s a health food.” But for these dishes which are often made with oil and canola oil, the high concentration of saffron causes them to oxidise during cooking and spoil the results.
Invented by a French doctor, Jean-Philippe Bussard in the late 1700s, saffron is also thought to prevent cancer by fighting off damaging pollutants and by making people immune to certain strains of the nasty fungus that usually causes diseases. Bournoue is careful to say that there is no evidence to show the plant benefits people with diabetes. “It’s important that we do not believe it can do this,” he says, of saffron.
So saffron can’t cure cancer?
That’s a matter of debate. Many scientists believe it to be too small a sample size to prove any health benefits for those who don’t get it from their diet. “It isn’t a panacea for all illnesses and it can’t cure everything, either,” says Professor Andrew Knol, director of the research partnership at the University of York’s School of Food Science. But he also says the high concentration of saffron in the dishes is probably responsible – since the plant is also a “key ingredient in many dishes” around the world, which are likely to be made with the crop in mind.
Other scientific evidence says the plant has antioxidant properties and may actually help to ward off cancers. In one experiment, scientists at Oxford University discovered that when the plant was eaten or applied to cells, they were
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